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CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 FROM 
 
 J.G.Sch.urniann 
 
Cornell University Library 
 
 PR 3423.S15 1881a 
 
 Dryden. 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31 92401 31 81 1 30 
 
ewQim mm ot ^ttttvs 
 
 EDITED BY JOHN MQELEY 
 
 DEYDEN 
 
DRYDEN 
 
 BY 
 
 G. SAINTSBURY 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 1881. 
 
 {The Jiiffht of Translatton and Reproduction is Reserved.'i 
 
PREFATORY NOTE. 
 
 A WRITER on Dryden is. more especially bound to ac- 
 knowledge his indebtedness to his predecessors, because, 
 so far as matters of fact are concerned, that indebtedness 
 must necessarily he greater than in most other cases. 
 There is now little chance of fresh information being 
 obtained about the poet, unless it be in a few letters 
 hitherto undiscovered or withheld from publication. I 
 have therefore to acknowledge my debt to Johnson, 
 Malone, Scott, Mitford, Bell, Christie, the Eev. E. 
 Hooper, and the writer of an article in the Quarterly 
 Bevieio for 1878. Murray's " Guide to Northampton- 
 shire " has been of much use to me in the visits I have 
 made to Dryden's birthplace, and the numerous 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 biographers. 
 Mr. "W. Noel Sainsbury, of the Eecord 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 original 
 editions of many late seventeenth-century works, including 
 
vi PEBFATOEY NOTE. 
 
 most of the rare pamphlets against the poet in reply to 
 his satires. 
 
 Except Scott's excellent hut costly and hulky edition, 
 there is, to the disgrace of English hooksellers or hook- 
 buyers, no complete edition of Dryden. The first issue of 
 this in 1808 was reproduced in 1821 with no material 
 alterations, but both are very expensive, especially the 
 second. 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 Congreve'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 obtaiued in duplicate. 
 This, of course, deprives the reader of Scott's life and 
 notes, which are very valuable. The life, however, has 
 been reprinted, 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. 
 
 PA.GB 
 
 BEroKE THE Eestokation .... .1 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 Early Liteuaky Work ...;.... 23 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 Period of Dramatic Activity 38 
 
 CHAPTER lY. 
 Satirical akd Didactic Poems 71 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 LiiTE JROM 1680 TO 1688 . . .... 99 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 Later Dramas and Prose Works 113 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 Period op Translation 135 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 The Fables . . 153 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 Conclusion 177 
 
DEYDEN. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 BEFOEB THE EESTOEATION. 
 
 John Deydbn was born on tlie 9th. of August, 1631, at 
 the Vicarage of Aldwinkle AJl Saints, between Thrapston 
 and Oundle. Like other smaU Northamptonshire villages 
 Aldwinlde is divided into two parishes, AU 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 industrious 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 grandfather, 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, neigh- 
 bours. The Drydens originally came from the neighbour- 
 hood 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 
 
2 DRTDEN. [chap. 
 
 county of Northampton. 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 hefore 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 hiUy 
 ilistrict 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, over- 
 looking the flats of Huntingdon. The poet's father is 
 described as "of Tichmarsh," and seems to have usually 
 resided in that neighbourhood. 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 forty 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 Dry- 
 den's youth, and, moreover, 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 Towoester on the one side, and Ban- 
 
I.] BEFORE THE EBSTORATION. 3 
 
 bury on the other. On at least one occasion a great fight 
 took place, the parliamentarians barricading themselves in 
 the church of Canons Ashby, witiiin stone's throw of the 
 house, and defending it and its tower for several hours 
 before the royalists forced the place and carried them off 
 prisoners. This was in Dryden'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 co?;- 
 nected 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 valley is ^iiot 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 mono- 
 tony of the adjacent fens, and fuU of historical and archi- 
 tectural 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 present in long 
 slow reaches, thick with water plants. The remnants of 
 the great woods which once made Northamptonshire 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 
 B 2 
 
4 DEYDEN. [chap. 
 
 of hia birtli and education, lie on opposite sides of tlic 
 river, about two miles from Thrapston. Aid winkle is 
 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 
 planted two years before his birth. A little beyond Aid- 
 winkle, following the course of tire river, is the small 
 church of Pilton, where Erasmus Dryden and Mary 
 Pickering were married on October 21, 1630. All these 
 villages are embowered in trees of all kinds, elms and 
 walnuts especially, and the river banks slope in places 
 with a pleasant abruptness, giving good views of tlie 
 magnificent woods of Lilford, which, however, are new 
 comers comparatively speaking. Another mile or two 
 beyond Pilton brings the walker 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, whore 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 aU that remains of the 
 castle of Fotheringhay. Now, as then, the great lantern 
 
1.] BEFORE THE RESTORATION. 5 
 
 of tlie cliurch, 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 works, and, 
 indeed, there seems to have been a very natural feeling 
 among all seventeenth century writers on the court side 
 that the less said about Mary Stuart the better. Fother- 
 inghay waits until Mr. Swinburne shall complete the 
 trilogy begun in Chastelard and continued in Bothwell, 
 for an English dramatic poet to tread worthily in the 
 steps of Montchrestien, of Vondel, and of Scliiller. But 
 Dryden must have passed it constantly, when he was at 
 Cotterstock 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 dominance 
 in the haunts of this intellectually greatest among the par- 
 tisans of the Stuarts, of the scene of the greatest 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 lialf the churches and 
 half the manor-houses in that part of the country, boasts 
 that he had his early education in that village, whUe 
 Oundle, as has been said, has some traditional claims to a 
 similar distinction. From the date of his birth to his 
 entry at Westminster School we have no positive informa- 
 tion whatever about him, and even the precise date of the 
 latter 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, 
 
DRYDEN. [chap. 
 
 1650, matriculated on July 16th, and on October 2nd 
 was elected to a Westminster scholarship. He was then 
 nineteen, an instance, be it observed, among many, of the 
 complete 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 "Westrainster. 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 Shadwell's unsupported assertions about Dryden 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 unkind 
 reference to her in his very best manner. In one of his 
 numerous prologues to the University of Oxford — the 
 Uuiverity of Cambridge seems to have given him no occa- 
 sion of writing a prologue — occur the famous lines — 
 
 Oxford to him a doarer name stall 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 
 
1.] BEFORE THE RESTOKATION. 7 
 
 •will endure." But I am inclined to think that most 
 university men will agree with me that this is probably a 
 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 flatterers 
 that ever lived, and certainly had no need save of delibe- 
 rate choice to resort to the vulgar expedient of insulting 
 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 Avill not 
 account for it. 
 
 If, however, during these years we have little testimony 
 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, contain- 
 ing 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 stiU, 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 yoking 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 Revieir, whom I cer- 
 tainly do not name otherwise than honoris ccmsd, pro- 
 nounces the one execrable, and the other inferior to the 
 juvenile productions of that miserable poetaster, Kirke 
 
8 DRYDEN. Icbat. 
 
 White. It seems to this reviewer that Dryden had at 
 this time "no ear for verse, no command of poetic diction, 
 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, 
 f.s 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 
 saturated 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 Diy- 
 den than another, it is that he was emphatically of his 
 time. Xo 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 suh specie ceternitaiis 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 riiany 
 preliminary wanderings. Eut 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 Theophile 
 Gautier once put it in his own case, " the sheep of Hu"o 
 from the goats of Scribe." I do not hesitate Jo say that 
 
I.] BEFORE THE EESTOEATION. 9 
 
 an intelligent reviewer in the year 1650 would have 
 ranked Dryden, though perhaps \yith some misgivings, 
 among 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 phy- 
 siologists — 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 making "the young blushing 
 virgins die " for him in a miscellaneous but probably 
 harmless manner. All that is positively known on tLo 
 subject is that Honor never married, that the cousins were 
 on excellent terms some half-century after this fervent 
 epistle, and that j\Iiss Driden is said to have treasured 
 the letter and shown it with pride, which is much more 
 reconcilable with the idea of a harmless flirtation 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 
 
10 DEYDEN. [chap. 
 
 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 
 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. 
 Dryden's two-thirds were estimated hy Malone at the 
 end of the last century to be worth about 120Z. income of 
 that day, and this certainly equals at least 200Z. to-day. 
 With this to fall back upon, and with the influence of the 
 Driden 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 Dryden's 
 cousin, was wiser in his generation. He was one of the 
 few members of the Long Parliament who judiciously at- 
 tached 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 
 remarkable Heroic Stanzas on Cromwell's death. This 
 poem must haye 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 
 written 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 
 
I.] BEFORE THE RESTOEATION. 11 
 
 bold opening, in which the stately march of the verse is 
 not to be disguised by all the frippery of erudition which 
 loads it : — 
 
 And now 'tis time ; for their officious haste, 
 Who would before have borne him to the sky, 
 
 Like eager Eomans, ere all rites were past, . 
 
 Did let too soon tlie 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 denying, 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 famous 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 I., is to wrest 
 the sense of the original hopelessly and uupardonably. 
 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 
 
]3 DEYDEK. [chap. 
 
 said tliat tliis 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 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 
 describes. 
 
 It is possible that a certain half-heartedness may have 
 been observed in Dry den by those of his cousin's party. It 
 is possible, top, that Sir Gilbert Pickering, like Thackeray's 
 Mr. Scully, was a good deal more bent on making use of 
 his young kinsman than on rewarding him in any perma- 
 nent manner. At any rate, no kind of preferment fell to 
 his lot, and the anarch}' 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 Pickering's house- 
 hold, and had betaken himself to literature. The fact of his 
 so betaking himself almost implied adherence to the royal- 
 ist party. In the later years of the commonwealth, Eng- 
 lish 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 exclusively to the 
 royalist party. Milton had long forsworn pure literature, 
 to devote himself to official duties with an occasional per- 
 sonal polemic as a relief. Marvell and "Wither, the two 
 other chief lights of the Puritan party, could hardly bo 
 regarded by any one as men of light and leading, despite 
 the really charming lyrics wliicli both of them had pro- 
 duced. All the other great literary names of the time 
 were, without exception, on the side of the exile. Ilobbes 
 was a royalist, though a somewhat singular one, Cowley 
 
I.] BEFORE THE RESTORATION. 13 
 
 was a royalist, Hen'ick was a royalist, so was Deiiliam, 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 of 
 -organizing literary effort with the power of himself pro- 
 ducing 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 enter- 
 tainments of a kind, and moderate royalists, like Evelyn, 
 with an interest in literature and the arts and sciences, 
 were returning 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 litera- 
 ture than in politics, and belonging as he did rather to 
 the Presbylierian faction, who were everywhere returning 
 to the royalist political faith, than to the Independent 
 republicans, should become j>oyalist 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-cen- 
 tury the literary current has been so entirely on the 
 Puritan side that ws 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 accounting 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 beyond all question that- alienated 
 
14 DKTDEN. [ch4p. 
 
 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 which brought about in our own 
 days a political movement to which there is no need to 
 refer more particularly. 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 bloodshedding. Their troops were dis- 
 orderly and given to plunder, but not to cruelty. No 
 legend even charges against Astley or Goring, against 
 Eupert or Lunsford, anything like the Drogheda massacre 
 — the effect of which on the general mind Defoe, an un- 
 exceptionable witness, has preserved by a chance phrase in 
 Robinson Crusoe — or the hideous bloodbath of the Irish- 
 women after Naseby, or the brutal butchery of Dr. Hud- 
 son at "Woodcroft in Dryden's own county, where the 
 soldiers chopped off the priest's fingers as he clung to the 
 gurgoyles of the tower, and thrust him back with pikes into 
 the moat which, mutilated as he was, he had managed to 
 swim. A certain hunianity and absence of bloodthirstiness 
 are among Dryden's most creditable characteristics,' and 
 these excesses of fanaticism are not at all unlikely to have 
 had their share in determining him to adopt the winning 
 
 ' The too famous Political Prologues may, perhaps, be quoted 
 against me here. I have only to remark : lirst, that, bad as they 
 are, they form an infinitesimal portion of Dryden's work, and are 
 in glaring contrast with the sentiments pervading that work as a 
 whole ; secondly, that they were written at a time of political 
 excitement unparalleled in history, save once at Athens and onoo 
 or twice at Paris.' But I cannot help adding that their de- 
 nouncers 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 KESTOEATIOX. 13 
 
 side 'wlieu at last it won. But it is perhaps more to the 
 purpose that his literary leanings must of themselves have 
 inevitably inclined him in the same direction. There was 
 absolutely no opening for literature on the republican side, 
 a fact of which no better 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 rewarding its other servants too 
 meagrely. That Dryden at this time had any deep-set 
 theological or political prejudices is very improbable. He 
 certainly had not, like Butler, noted for years the faults 
 and weaknesses of the dominant 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 associates 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 litera- 
 ture in which he thus took service must l)e described 
 before we go any further. 
 
 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 
 
16 DEYDEN. [chap. 
 
 beauty. "When Domie speculates as to the finding on tho- 
 body of his dead lover 
 
 A bracelet of bright hair about the bono 
 when he tells us how — 
 
 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 
 exhibited by Dryden with considerable felicity in his 
 poem on Lord Hastings and the small-pox. I really do 
 not know that in all Jolmson'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 
 directly than is generally thought to the unequalled oddi- 
 ties of Biitler, 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 
 therefore growing up a kind of school of good sense in 
 poetry, of which Waller, Denham, Cowley, and Davenant 
 were the chiefs. "Waller deri-»es most of his fame from his 
 lyrics, inferior as these are to those of Herrick and Carew. 
 Cowley was a metaphysician with a strong hankering after 
 something different. Denham, having achieved one admi- 
 rable piece of versification, had devoted himself chiefly to 
 
I,] BEFORE THE EESTOEATIOX. 17 
 
 doggrel; but Davenaiit, though perhaps not so good a 
 poet as any of the three, -was a more living influence. His 
 early works, especially his dirge on Shakespeare and his 
 exquisite lines to the Queen, are of the best stamp of the 
 older school. His Oondibert, little as it is now read, and 
 unsuccessful as the quatrain in which it is written must 
 always be for a very long work, is better than any long 
 narrative 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 
 direction 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 ceptury and a 
 half to come. The heroic couplet was, of course, no 
 novelty in English ; but it had hitherto been only fitfully 
 patronized for poems of length, and had n ot been adap ted 
 ft)i' geuui'al Liay. — The whcteTtruoture^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 intricacies of the stanza, writers had got into the 
 habit of communicating to their verse a slow and somewhat 
 languid 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 draw- 
 backs. Either it was turned by means of eiijamlements 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 
 
 
 
18 DRYDEN. [chap. 
 
 four poets meiitioned, especially the three first, did much 
 to fit the couplet for miscellaneous work. All of' them 
 together, it is hardly needful to say, did not do so much 
 as the young Cambridge man who, while doing book- 
 seller's work for Herringman the publisher, hanging about 
 the coffee-houses, and planning plays with Davenant and 
 Sir Eobert Howard, was waiting for opportunity and im- 
 pulse 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 
 important person. All "the giant race except Shirley were 
 -dead, and Shirley had substituted a kind of tragedie 
 lourgeoise for the work of his masters. Other practitioners 
 chiefly favoured the example of one of the least imitabla 
 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, 
 sometimes 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. Dave- 
 nant 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 
 regular stage plays. But Shakespeare's godson, with his 
 keen manager's appreciation of the taste of the public, 
 and his travelled experience, did not content himself witli 
 deviating cautiously into the old paths. He it was who, 
 in the Siege of Bliodes, introduced at once into England 
 the opera, and a less long-lived but, in a literary point 
 of view, more important variety, the heroic play, the latter 
 of which always retained some tinge of the former. There 
 
i.J BEFORE -THE EESTOEATIOK. 39 
 
 are not many subjects on wliich, to put it plainly, more 
 rubbish bas been talked than the origin of the heroic 
 play. Very few Englishmen have ever cared to examine 
 accurately the connexion 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. The blundering attribution 
 of Dryden and his rivals to Corneille and Eacine, the 
 more blundering attribution of Corneille and Racine 
 to the Scudery romance (as if somebody should father 
 Shelley on Monk Lewis) has been generally 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 intel- 
 ligible, and by no means difficult to trace. The French 
 classical drama is the direct descendant of the drama of 
 Seneca, 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 
 adopted the English freedom of action, multiplicity of 
 character, and licence of stirring scenes acted com7n popido. 
 It borrowed lyrical admixture from Italy, exaggerated and 
 bombastic language came to it from Spain, and to Franco 
 it owed little more than its rhymed dialogue, and perhaps 
 .something of its sighs and flames. The disadvantages of 
 ihyme 'in dramatic writing seem to ipodern Euglishmen 
 c 2 
 
20 ' DEYDEN. [chap. 
 
 so great, tliat they sometimes find it difficult to understand 
 how any rational being could exchange the blank yei'se 
 of Shakespeare 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 Terse of Shakespeare or of Fletcher that was 
 thus exchanged. In the three-quarters of a century, or 
 thereabouts, wliich elapsed between the beginning of the 
 groat dramatic era and the Eestoration, 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 Shakespearian quality — is indeed 
 in many cases such as is hardly to be recognized for verse 
 at all. Between this awkward and inharmonious stuff 
 and the comparatively polished and elegant couplets of 
 the innovators there could be little comparison, especially 
 when Dryden had taken up the couplet himself. 
 
 Lastly, in prose the time was pretty obviously calling 
 for a reform. There were great masters of English prose 
 living when Dryden joined the literary world of London, 
 but there was no 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 himself,, 
 when his readers are wonderiiig whether breath and brain 
 ■will last out their involution ; the hopeless coils of paren- 
 thesis 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 
 numbered about quotations, which it introduced with 
 
I.] BEFORE THE EBSTORATION. 21 
 
 merciless frequency. It had no notion of a unit oi style 
 in the sentence. It indulged, without the slightest hesi- 
 tation, in every 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 in- 
 flected languages of Greece and Rome, where the structural 
 alterations of the words according to their grammatical 
 connexion are for the most part sufiicient to make the 
 meaning tolerably clear. Nothing so much as the lack of 
 inflexions 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 
 straighforwardly, as Eunyan'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, nothing like a general prose style had ever yet 
 been elaborated at all ; what had been done had been done 
 chiefly in the big-boAV-wow manner, as Dryden's editor 
 might have called it. For light miscellaneous work, 
 neither fantastic nor solemn, th« demand was only just 
 being created. Cowley indeed wrote well, and, compara- 
 tively sp3aking, elegantly, but his prose work was small in 
 extent, and little read in comparison to his verse. TiUot- 
 son was Dryden's own contemporary, and hardly preceded 
 him in the task of reform. 
 
 Erom this short notice it will be obvious that the 
 general view, according to which a considerable change 
 took place and was called for at the Restoration, is correct, 
 notwithstanding the attempts recentlv made to prove the 
 
22 DRTDES. [en. i. 
 
 contrary 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 general 
 literary soil. Milton is not a writer of the Eestoration, 
 though his greatest works appeared after it, and though he 
 survived it nearly fifteen years. Nov was Taylor, nor 
 Clarendon, nor Cowley : hardly even Davenant, or Waller, 
 or Butler, or Denliam. The writers of the Eestoration 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 succes.sors 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. 
 
CHAPTEE II. 
 
 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 sin^e 
 letter and three poems, not amounting in all to three 
 hundred lines. K"or can it he said that even subsequently, 
 during his forty years of fame and literary activity, positive 
 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 lor 
 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. Omitting for 
 the present literary work, the next fact that we have to 
 record after the Eestoration is one of some importance, 
 though as before the positive information obtainable in 
 connexion with it is but scanty. On the 1st of December, 
 1663, Dryden was married at St. Swithin's Church to 
 Ijady Elizabeth Howard, eldest daughter of the Earl of 
 Berkshire. 
 
 This marriage, like most of the scanty events of Dryden's 
 
21. DEYDBN. [chap. 
 
 life, has teen made the occasion of much and unnecessary 
 coutroversy. The Hbellers of the Popish Plot disturb- 
 ances 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 Eussell 
 to go into trade. The notion of an absolute severance 
 between Court and City at that time, is one of "the many 
 mihistorical fictions which have somehow or other obtained 
 currency. Dryden was already an intimate friend of Sir 
 Eobert 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 contains can only satisfy 
 minds previously made up. It testifies certainly to some- 
 thing lilte a flirtation, and suggests an interview, but there 
 
r.] EARLY LITERARY WORK. 25 
 
 is nothing in it at all compromising. 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 appears 
 to have acquired some small property in Wiltshire ; 
 perhaps also a royal grant which was made to Lady 
 Elizabeth 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-tempered 
 and not overburdened with brains, and he himself was pro- 
 bably no more a model of conjugal propriety than most of 
 his associates. I say probably, for here, too, it is astonish- 
 ing how the evidence breaks down when it is examined, or 
 rather how it vanishes altogether into air. Mr. J. E. 
 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 
 spiiv to his debaucheries." We have seen what founda- 
 tion there is for this gross charge against Lady Elizabeth ; 
 now let us see what ground there is .for the charge against 
 Dryden. There are the libels of Shad well 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. Eeeve, 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 appeared in the Gentleman's Magazine for 
 1745, the author of which is unknown, though conjec- 
 tures, as to which there are difficulties, identify him with 
 
26 DRYDEN. [chap. 
 
 Dryden's youthful friend Southern. " I remember," says 
 this person, " plain John Dryden, before he paid his court 
 \Yitli success to the great, in one uniform clothing of Nor- 
 wich drugget. I have ate tarts with him and Madam 
 Eeeve at the MulbeiTy Garden, when our author advanced 
 to a sword and a Chedreux wig." Perhaps there is no 
 more curious instance of the infinitesimal foundation on 
 which scandal builds than this matter of Dryden's immo- 
 rality. Putting aside mere vague libellous declamation, the 
 one piece of positive information on the subject that we 
 have is anonymous, 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 trans- 
 lated into the language of Mr. Green becomes the disso- 
 luteness of a libertine, spurred up to now 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 lie found "Dryden, the poet I knew at Cam- 
 bridge," and all the wits of the town. The company 
 pleased Pepys, and ho 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 lie was later to reign as 
 undisputed monarch ; and thirdly, of the fact that he was 
 already recognized 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 
 do, to earn that title, reserving the important subject of 
 
II.] EAELY LITERAEY WOEK. £7 
 
 his dramatic activity, wliich. also began about this time, 
 for separate treatment. 
 
 The lines on the death of Lord Hastings, and the lines 
 to Hoddesdon, have, it has been said, a certain promise 
 about them to experienced e_yes, but it is of that kind of 
 promise ivhich, 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 h%nd, 
 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 anti- 
 cipated the methods of a later school of criticism, might 
 have had some difficulty in deciding whether the masterly 
 
28 DRYDEN. [chap. 
 
 plainness, directness, and vigour of the best lines liere ought 
 or ought not to excuse the conceit about the palms and 
 the weights, and the fearfully far-fetched piece of fancy liis- 
 to]y 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 
 ivritten 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 Eestoration, which 
 J'or 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 
 ambiguous utterances. Astrma 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 Annus 
 Mirabilis at the beginning of 1667, the crowning efi'ort 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 
 Annvs 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 tlie anticipa- 
 tion that the writer would do better and better work as 
 he grew older. All the pieces enumerated, with the ex- 
 ception 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. 
 
II.] EARLY LITERARY WORK. 29 
 
 But nothing is more characteristic of Dryden than tlic; 
 extremely tentative character of his work, and he had 
 doubtless not yet satisfied himself that the couplet was 
 suitable for narrative poems of any length, notwithstand- 
 ing the mastery over it which he must have known him- 
 self to have attained in his short pieces. The very first lints 
 oiAstrcea Redux 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. Tlie 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 
 invades 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. 
 Bxperionced 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 ouv 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 
 
30 DEYDEN. [chap. 
 
 one of those questions on which, doctors will doubtless 
 disagree to the end of the chapter. But even when we 
 look back throitgh the long rows o-f practitioners of th& 
 couplet who have succeeded Dryden, we shall, I think, 
 hardly find one who is capable oi 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 
 introduced 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 daj^, with inappropriate and clumsy learn- 
 ing, 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 oiAstrcea Redux must of course not be judged 
 by the reader's acquiescence in its sentiments. But let 
 
II.] EAELY LITERARY WORK. 31 
 
 any one read the following passage without thinking of the 
 treaty of Dover and the closed exchequer, of Madam Car- 
 well's twelve thousand a year, and Lord Eussell's scaffold, 
 and he assuredly will not fail to recognise their heauty : — 
 
 Metliinks I see those crowds on Dover's strand, 
 Who ia 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. 
 
 Tlie extraordinary art with which the recurrences of the 
 7J0U 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 com- 
 parison with even the best couplet verso of the time will 
 show many other excellences in it. 1 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 
 English poetry, I must, once for all, take leave to foUow 
 the only road open to me to show what he actually did. 
 The other smaller couplet-poems which have been 
 
32 DKYDEN. [chap. 
 
 mentioned are less important tlian Astrcea Redux, not 
 merely in point of "size, but because they are later in da,te 
 Tlie piece on the coronation, however, contains lines and 
 passages 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 youi' 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 e|ir]y versification — 
 
 Our setting sun from his declining seal 
 
 Shot heama 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 times. 
 
 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 ; 
 
 "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. 
 
ir.] EAELY LITEEAEY WOEK. 33 
 
 For once the mania for simile and classical allusion has 
 not led the author astray here, hut hks 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- 
 ahle 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 Mirahilis 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 Kohert 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 poetrj', 
 his play of the Maiden Queen, and Annus Mirahilis 
 itself. This last was published very early in 1667, and 
 seems to have been successful. Pepys bought it on the 
 2nd of February, and was fortunately able to like it better 
 than he did Hiidihras. " A very good poem,'' the Clerk 
 of the Acts of the Navy writes it down. It may be men- 
 tioned in passing that during this same stay at Charlton 
 Dryden's eldest son Charles was born. 
 
S4 DRYDEN. [chap. 
 
 Annus Mirdbilis consists of 304 quatrains on tlie Gondi- 
 bert model, reasons for the adoption of wkich Dryden gives 
 (not so forcibly perhaps as is usual with him) in the 
 before-mentioned letter to his brother-in-la-vv. He speaks 
 of rhyme generally with less respect than he was soon to 
 show, and declares that he has adopted the quatrain 
 because he j udges 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 
 Davenaut, and that Gondibert as yet retained sufficient pres- 
 tige to make its stanza act as a not unfavourable advertise- 
 ment of poems written in it. With regard to the nobility 
 and dignity of this stanza, it may safely be said that Annus 
 Mirabilis itself, the best poem ever written therein, killed 
 it by- exposing its faiilts. 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 dis- 
 jointedness 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, Drj-den 
 produced a very fine poem in Annus Mircibilis, 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 
 his singular faculty of bending to poetical uses the most 
 refractory names and things, aU make themselves fully felt 
 here. On the other hand there is still an undue tendency 
 to conceit and exuberance of simile. The famous lines^ 
 
11.] EARLY LITERARY WORK. 33 
 
 These fight like hasbands, but like lovera those ; 
 These fain would keep, and those more fain enjoy ; 
 
 are followed in tlie next stanza by a most indubitably 
 " metaphysical " statement that 
 
 Some preciously by shattered porcelain full 
 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 maffots. Such puerile fancies are certainly unworthy 
 of a poet who could tell how 
 
 The mighty ghosts of our great Harrys rose 
 And armfid Edwards looked with anxiona 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 pre- 
 vent, 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 — injures the best passages. The best of aU 
 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. 
 
 Then in some close-pent room it crept along 
 And, smouldering as it went, in silence fedj 
 
 Till the infant monster, with devouring strong. 
 Walked boldly upright with exalted head. 
 D 2 
 
38 DRYDEN. [chap. 
 
 Now, like some rioli 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 hia 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 tliat 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 
 endeavoured to point out, amply entitled him to the 
 position 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 
 
n.] EAELT LITERARY WORK. 37 
 
 only by some isolated and ill-sustained efforts. He had 
 manifested an equal originality ia the turn of his phrase, 
 an extraordinary command of poetic imagery, and, ahove 
 all, a faculty of handling by no means promising subjects 
 in an indisputably poetical manner. Circufiistances -which 
 I shall now proceed to describe called him away from the 
 practice of pure poetry, leaving to him, however, a repu- 
 tation amply deserved and acknowledged even by his 
 enemies, of possessing unmatched skill in versification. 
 M"or 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 language, increased his skiU in verse, and above 
 all tended by degrees to reduce and purify what was 
 corrupt in his p hraseology and system of ornamentatio nj. 
 Fourteen years of dramatic practice did more than turn 
 out some admirable scenes and some even more admirable 
 criticisi& — They acted as a filtering reservoir for his 
 poetical powers, so that the stream which, when it ran 
 into thbm, was the turbid and rubbish-laden current 
 of Annus Mirabilis flowed out as impetuous, as strong, but 
 clear and -without base admixture, in the splendid verse 
 of Absalom and Achitojphel. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 PEEIOD OP DRAMATIC ACTIVITY. 
 
 Theeb are not many portions of English literature wHcli 
 have heen treated with greater severity by critics than 
 the Eestoration drama, and of the Eestoration dramatists 
 few have met with less favour, in proportion to their 
 general literary eminence, than Dryden. Of his comedies 
 in particular few have been found to say a good word. 
 His sturdiest champion, Scott, dismisses them as "heavy;" 
 Hazlitt, a defender of the Eestoration comedy iu 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 manhood. So complete is the 
 obhvion into which these dramas have fallen, that it has 
 buried in its folds the always charming and sometimes 
 exquisite songs which they contain. Except in Congreve's 
 two editions, and in the bulky edition of Scott, Dryden's 
 theatre is unattainable, and thus the majority of readers 
 have but little opportunity of correcting from individual 
 study the unfavourable impressions derived from tlio 
 
CH. III.] PERIOD OF DRAMATIC ACTIVITY. 39 
 
 verdicts of the critics. For myself, I am 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 
 tetter has ohscured 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 inferior as plays to his satires and his fables as 
 poems. But both the poems of Scott and the plays of I 
 Dryden are a great deal better than the average criticy' 
 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 subject which he afterwards resumed) shortly after the 
 Restoration. As soon as that event happened, a double 
 incentive 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 indifferent 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 honestiy 
 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 according to the taste of the time, and 
 it was both acted and published. It certainly cannot be 
 said to be a great success even as it is. Dryden had, like 
 most of his fellows, attempted the Comedy of Humours, 
 
40 DRTDEN. [chap. 
 
 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, 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 Shakespeare and Fletcher had almost 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 bo done well, and the 
 consequent fidelity with wbicli it holds up the muses' 
 looking-glass (to use the title of one of Eandolph'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 Shadwell, the actor Lacy 
 a,nd several others were to take it up and carry it on. It 
 had frequently been combined with the embroiled and 
 complicated plots of the Spanish comedy of intrigue, the 
 adapters usually allowing these plots to conduct themselves 
 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 
 illustrated 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> 
 respectful reception. Dryden in his first play fell to the 
 fuUest extent into the blunder of this combined Spanish- 
 
HI.] PERIOD OF DRAMATIC ACTIVITY. 41 
 
 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 of fashion, though the national taste and temperament 
 Tvere too strongly in favour of the latter to allow them to 
 he totally banished. In our very best plays of the so-called 
 artificial style, such as Loue 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 iu 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 
 ShadweU 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 Ught- 
 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 affection 
 for one another and in a hearty, natural manner, maketheir 
 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, 
 
42 DETDEN. [chap. 
 
 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 honour ; but they have, at the same time, a certain 
 healthiness and sweetness of the older days, which bring 
 them, if not close to Eosalind 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 Umperor (1G65) was Dryden's first original play, his 
 first heroic play, and indirectly formed part of a curious 
 literary dispute, one of many in which he was engaged, 
 but which in this case proved fertile in critical studies of 
 his best brand. Sir Eobert Howard, Dryden's brother-in- 
 law, had with the assistance of Dryden himself, produced 
 a play called the Indian Queen, and to this the Indian 
 Emperor was nominally a sequel. But as Dryden remarks, 
 with a quaintness which may or may not be satirical, the 
 conclusion of the Indian Queen " left but little matter to 
 build upon, there remaining but two of the considerable 
 characters alive." The good Sir Eobert had indeed 
 heaped 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 
 English 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 
 
in.] PERIOD OF DRAMATIC ACTIVITY. 43 
 
 tte plot and arranging the characters. The play was 
 extremely poptJar, and it divides with Tyrannic Love and 
 the Conquest of Granada the merit of being the best of 
 all 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 1067, 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 contribution of any value to the 
 comic stage. Charles gave the play particular com- 
 mendation, and called it " his play," as Dryden takes care 
 to tell us. Still in the same year came Sir Martin Mar- 
 all, 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 equallj' 
 for his own gallantry in the civil war and for the 
 oddities of his second duchess, Margaret Lucas, translated 
 VEtourdi, and gave it to Dryden, who perhaps combined 
 with it some things taken from other French plays, added 
 not a 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 col. 
 
44 DETDBN. [chap. 
 
 laboration, and tlie very next play whicli 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 almost whoUy to Davenant. Besides degrading 
 in every way the poetical merit of the poem, Sir WUHam, 
 from whom better things might have been expected, got 
 into his head what Dryden amiably calls the "excellent 
 contrivance " of giving Miranda a sister, and inventing a 
 boy (Hippolito) who has never seen a woman. The ex- 
 cellent contrivance gives rise to a good deal of extremely 
 characteristic wit. But here, too, there is little reason for 
 giving Dryden credit or discredit for anything more than 
 a certain amount of arrangement and revision. His next 
 appearance, 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 Astrologue, partly from the Depit Amoureiix, But 
 the play, with the usual reservations, may be better spoken 
 of than any of Dryden's comedies, except Marriage a la 
 Mode and Arnphitryon. "Wildblood and Jacintha, who 
 play the parts of Celadon and Plorimel in the Maiden 
 Queen, are a very lively pair. Much of the dialogue is 
 smart, and the incidents are stirring, while the play con- 
 tains 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 inappro- 
 priately allotted to Mrs. Eleanor Gwyn) is beautiful 
 throughout, and that of Maximin is quite captivating in. 
 
iii.J PERIOD OF DRAMATIC ACTITITF. 45 
 
 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 
 account of the final scene of the play ■vvUl perhaps show 
 better than anything else the rant and folly in which 
 authors 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 had 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 yon leaned your hungiy 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 : " Plaeidius 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 
 
48 DKYDBN. [chap. 
 
 couplet to the audience. Thereupon Maxiniin again stabs 
 the person upon whom he is sitting, and they hoth expire 
 as follows : — 
 
 Plac. Oh ! I am gone. Max, And after thee I go, 
 ReTenging 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 goda I hit. 
 
 [_8tabs liim again.'] 
 
 Tyrannic Love was followed hy the two parts of Al- 
 manzor and Almaliide, or the Conquest of Granada, the 
 triumph and at the same time the reductio ad absur- 
 dum of the stylo. 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 
 families — 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 kUls 
 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 
 discovered 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 
 outrageous 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 
 conditions ; 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 
 
in.] PERIOD OF DKAMATIC ACTITITT. 47 
 
 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 eyer-victorious Almanzor having captured 
 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 amiahle qualities of -womankind. AhdaUa, 
 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 Alma- 
 hide, and the act ends by the formation of a conspiracy 
 against Boabdelin, the conspirators resolving to attach 
 the invincible 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 dis- 
 posed 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 jjlace with one of Dryden's 
 delightful, and, alas, scarcely ever whoUy quotable lyrics. 
 Tlie 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. 
 
 y 
 
 Prom 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. 
 
48 DEYDElSr. [chap. 
 
 Her hands, her lips, did love inspire. 
 
 Her every grace my heart did fire, 
 
 But most her eyes, which languished with desire. 
 
 It is a thousand pities that the quotation cannot he con- 
 tinued ; hut 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 fuU 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. 
 Almanzor 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 
 effectual. 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 com- 
 mitted 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 re- 
 course 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- 
 
III.] PERIOD OF DRAMATIC ACTIVITr. 49 
 
 raxa's castle is stormed, the stormers in their turn driven 
 out hy the Duke of Arcos and Ahdalla, who has joined the 
 Spaniards, and a general imbroglio created. But Almanzor 
 obeys Almahide's summons with the result of more sighs 
 and flames. The conduct of Almahide is unexception- 
 able, but Boabdelin's jealousy is inevitably aroused, and 
 this in its turn mortally offends the queen, which again 
 offends Almanzor. More inexplicable embroUment foUows, 
 and L'yndaraxa 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 viore sua. 
 Yet another love-scene follows, and then Zulema, who 
 has not forgotten his passion for Almahide, brings a false 
 accusation against her, the assumed partner of her guilt 
 being however not Almanzor but Abdelmelech. This 
 leaves the hero free to undertake the wager of battle for 
 his mistress, though he is distracted with jealous fear that 
 Zulema's tale is true. The result of the ordeal is a fore- 
 gone 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 
 Almanzor meet once more, and by this time even the con- 
 ventionalities of the heroic jplay 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 traitorous help with her Zegrys, is pro- 
 claimed queen by Perdinand but almost immediately 
 stabbed by Abdelmelech, Almanzor turns out to be the 
 
50 DETDESr. [chap. 
 
 loHg-lost son of the Duke of Aicos ; and Alniahide, en- 
 couraged by Queen Isabella, owns that when her year 
 of widowhood is up she may possibly be induced to 
 crown his flames. 
 
 Such is the barest outline of this famous play, and I fear 
 that as it is it is too long, though much has been omitted, 
 including the whole of a pleasing underplot of love be- 
 tween 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 mosfr'preposterdus 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 loiow the preceding couplet, which 
 is perhaps better still : — 
 
 A Wash 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 
 
HI.] PERIOD OF DRAMATIC ACTIVITT. 51 
 
 poetry and of the stamp of its spirit, and with this I must 
 be content : — 
 
 Fair thougli you are 
 Aa summer mornirige, and your eyes more briglit 
 Than stars that twinkle on a winter's night ; 
 Though you have eloquence to warm and movo 
 Cold age and fasting hermits into love ; 
 Though Almahide with scorn rewards iny 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 mo. 
 
 The audience that cheered this was not wholly vile. 
 
 The Conquest of Chxinada 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 original 
 Bayes was beyond all doubt Davenant, to whom some of 
 the jokes directly apply, while they have no reference to 
 Dryden. In the second place, the examples of heroib plays 
 selected for parody and ridicule are by no means exclu- 
 sively drawn from Dryden's theatre. His brothers-in-law, 
 Edward and Eobert Howard, and others figure beside him, 
 and the central character is, on the whole, as composite as 
 might be expected from the number of authors 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, author of 
 some singularly ill-tempered if not very pointed remarks 
 on Dryden's plays, which were net published tiU long 
 afterwards. Butler's hand is indeed traceable in many of 
 B 2 
 
52 DEYDEN. [chap. 
 
 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 
 Rehearsal does not now make a good acting play, the fact 
 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 cooUy, as 
 in fact he did. As he says, with his customary proud 
 humility, " his betters were much more concerned than 
 himself; " and it seems highly probable that Buckingham's 
 coadjutors, confiding in his good nature or his inability 
 to detect the liberty, had actually introduce'd 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 ai 
 greater mistake than to say or to think that the Rehearsal 
 killed heroic plays. It did nothing of the kind, Drydea 
 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 
 Dryden's equanimity was very little disturbed. Bucking- 
 ham he paid off in kind long afterwards, and his Grace 
 immediately 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 let- 
 ter 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. 
 
m.] PERIOD OF DRAMATIC ACTIVITY. 53 
 
 as Sliadwell sul^sequently did, the assailants became out- 
 rageous 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. 
 
 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 
 Eochester's innumerable led-poets, and was too utterly be- 
 neath contempt to deserve even Eochester's spite. The 
 character of Doeg, ten years later, did Settle complete jus- 
 tice. He had a " blundering kind of melody " about him, 
 but absolutely nothing else. However, a heroic play of 
 bis, 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 replied by a 
 study, as we should say nowadays,. of tli& -s^ery vulnerable 
 Conquest of G^-anada. This is the only instance 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 veno- 
 mous 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 extent the blame of 
 the Rehearsal, which it must be remembered 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 transference of irrita- 
 tion, and it would explain Dryden's otherwise inexplicable 
 conduct. His attack on Settle is, from a strictly literary 
 
51 DETDEN. [chap. 
 
 point of view, one of his most unjustifiable acts. The 
 pamphlet, it is true, is said to have been moinly " Starch 
 Johnny " Crowne's, and the character of its strictures 
 is quite different from Dryden's broad and catholic man- 
 ner of censuring. But the adage, " tell me with whom you 
 live," is peculiarly applicable in such a case, and Dryden 
 must be held reponsible for the assault, whether its 
 venom be really due to himself, to Crowne, or to the 
 foul-mouthed libeller of whose virulence the laureate 
 himself was in years to come to have but too familiar 
 experience. 
 
 A very different play in 1 672 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. Ehodophil 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. Ehodophil accordingly lays 
 siege to Melantha, a young lady who is intended, though 
 he does not know this, to marry his friend Palamede, 
 while Palamede, deeply distressed at the idea of matri- 
 mony, 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 Cengreve's genius does not owe something to 
 
HI.] PERIOD OF DEAMATIC ACTIVITY. 55 
 
 her. Doralice, on the other hand, has ideas as to the 
 philosophy of flirtation -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. 
 
 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 successor Amboyna, is also deserving of the same 
 epithets, though being a mere play of ephemeral interest, 
 and serving 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 performances. 
 A disinclination to put himself to the trouble of designing 
 a wholly original composition is among the most note- 
 worthy of his literary characteristics. No man followed 
 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 productions^ 
 AJl for Love and Palamon and Arcite — are specially 
 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 wUl," is the 
 ti'aditional 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 
 
50 DBYDEN. [chai-. 
 
 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 
 undouhtedly appreciated Milton to the full long before 
 Addison, as it is vulgarly held, taught the British public 
 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 dramatic 
 writing was concerned. These words occur in the pro- 
 logue to Aiirengzebe, 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 
 several allusions to his well-lmown 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 Aurengzehe was 
 his last in rhyme, at least whoUy in rhyme. It is in some 
 respects a very noble play, free from the rants, the pre- 
 posterous bustle, and the still more preposterous length of 
 the Conquest of Qranada, while possessing most of the 
 merits of that singular work in an eminent degree. Even 
 Dryden hardly ever went further in cunning of verse 
 than in some of the passages of Aurengzehe, such as 
 that well-known one which seems to take up an echo 
 of Macbeth : — 
 
in.] PEEIOD OF DRAMATIC ACTIVITY. 57 
 
 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, outs off what we possest. 
 
 Strange cozenage ! none would live past years again 
 
 Yet all hope pleasure in what yet remain, 
 
 And from the dregs of life think to receive 
 
 What the first sprightly running could not give. 
 
 I'm tired with waiting for this chemio gold 
 
 Which fools U3 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 
 enjamhement ; 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 
 absolute 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 ^ erse was too easy for long and dignified com- 
 positions. It was thought by others that the secret of it 
 had been lost, and that the choice was practically between 
 
53 DETDBN. [chap. 
 
 bad Hank verse and good rhyme. In All for Love 
 Dryden very .shortly showed, anibulando, that this notion 
 was wholly groundless. Prom this time forward he 
 was faithful to the model he had now adopted and — 
 which was of the greatest importance — he induced others to 
 be faithful too. Had it 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 considerable bitterness) brought out a play called 
 The Mistalcen Husband, which he 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.^ Nearly three years passed without anything 
 of Dryden's appearing, and at last, at the end of 1677, or 
 the beginning of 1678, appeared a play as much better 
 than Aurengzehe as Aurengzehe was better than its fore- 
 
 ^ The list of Dryden's spurious or doubtful works is not large 
 or important. But a note of Pepys, mentioning a play of Dryden 
 entitled Ladies h la Mode which was acted and damned in 1668 
 l.ng puzzled th'e commentators. There is no trace of this Ladies 
 cl la Mode. But Mr. E. W. Gosse has in his collection a play entitled 
 The Mall or The Modish Lovers, whicli 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 evidence connecting him with it, the 
 question, though one of much interest, is perhaps not one to be 
 dealt with at any length here. 
 
HI.] PERIOD or DRAMATIC ACTIVITY. 59 
 
 runners. 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 curious fancy ■wliich made him 
 tread in the very steps of Shakespeare. It is sufficient 
 to say now that the attempt, apparently foredoomed to 
 hopeless failure, is, on the contrary, a great success. 
 Antony and Cleopatra and AU fm- Love, when they are 
 contrasted, only show by the contrast the difference of 
 kind, not the difference of degree, between 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 unfavourable 
 show even "without the "dull sweets of rhyme " to drug 
 the audience into good humour Avith it. The famous 
 scene between Antony and Ventidius divides with the 
 equally famous scene in Don Sebastian between Sebastian 
 and Dorax the palm among Dryden's dramatic efforts. 
 But &s a "whole the play is, I think, superior to Don 
 Sebastian. The blanlc verse, too, is particularly in- 
 teresting, because it was almost its author's first attempt 
 at that cntx ; and because, for at least thirty years, hardly 
 any tolerable blank verse — omitting of course Milton's — 
 had been written by any one. The model is excellent, 
 and it speaks Dryden's unerring literary sense, that, fresh 
 as he was from the studj' of Paradise Lost, and great as 
 was his admiration 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, suc- 
 cessful. 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 fuUy grasped 
 the weakness as well as the strength of Dryden's cha- 
 racter, tliat the noble matter and manner of Aurengzebe 
 
60 DEYDEN. [chap. 
 
 and All for Love should have iDeen 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 writing the tragedy of CEdipus, 
 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 Lee mingles throughout his 
 usual bombast with his usual splendid poetry. If any one 
 thinks this expression hyperbolical, I shall only ask him 
 to read CEdipus, instead of taking the traditional witticisms 
 about Lee for gospel. Therfe is of course plenty of — 
 
 Let gods meet gods and jostle in the dark, 
 
 and the other fantastic follies, into which " metaphy- 
 sical"' 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 CEdipus 
 cries, — 
 
 Thou coward ! yet 
 Art living ? 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. 
 
 (Ediptis 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 cotnpany, and by them (April, 1679) 
 a " potboUing " adaptation of Troilus and Cressida was 
 brought out, which might much better have been left 
 unattempted. Two years afterwards aj^peared the last 
 play (leaving operas and the scenes contributed to the 
 
III.] PERIOD OF DRAMATIC ACTIVITY. 61 
 
 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 heen somewhat over-rated, as far as literary 
 excellence is concerned. 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 of both his ancestors in a way 
 which cannot but be unfavourable to himself. The play 
 is to me most interesting because of the light it throws 
 on Dry den's grand characteristic, the consummate crafts- 
 manship with which he could throw himself into the 
 popular feeling of the hour. This " Protestant play " is 
 perhaps his most notable achievement of the kind in 
 drama, and it may be admitted that some other achieve- 
 ments of the same kind are less creditable. 
 
 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 constitute 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 argu- 
 mentative 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 distiuct 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 
 
62 DRTDEN. [chap. 
 
 oftenest associated. But tlie later seventeenth century had. 
 a singular gift for such performance — 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 Mul- 
 grave, wrote singularly fascinating 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 despicable, songster. Even among 
 the common run of play-wrights, who have left no lyrical 
 and not much literary reputation, scraps and snatches with 
 which have the true song stamp are not tinfrequently 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. " Tou charmed me not with 
 that fair face," is an instance of the well-known common 
 measure which is so specially English, and which is poetrj- 
 or doggrel according to its cadence. " After the pangs of 
 a desperate lover " is one of -the rare examples of a real 
 dactylic metre in English, where the dactyls are not, as 
 usual, equally to be scanned as anaptests. " 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 metrical triumph as any of the 
 others. !N"or 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 
 
III.] PERIOD OF DRAMATIC ACTIVITT. 63 
 
 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 ex- 
 ample of the singular fertility with which Dryden devised 
 and- managed measures suitahle for song. His lyrical 
 faculty impelled him also — especially in his early plays — 
 to luxuriate in incantation scenes, lyrical dialogues, and 
 so forth. These have been ridiculed, not altogether un- 
 justly, in The Rehearsal ; but the incantation scene in 
 CEdipus is very far above the average of such things ; and 
 of not a few passages in King Arthur at least 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. 
 Towards the middle of it, however, when he had, by 
 poems and plays, already established himself as the 
 greatest living 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 commented upon as one of the most curious 
 literary phenomena of the time. The custom is still, on 
 special occasions, sparingly 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 other. It was also usual to make personal 
 appeals to the audience 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 
 
6i DEYDEN. [chap. 
 
 own — to Tyrannic Love, in which Mrs. Eleanor Gwyn, 
 being left for dead on the stage, in the character of 
 St. Catharine, and being about to be carried out by the 
 scene-shifters, exclaims, — 
 
 Hold ! are you mad ? you danmed confounded dog, 
 I am to rise and speak the epilogue, 
 
 is only a very mUd sample of these licences, upon which 
 Macaulay has commented with a severity which is for 
 once absolutely justifiable. There was, however, no poet 
 who had the knack of telling alliision to passing events as 
 Drydon 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 Albumazar, a. 
 curious piece, believed, but not known to have been written 
 by a certain Tomkis in James the First's reign, and rank- 
 ing among the many which have been attributed with 
 more or less (generally leas) show of reason to Shakespeare. 
 Dryden's knowledge of the early English drama was not 
 exhaustive, and he here makes a charge of plagiarism 
 against Ben Jonson, for which there is in all iDrobability 
 not the least ground. The piece contains, however, as 
 do most of these vigorous, though unequal compositions, 
 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 had 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 prologues, 
 but they are among his best pieces of the class, and are for 
 the most part entirely free from the ribaldry with which 
 
ni.] PERIOD OP DEAMATiC ACTIVITY. 65 
 
 he was hut too often wont to alloy them. In these years 
 pieces intended to accompany Carlell's Arviragus and Pld- 
 lieia, Etherege's Man of Mode, Charles Davenant's Circe, 
 Lee's Mithridates, ShadweU's True Widow, Lee's Gcesar 
 Borgia, Tate's Loyal General, and not a few others occur. 
 A specimen of the style in which Dryden excelled so re- 
 markahly, and which is in itself so utterly dead, may 
 fairly he 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 
 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 he found in Dennis's remark 
 that the ". younger fry " at Cambridge preferred Settle 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 leammg 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 voxe. 
 
 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. 
 
 P 
 
66 DRYDEN. [chap 
 
 Judge, then, if we who act, and they who write, 
 
 Should not be proud of giving you delight. 
 
 Loudon 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. 
 
 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 j 
 
 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 identified with his 
 name.' While his children were young, his means must 
 
 1 A house in Fetter Lane, now divided into two, bears a 
 
III.] PERIOD OF DRAMATIC ACTIVITY. 67 
 
 liave been sufficient, and. for ttiose days, consideraMe. 
 With his patrimony included, Malone has calculated that 
 for great part of the time his income must have 
 been fully 700Z. a year, equal in purchasing power to 
 20007. a year in Malone's time, and probably to nearer 
 3000Z. 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 Canterbury. 
 Two years later, in the summer of 1670, he was made 
 poet laureate and historiographer royal." Davenant, the last 
 holder of the laureateship, had died two years previously, 
 and Howell, the well-known author of the Epistolce Ho- 
 JSliancE, and the late holder of the historiographership, 
 four years before. When the two appointments were con- 
 ferred on Dryden, the salary was fixed in the patent at 
 200?. 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, 
 201. a year which had been payable to him from the 
 JSTorthamptonshire property. From 1667, or thereabouts, 
 Dryden had been in possession of a valuable partnership 
 
 plate stating that Dryden lived there. The plate, a« I was in- 
 formed by the present occupiers, replaces a stone slab or insorip- 
 tion which was destroyed in some alterations not very many 
 years ago. I know of no reference 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 
 \rith Herringman and his marriage. 
 
 2 The patent, given by Malone, is dated Aug. 18. Mr. TV. 
 Koel Sainsbury, of the Eecord 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. 
 
 F 2 
 
68 DBYDEN. [chap. 
 
 with the players of the king's house, for ■whom he con- 
 tracted 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 300Z. to 400?. a year, 
 besides which he had (sometimes at any rate) the third 
 night, and (we may suppose always) the bookseller's fee for 
 the copyright of the printed play, which together averaged 
 100?. 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 100?. 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 Eochester 
 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 
 Eochester himself. It might be said of this famous person, 
 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 monlcey trick or other on those who 
 were unfortunate enough to be his intimates. He had 
 relations with most of the literary men of his time, but 
 
III.] lEKIOD OF DEAMATIC ACTIVITY. 69 
 
 tliose relations almost alway s ended badly. Sometimes he set 
 them at each, other like dogs, or procured for one some 
 court favour certain to annoy a rival ; sometimes he 
 satirized them coarsely in his foul-mouthed poems ; some- 
 times, as we shall see, he forestalled the Chevalier de 
 Eohan in his method of repartee. As early as 1675 
 Eochester had disobliged Dryden, though the exact 
 amount of the injury has certainly been exaggerated 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 
 be acted by the court ; indeed, this appears to have been 
 the main regular duty of the office at least in the seven- 
 teenth century. That Crowne should have been charged 
 with the composition of Galisto 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 Landed down, seems 
 to show that the latter recognized the fact. But the 
 addition to the charge against Eochester that he after- 
 wards 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 Eochester's malevolence. He had recently 
 become very intimate with Lord Mulgrave, who had 
 (juarreUed with Eochester. Personal courage was not 
 Eochester's forte, and he had shown the white feather 
 when challenged by Mulgrave. Shortly afterwards there 
 
70 DETDBN. [CH. iii. 
 
 was circulated in manuscript an Essay on Satire, containing 
 virulent attacks on the king, on Eocliester and the 
 Duchesses of Cleveland and Portsmouth. How any one 
 could ever have suspected that the poem was Dryden's 
 it is difficult 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 attack the king from whom he derived the greatest 
 part of his income, was inconceivable. Thirdly, no 
 literary judge could for one moment connect him with the 
 shambling doggrel lines which distinguish the Essay oil 
 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 truthful and fearless enough, expressly 
 absolves Dryden as being not only innocent, but ignorant 
 of the whole matter. However, Eochester chose to identify 
 him as the author, and in letters still extant almost ex- 
 pressly 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, Covent Garden, he was attacked and beaten 
 by masked nien. Eifty pounds reward (deposited at what 
 is now called Childs' Bank) was offered for the discovery 
 of the offenders, and afterwards a pardon was promised to 
 the actual criminals if they would divulge the name of 
 their employer, 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 became the next chapter wlQ show. 
 
CHAPTEE IV. 
 
 SATIRICAL AND DIDACTIC POEMS. 
 
 In the year 1680 a remarkable change came over the cha- 
 racter 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 poetry 
 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 aUowanoe. Of late yearsj 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 fortune, 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 lan- 
 guage. The series of satirical and didactic poems which, 
 in the space of less than seven years he was now to pro- 
 duce, occupies the position which the epic would almost 
 to a certainty have failed to attain. Not only is there 
 
72 DRTDEN. ' [chap. 
 
 nothing better 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 AcldtoiJliel, The Medal, Mac- 
 Heeknoe, 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 imlikeli- 
 ness of his ever having been a very fervent Eoundhead, 
 and I do not think that there is much more 'probability of 
 his having been a very fervent Eoyalist. 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 political 
 questions. Dryden almost always reflected the sympathies 
 of the nation at large. The Popish Plot, however, and 
 the dangsrous 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 seri- 
 ous subjects are at any rate by courtesy supjposed to possess 
 
IV.] SATIRICAL AND DIDACTIC POEMS. 73 
 
 greater attractions than tliey exert in youth. Tradition 
 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 de- 
 feated by the fidelity of the brisk boys of the city to 
 their leader, there is no question that the poem worked 
 powerfully among the influences which after the most 
 desperate struggle, short of open warfare, in which any 
 English sovereign has ever been engaged, finally won for 
 Charles the victory over the Exclusionists, by means at 
 least ostensibly constitutional and legitimate. It is, how- 
 ever, with the literary rather than with the political aspect 
 of the matter that we are here concerned. 
 
 The story of Absalom and Achitophel has obvious capa- 
 cities for political adaptation, and it had been more than 
 once so used in the course of the century, indeed (it woidd 
 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 
 
74 DETDEN. [chap. 
 
 England the character or portrait, a set description of a 
 given person in prose or verse, had for some timei been 
 fashionable. Clarendon in the one country, Saint Evre- 
 mond in the other, had in particular composed prose 
 portraits 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 ^ways 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 needed 
 no such setting as this, a setting which to all appearance 
 Dryden was as unable as he was unwilling to give. He 
 could, however, and did give other things of much greater 
 importance. I 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 exer- 
 cised and developed, till its owner was in as thorough 
 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 luojetius has ever equalled, and which, if it 
 falls short of the great Eoman's in logical exactitude, 
 hardly falls short of it in poetical ornament, and excels 
 it in a sort of triumphant vivacity which hurries the 
 
IV.] SATIRICAL AND DIDACTIC POEMS. 75 
 
 reader along, wliether he will or no. All these three gifts 
 are almost indifferently exemplified in the series of poems 
 now under discussion, and each of them may deserve a little 
 consideration hefore 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 recognized for verse 
 by the rattle of the rhymes and by a diligent scansion with 
 the finger. Something the same, allowing for the influ- 
 ence of Waller and his school, may be said of Marvell and 
 even of Oldham. Meanwhile the octosyllabic satire of 
 Cleveland, Butler and others, though less violently uncouth 
 than the decasyUables, was purposely grotesque. There is 
 some difference of opinion as to how far the heroic satirists 
 themselves 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 something 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 vary- 
 ing 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 DEYDEN. [chap. 
 
 been noted, a remarkaljly varied cadence ; in the second, its 
 strong antitheses and smart telling iiits 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 
 respect it is at least as much distinguished from its prede- 
 cessors as in the former. There had been a contiauous 
 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 ChurchiE. and 
 Lloyd. Now this moral indignation, apt to be rather tiresome 
 when the subject is purely ethical — Marston is a glaring 
 example of this — becomes quite intolerable when the sub- 
 ject 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 Dryden 
 alone, has observed this rule. As I have just observed, his 
 manner towards his subjects is that of a cool and not iU- 
 humoured scorn. They are great scoundrels certainly, but 
 
IV.] SATIEIOAL AND DIDACTIC POEMS. 77 
 
 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 satirists 
 are usually prone to the error of attacking either mere 
 types, or else individuals too definitely marked as indivi- 
 duals. The first is the fault of Eegnier 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 folly in 
 the abstract. In the second case a suspicion of personal 
 pique comes in, and it is felt that the requirement of art, 
 the disengagement of the general law from the individual 
 instance, is not sufficiently attended to. Eegnier perhaps 
 only in Macette, Pope perhaps only in Atticus, escape this 
 Scylla and this Charybdis. But Dryden rarely or never 
 falls into either's grasp. His figures are always at once 
 types and individuals. Ziniri is at once Buckingham and 
 the idle grand seigneur who plays at politics and at learn- 
 ing, Achitophel at once Shaftesbury and the abstract 
 intriguer, Shimei at once Bethel and the sectarian politi- 
 cian 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 Achi- 
 tophel be compared with the replies it called forth, this is 
 especially noticeable. Shad well, for instance, ia the almost 
 incredibly scurrilous libel which he put forth in answer to 
 the Medal, accuses Dryden of certain definite misdoings 
 
78 DRTDEN. [chap. 
 
 and mis-sayings most of whicli are Tinbelievalile while 
 others are inconclusive. 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 establishing 
 that of folly. But when Shad well, 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 dis- 
 dained. When Dryden himself mates such charges it is 
 always in a casual and allusive way, as if there were no 
 general dissent as to the truth of his allegation, while he 
 takes care to be specially happy in his language. The dis- 
 graceful insinuation against Forbes, the famous if irreve- 
 rent 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- 
 ]iutable. 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 
 
IV.] SATIRICAL AND DIDACTIC POEMS. 79 
 
 of his verse was wortKless ; and it is absolutely true that 
 ShadweU wrote worse, and was in some respects a duller 
 man, than any person of equal talents placed among English 
 men of letters. There could not possibly be a more com- 
 plete justification of Macflecknoe than the victim's com- 
 plaint that " he had been represented as an Irishman, 
 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 historyj 
 of English poetry. But Dryden's didactic poems are quitei 
 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_foriQulM of the schools, 
 and his various literary critioisitfs are frequently very fair 
 specimens of deductive reasoning. The bent of his mind, 
 moreover, was of that peculiar kind which delights in 
 arguing a point. Something of this may be traced in the 
 singular variety, not to say inconsistency, even of his 
 literary judgments. He sees, for the time being, only the 
 point which he has set himself to prove, and is quite care- 
 less of the fact that he has proved something very different 
 yesterday, and is very likely to prove something different 
 still to-morrow. But for the purposes of didactic poetry 
 he had special equipments unconnected with liis merely 
 
80 DKTDEN. [CHAH. 
 
 logical power. He was at all times singularly happy and 
 fertile in the art of illustration, and of concealing the 
 weakness of an argument in the most convincing way, hy 
 a happy simile or jest. He steered clear of the rook on 
 which Lu cretius has more than once gone nigh to split — 
 the repetition of diy formulas and professional terms. In 
 the Hind and Panther, indeed, thfe argument is, in great 
 part, composed of narrative and satirical portraiture. The 
 Fable 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 stUl 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." Tn reality it is a model of the plainer sort of 
 verse, and nearer to his own admirable prose than any- 
 thing 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 ShadweU after 
 both had assailed him in the most virulent and unpro- 
 voked fashion. Many of the minor assailants whom, as we 
 shall see, Absalom and Achito^liel 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 per- 
 fectly true and just, but was also a fair literary tit-for-tat 
 
iv.] SATIRICAL AND DIDACTIC POEMS 81 
 
 in return for tlie Rehearsal ; nor did Buckingliam's foolish 
 rejoinder provoke tlie poet to say another word. Last of 
 all, in no part of his satires is there the slightest reflection 
 on Eochester, notwithstanding the disgraceful conduct of 
 which he had been guilty. Eochester was dead, leaving 
 no heirs and very few friends, so that at any time during 
 the twenty years which Dryden 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 AchitqpJiel is perhaps, with the exception 
 of the St. CeoUia ode, the best known of aU 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 unapproached 
 portrait of Zimri, and the final harangue of David, have 
 for generations found their places in every book of elegant 
 extracts, either for ge nerf<] nr nr-Tionl urr But perhaps the 
 most characteristic passage of the whole, as indicating the 
 kind of satire which Dryden now introduced for the first 
 • time, is the passage descriptive of Shimei — Slingsby Bethel 
 — the Eepublican sheriff of the city : — 
 
 Bat Ke, thougli bad, 13 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. 
 
 a 
 
82 DKYDEN. [cuap. 
 
 Thus heaping wealth, by the most ready way 
 
 Among the Jews, which was to cheat and pray ; 
 
 The City, to reward his pioua hate 
 
 Against his master, chose him magistrate. 
 
 His hand a vare ol 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 lored 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 factions 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 suro '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 moimt. 
 
 There had been nothing in the least like this tefore. 
 
IV.] SATIRICAL AND DIDACTIC POEMS. 83 
 
 Tlie 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 Avhich his party -were accustomed to 
 employ, and above all the polish of the language and 
 the verse, and the tone of haK- 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 ap- 
 pearance 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 Poetical 
 Refiections of tlie dreariest kind. Him followed an anony- 
 mous 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 Huahai. 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. Lastly, 
 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 subse- 
 quent 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 
 G 2 
 
81 DRTDEN. [chap. 
 
 the debt which the English language owes to him unless he 
 has read at least some of them in full. 
 
 The popularity of Absalom and AchitopTiel was immense 
 and its sale rapid ; but the main object, the overthrow- 
 ing of Shaftesbury, was not accomplished, and a certain 
 triumph was even gained for that turbulent leader by 
 the failure of the prosecution against him. This failure 
 was celebrated by the striking of a medal with the 
 legend Laetamur. Thereupon Dryden 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 gentle- 
 man 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 impossihle, 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 Achitqphel, extending to little 
 more than 300 lines, and containing none of the pic- 
 turesque personalities which had adorned its predecessor. 
 Part of it is a bitter invective against Shaftesbury, 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 lively than that of Ab- 
 
IV.] SATIRICAL AND DIDACTIC POEMS. 85 
 
 salom and Aehiiophel, but not less careful. It is noticeable, 
 too, that the Medal contains a ILue of fourteen syllables. 
 
 Thou leap'st o'er all eternal truths in thy Pindaric way. 
 
 Tbe 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 
 universal 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 hkely to go unanswered ; and indeed 
 Dryden had described in it with exact irony the cha- 
 racter of the replies he received. Pordage returned to 
 the charge with the Medal Reversed; the admirers of 
 Somers hope that ha did not write Dryden's Satire to his 
 Muse ; and there were many others. But one of them, 
 the Medal of John Bayes, is of considerably greater impor- 
 tance. It was written by Thomas Shadwell, and is per- 
 haps the most scurrilous piece of ribaldry which has ever 
 got itself quoted ia English literature. The author gives 
 a life of Dryden, accusing him peU-mell of all sorts of dis- 
 graceful conduct and unfortunate experiences. His adu- 
 lation of Oliver, his puritanic relations, his misfortunes at 
 Cambridge, his marriage, his intrigues with Mrs. Eeevc, 
 &c., &c., are all raked up or invented for the purpose of 
 throwing obloquy on him. The attack passed aU bounds 
 of decency, especially as it had not been provoked by 
 any personality towards Shadwell, 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 appa- 
 rently jea,lous 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 
 received 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 qver. His manners are admitted to have 
 been coarse "and brutal, his conversation unclean, his 
 appearance uninviting ; nor was his literary personality 
 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 
 amusing play than any of Dryden's, and the Squire of 
 Alsatia, Bwy 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 Rochester pretended, or, as Dryden would have 
 it, to certain intellectual incapacities, there can be no 
 doubt that nobody ever made less use of his faculties than 
 
IV.] SATIRICAL AND DIDACTIC POEMS. 87 
 
 Shadwell. His work is always disgraceful as writiag ; 
 lie seems to have been totally destitute of any critical 
 faculty, and he mixes up what is really funny with the 
 dullest and most wearisome folly and ribaldry. He was 
 thus given over entirely into Dryden's hands, and the 
 unmatched satire of MacFlechnoe 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, monaichs 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 ; 
 SbadweU alone, of all my sons, is he 
 Who stands confirmed in full stupidity. 
 
88 DEYDEN. [chap. 
 
 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 ; 
 
 Bat 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 in solemn state, supinely reign." 
 
 MacFlecIcnoe was published in October, 1682, but Dryden 
 bad not done witb Sbadwell. A month later came out 
 the second part of Absalom and Achitophel, in which 
 !Nahum Tate took up the story. Tate copied the versifica- 
 tion 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 laureate's 
 part. But the second part of Absalom and Achitopliel 
 would assuredly never be opened were it not for a long 
 passage of about 200 lines, which is entirely Dryden's, 
 and which contains some of his very best work. Un- 
 luckily it contains also some of his greatest licences of 
 expression, to which he was probably provolied by the 
 unparalleled 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 
 Johnson are successively branded, Pordage has his ten 
 syllables of immortalizing contempt, and then come the 
 famous characters of Doeg (Settle) and Og (ShadweU), — 
 
 Two fools that crutch their feeble sense on verse, 
 Who by my muse to all succeeding times 
 Shall live, in spite of their own doggrel rhymes. 
 
 The coarseness of speech before alluded to makes it im- 
 
IV.] SATIRICAL AND DIDACTIC POEMS. 89 
 
 possible to quote tliese 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. 
 Bailing in other men may be a crime, 
 Eat 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 hia door to lay, 
 Who makes heaven's gate a lock to its own key ; 
 Let him rail on, let hia invective muse 
 Have four-and-twenty letters to abuse. 
 Which, if he jumblea to one line of senae. 
 Indict him of a capital offence. 
 In fire-works give him leave to vent his spito. 
 Those are the only serpents he can write ; 
 The height of hia ambition is, we know, 
 But to be master of a puppet-show j 
 On that one atage hia 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 treaaon-tavern rolling home. 
 Bound aa a globe, and liquored every chink, 
 Goodly and great he sails behind his link. 
 With all thia bulk there'a nothing lost in 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 ! 
 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 ; 
 
90 DRYDEN. [chap. 
 
 Eat opium, mingle arsenic in tliy 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 ; 
 
 Ehyme 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. 
 
 1^0 one, I think, can fail to recognize here the qualities 
 which have already been set forth as specially distinguish- 
 ing Dryden's satire, the fund of truth at the hottom 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. 
 
 These verses were the last that Dryden wrote in the 
 directly satirical way. His four great poems — the two 
 parts of Absalom and AcMiojjhel, the Medal, and Mac- 
 Fleclmoe, had been produced in rather more than a year, 
 and, high as was his literary position before, had exalted 
 
)v.] SATIRICAL AND DIDACTIC POEMS. 91 
 
 liim 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 Englishmen of 
 letters. He was now to earn a new title to this position. 
 Almost simultaneously with the second part of Absalom 
 and Acldtopliel appeared i?e%«o 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 
 reached 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 
 theological controversy was bred in the bone of the seven- 
 teenth century. It wUl always remain an instance of the 
 subordination in ]^!acaulay of the judicial to the advo- 
 cating faculty, that he who knew the time so well should 
 have adduced the looseness of Dryden's plays as an argu- 
 ment 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 
 not a mere assumption, and generally it may be noted 
 that the biographies of the time never seem to infer any 
 connexion between irregularity of life and unsoundness 
 of religious faith. I have already shown some cause for 
 disbelieving the stories, or rather the assertions, of Dryden's 
 
92 DRYDEN. [chap. 
 
 profligacy, thougli even these -woulcl not be conclusive 
 against his sincerity ; but I believe that it ■would be 
 difficult to trace any very active concern in him for 
 things religious before the Popish Plot. Various circum- 
 stances already noticed may then have turned his mind 
 to the subject, and that active and vigorous mind when it 
 once attacked 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 Tlie 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 Laid a 
 politicaLas weUas^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 
 struggles of the Popish Plot had led to the contests on 
 the Exclusion BLU on the one hand, and they had re- 
 opened the controversial question between the Churches 
 of England and Eome on the other. They had thus in 
 different ways given rise to Absalom and Achitophel and 
 to Religio Laid, but the two poems have no community 
 but a community of origin. Indeed, the suspicion of 
 any political design in Religio Laid is not only ground- 
 less but contradictory. The views of James on the sub- 
 ject were known to every one, and those of Charles 
 himself are not likely to have 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 suggestion that 
 
J v.] SATIRICAL AND DIDACTIC POEMS. 93 
 
 Dryden wrote {he 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 oc- 
 curred to him at the age of fifty. The poem therefore, 
 as it seems to me, must he 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 hy 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 difiiculties and 
 doubts. The author must have been familiar with the 
 usual objections of the persons vaguely called Hohbists, 
 and with the counter- objections of the Eomanists. He 
 takes them both and he makes the best of them. 
 
 In its form and arrangement Religio Laici certainly 
 deserves 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 ccesura 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 ar- 
 gumentative. There is and could be nothing specially 
 novel or extraordinarily forcible in the arguments ; but 
 they are put with that ease and apparent cogency which 
 have been already remarked upon as characterizing all 
 Dryden's didactic work. The poem is not without 
 
94 DEYDEK. [chap. 
 
 touolies of humour, and winds up witli 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 ; hut Dryden himself 
 had not practised it. The years 1685-6 gave him occa- 
 sion to do so. His Threnodia Augustalis or funeral 
 poem on Charles the Second may be taken as the chief 
 official production of his laureateship. The difficulties of 
 such performances are well known, and the reproaches 
 brought against their faults are pretty well stereotyped. 
 Threnodia Augustalis is not exempt from the faults of its 
 kind ; but it has merits which for that kind are decidedly 
 unusual. 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 termi- 
 nation is also fine. Of very different merit, however, is 
 the Ode to the Memory of Mrs. Anne Killegrew. This 
 elegy is among the best of many noble funeral poems 
 which Dryden wrote. The few lines on the Marquis 
 of Winchester, the incomparable address to Oldham — 
 " Jarewell, too little and too- lately known '' — and at a 
 later date the translated epitaph on Claverhouse are all 
 remarkable ; but the Killegrew elegy is of far greater im- 
 portance. It is curious that in these days of selections no 
 one has attempted a coUectioji 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 KUlegrew would 
 assuredly hold a high place. Johnson pronounced it the 
 noblest in the language, and in his time it certainly was, 
 unless I/i/eidas be called an ode. Since its time there 
 
IT.] SATIRICAL AND DIDACTIC POEMS. 95 
 
 has been Wordsworth's great immortality ode, and cer- 
 tain 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 incapable 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, 
 Eioh with immortal green above the rest : 
 
 Whether, adopted to some neighbouring stai-, 
 
 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 
 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 
 
96 DRYDEN. [chap. 
 
 to he true, though there is apparently no direct testimony 
 to its truth. It is said to have been written at Eushton 
 not far from Kettering, in the poet's native county. 
 Eushton 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 
 Eushton, architectural evidences of their devotion to the 
 cause survive in the shape of buildings covered with 
 symbolical carvings. The neighbourhood of Eushton, 
 too, is singularly consonant to the scenery of the poem. 
 It lay just on the southern fringe of the great forest of 
 Eockingham, and the neighbourhood is still wonderfully 
 timbered, though most of the actual wood owes its ex- 
 istence to the planting energy ofDuke Johnof Montagu, 
 half a century after Dryden's time. It would certainly 
 not have been easy to conceive a better place for the con- 
 ception and execution 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 iu plan a sort of combina- 
 tion of Absalom and AcJiitophel, and of Religio Laid, 
 but its three parts are by no means homogeneous. The 
 first part, which is perhaps on the whole the best, con- 
 tains the well-known apportionment of the characters of 
 different beasts to the different churches and sects ; the 
 second contains the major part of the controversy between 
 the Hind and the Panther ; the third, which is as long 
 as the other two put together, continues this controversy, 
 but before very long diverges into allegorical and jjersonal 
 satire. The story of the Swallows, which the Panther 
 
IV.] SATIRICAL AND DIDACTIC POEMS. 97 
 
 tells, is one of the liveliest of all Dryden's pieces of narra- 
 tion, 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. 
 
 Tlie Hind and the Panther was certain to provoke 
 controversy, 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 Beligio 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 
 defender of The Hind and the Panther, indeed, has 
 ever attempted to defend it as a regular or classically 
 proportioned piece of work. Its main theme is, as always 
 with Dryden, 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 alle- 
 gory in general, and the beast-fable in particular. Dryden, 
 like many other great men of letters, had an admiration 
 for the incomparable story of Eeynard the fox. It is 
 characteristic, 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 of its kind in English literature. If any 
 one wishes to appraise the value of the story that Dryden 
 was seriously vexed by The Hind and the Panther trans- 
 
 H 
 
98 DETDEN. [CH. ir. 
 
 versed to the Story of the City and Country Mouse, he 
 cannot do better than read that production. It is diffi- 
 cult 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 highest 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. Montague and Prior's strictures is a 
 sarcastic reference to Eeynard 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 Dryden wept at the attack and com- 
 plained that two young fellows to whom he had been civil 
 should thus have treated an old man. Now Dryden 
 certainly did not consider himself 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 misfortune for his fame that the Eevolution left it 
 out of print for the rest of the author's life. 
 
CHAPTEE V. 
 
 LIFE FROM 1680 TO 1688. 
 
 That poition of Dryden's life wliich. extends from the 
 Popish Plot to the Eevolution is of so nrach more im- 
 portance 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 he 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 man- 
 kind," the men who compensate for the admirable quaUties 
 of their heads by the despicable infirmities of their hearts. 
 According 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 
 contrary. Twenty years of play-writing had, in aU pro- 
 bability, somewhat disgusted Dryden with the stage, and 
 his Eose-Alley misfortune had shown him that even a 
 scrupulous abstinence froin meddling in politics or in per- 
 sonal satire would not save him from awkward conse- 
 H 2 
 
100 DETDEN. [chap. 
 
 quences. His lucrative contract -with the players liad, 
 beyond all doubt, ceased, and bis official salaries, as we 
 stall 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 religious 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 
 invito, Minerva he took to writing satires and argumenta- 
 tive pieees 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 
 February, 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 ex- 
 tant to Rochester — Hyde, notWilmot — complaining of long 
 arrears, and entreating some compensation in the shape of 
 a place in the Customs, or the Excise, besides an instal- 
 ment 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 161., the arrears being over 
 1000/., and an appointment to a coUectorship of Customs 
 
•7 ] LIFE FROM 1680 TO 1688. 101 
 
 in tte port of London, -witli unknown emoluments. The 
 only definite sum mentioned is a nominal one oi 51. a 
 year as collector of duties on cloth. But it is not likely 
 that cloth was the only suhject 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 he 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 iu the poet's mind. A carejuj. study of the 
 poem, instead of furnishing arguments against the sin- 
 cerity 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 patron, because of its rationalizing tone, its 
 halting adoption of the Anglican Church as a kind of make- 
 shift, 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 whicli 
 the poet afterwards took. 
 
 Sncli 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 
 
102 DEYDBN. [chap; 
 
 acquiescing layman ; but it is exactly tlie phrase ■which, 
 might be expected from a man -who was on the slope from* 
 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 
 English 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 further stiU. 
 He did go further, and has been accordingly railed against 
 for many generations. But I'do not hesitate to put the 
 question to the present generation in a very concrete form. 
 Is Dryden's critic no-wadays prepared to question the 
 sincerity 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- con- 
 version -writings of the Cardinal are not less superficially 
 inconsistent 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 haU" 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 
 
v.] LIFE FROM 1680 TO 1688. 103 
 
 conscious sincerity went, but of a certain amount of un- 
 conscious insincerity I am by no means disposed to 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 essentially a 
 literary man, and was disposed rather to throw himself 
 into the arms of any party than into those of one so hope- 
 lessly unliterary as the ultra-Liberal and ultra^Protestant 
 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. Fortunately — 
 and it is for everybody who has to do with literature 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 Dry den'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 determination 
 from Hobbism or Hahfaxism to Eomanist 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 pesent 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 compe- 
 tence, 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 Liberalism 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. 
 
104 DEYDEN. [chap. 
 
 considering the insufficiency of his knowledge, from 
 challenging the sincerity of Dryden. 
 
 How insufficient the knowledge was the lahours of 
 suhsequent 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 
 renewal 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 rehgion, and having written 
 indecent plays, the arguer has himself demolished his 
 argument in a famous passage about James's own morals, 
 and the conduct of the non-resistance doctors of the Angli- 
 can Church. Burnet's exaggerated denunciations of Dryden 
 as a "monster of impurity of all sorts," &c., are sufficiently 
 traceable to Shadwell's shameless libels and to the Character 
 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 
 writings, to have been in exactly the state of mind which 
 was likely to result in such a proceeding, and of whose 
 insincerity there is no proof of the smallest value — what 
 reason is there for suspecting him ? The literary great- 
 
v.] LIFE FROM 1680 TO 1688. 105 
 
 ness of the man ]ias nothing to do with the question. 
 The fact is that he has been convicted, or rather sen- 
 tenced, on 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 
 saying, 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 
 liioi recalls a curious and honourable story which Johnson 
 tells of Smith, the Bohemian author of Plimdra and 
 Hippolytus. Addison, who, as all the world knows, was 
 a friend of Smith's, and who was always ready to do Ms 
 friends good turns, procured for Smith,^ from some Whig 
 
106 DETDEN. [chap. 
 
 magnates, a dommission for a History of th'e Eevolution. 
 To the disgust of tlie mediator Smith demurred. "What,'' 
 he said, " am I to do with the character of Lord Sunder- 
 land 1 " Addison is said to have replied, in deep hut 
 illogical wrath, " When were you drunk last 1" 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 Eevolution. What are 
 they going to do with the character of Lord Sunderland 1 
 In the age not merely of Sunderland, but of Marlborough, 
 of Godolphin, of EusseU, 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 persistent refusal to give wa;^ 
 to Tonson^^ntreaties to dedicate the Virgil to William, 
 antThis whole post-Eevolution 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 literary merits, he would not 
 refuse their offers, but as to yielding an inch of his prin- 
 ciples, 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 postenori, 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 
 
v.] LIFE FKOM 1680 TO 1688. 107 
 
 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 
 chosen, nor in all cases very happily executed. His defence 
 of the reasons which had converted Anne Hyde, is ahout 
 the worst of his prose works, and was handled (in the 
 rough controversial fashion of the day) very damagingly 
 by StiUingfleet. A translation of a work of VariUas' on 
 ecclesiastical history was announced hut n«ver published, 
 and considering the worthlessness of Varillas as a historian 
 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 pre- 
 vented, apparently 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 
 
103 DKYDEN. [chap. 
 
 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 patri- 
 mony was but small, and such addition to it as he had 
 received with Lady Elizabeth did not exceed a few scores 
 of pounds annually. He had three sons grown to man's 
 estate, and all the more difficult to provide for that their 
 religion incapacitated 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 lucrative 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 " abscon- 
 dence." 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 consent. Loss of fortune, of 
 prospects, and of powerful friends was accompanied in 
 Dryden's case by the most galling annoyances to his self- 
 love. His successor in the laureateship was none other 
 than ShadweU, 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, how- 
 ever, 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 Eoches- 
 ters 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 opposition 
 to the assaults of fortune. In the twelve years of life 
 
v.] LIFE FEOM 1680 TO 1688. 109 
 
 ■which remained to him he buUt up his fortune and 
 maintained it anew, not merely hy 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 
 lines to please it. Just as no one from Annus Mirabilis and 
 Aurengzebe could have divined Absalom and Achitqphel 
 and the Hind and tJie FantJier, so no one, except on the 
 principle that all things were now possible to Dryden, could 
 have divined from Absalom and Acldtophel and the Hind 
 and the Panther, either Palamon and Arcite, or the trans- 
 lation of Viigil. 
 
 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 Dryden 
 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 mot t 
 curious problems of English literary history. Though Ethe- 
 rege was a man of fashion, of literary importance, and of 
 a distinguished position in diplomacy — he was English 
 minister at Katisbon, 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 
 
110 DBYDEN. [chap. 
 
 happened no one seems to know.' A line in the epistle 
 seems to show that Etherege had heen 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 of Sir Fqpling Flutter and Sfie would 
 if slie 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 manj' 
 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 Dryden 
 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 
 
 ' lu reply to a request of mine, Mr. W. Noel Sainsbnry has 
 brought to my notice letters of Etherege in the Record Office and 
 du the Reports of the Historical MSS. Commission. In January, 
 1688-9, Etherege wrote to Lord Preston from Eatisbon. The 
 first letter from his successor is dated April, 1689. If then he 
 died at Eatisbon this brings the date between narrow limits. 
 There is, however, a rival legend that he followed James into exile. 
 Since this note was written more letters have, I hear, been found 
 in the British Museum, and Mr. Gorse has the whole subject under 
 treatment. 
 
v.] LIFE PEOM 1680 TO 1688. Ill 
 
 in the beginning of 1685, though a considerable interval 
 occurred before a third volume was brought out. These 
 volumes contained both old and new poems, mostly of the 
 occasional kind, by Dryden himself, besides many of his 
 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, wais a contributor. These two years (1684 
 and 1685), it wiU be observed, were not merely those in 
 which, owing to the non-payment of his appointments, 
 his pecuniary 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 Dryden's abstinence from the stage during this time 
 — which was broken 6nly by the Diike of Guise and by 
 the production of the rather unsuccessful opera, Albion 
 and Alhanius — seems to have been accompanied by a 
 cessation also in his activity as a prologue writer. Both 
 before and after this period prologue writing was a regular 
 source of income and employment to him. There fs a 
 famous story of Southerne 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 comment on the trustworthiness of such 
 stories. Every one is supposed to know Pope's reference 
 to the author of OroonoJco as — 
 
 Tom whom heaven sent down to raise 
 The price of prologues and of playg. 
 
 The story is that Southerne in 1782 applied to Dryden 
 for a prologue (which is extant), and was told that the 
 
112 DBYDEN. [cH. v. 
 
 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 
 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 struggles 
 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 
 excesses of some of Dryden's few utterances of the kind at 
 this time are not creditable to his memory. HaUam's phrase 
 of " virulent ribaldry " is absurd as applied to Absalom 
 and AchitopUel, 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 pro- 
 logues 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 Lave seemed, at first sight, that the Eevolution 
 ivould 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 
 altogether insignificant, quite insufficient for his wants, 
 and he had three sons to maintain and set out in the 
 world. Bat 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 characteristics. Not all 
 his friends deserted him, and from Dorset in par- 
 ticular he received great and apparently constant assis- 
 tance. 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, 
 
 I 
 
114 DKYDEN. [chap. 
 
 nor, even allowing for the simpler manners of the time, to 
 his delicacy 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 pre- 
 served at Knole, and not yet given to the world, there 
 are stiU more definite acknowledgments. Dryden, how- 
 ever, 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 increase them by dedication or by 
 the growing practice of placing subscription copies among 
 wealthy friends. Still, a hundred pounds could be de- 
 pended upon from a good third night and from the book- 
 seller's fee for the book, and a hundred pounds was a 
 matter of considerable importance to Dryden just now. 
 For full seven years he had all but abandoned dramatic 
 composition. His contributions 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 Spanisk 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. If 
 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 enemies of the court than on 
 poetical or dramatic merits. But Dryden's dramatic repu- 
 tation was by no means impaired. 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, 
 
VI.] LATER DEAMAS AND PROSE WOEKS. 115 
 
 and, as it happened, there were in the Spanish Friar 
 many allusions of an accidental hut unmistakahle kind to 
 ungrateful children, hanished monarchs, and so forth. The 
 eyes of the whole audience were fixed on Mary, and she 
 probahly 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 production 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 various 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 contempo- 
 raries (with the exception of Dryden himself) in being an 
 ardent admirer of Chaucer. In the preface to the Fables 
 the poet tells us that he had postponed his translation 
 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 original, 
 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 
 Dryden are remarkable examples of the power which 
 great writers have of treading ia each other's steps with- 
 out servile 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 
 I 2 
 
116 DRYDEN. [chap. 
 
 Sebastian had been dedicated to Lord Leicester, an old 
 Cromwellian, so Amphitryon was dedicated to Sir William 
 Leveson Gower, a prominent Williamite. Neither dedi- 
 cation contains the least truckling to the powers that were, 
 hut Dryden seems to have taken a pleasure in showing 
 that men of hoth 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 oi Albion 
 and Alhanius. Unlike the latter, it has no political meaning ; 
 indeed, Dryden confesses to having made considerable 
 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. PurceU undertook 
 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 Emmeline 
 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 ex- 
 cellent. Dryden was less fortunate with his two remaining 
 dramas. In writing the first he showed himself, for so old 
 a craftsman and courtier, very unskilful in the choice of a 
 subject. GJeomenes, the banished King of Sparta, could 
 not but awaken the susceptibilities of zealous revolution 
 censors. 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 
 passages, but the most remarkable thing about it is that 
 there is a considerable relapse into rhyme, which Dryden. 
 
VI.] LATER DRAMAS AXD PROSE WORKS. 117 
 
 had abandoned for many years. It contains, also, one of 
 the last, not the least beautiful, and fortunately almost 
 the most quotable of the exquisite lyrics which, whUe 
 they prove perhaps more fully than anything else, Dryden's 
 almost unrivalled command of versification, disprove at 
 the same time his alleged incapacity to express true 
 feeling. Here it is : — 
 
 No, no, poor suSering 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 tele dramatique, and yet in the Conquest of 
 Granada, in Marriage a la Mode, in Aurengzebe, m All 
 
113 DEYDBN. [onAP. 
 
 for Love, in the Spanish Friar, in Don Sebastian, and in 
 Ampliitryon he produced plays which are certainly worthy 
 of no little admiration. For the rest, save in isolated 
 scenes and characters, little can he 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 inferiorityto 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 onlj' play, 
 with the exception of Venice Preserved, which was written 
 so as to be thoroughly worth reading now for 150, I had 
 almost said for 200 years. The Mourning Bride and the 
 Fair Fenitent 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 
 poetical 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 
 
Ti.] LATBH DRAMAS AND PROSE WORKS. 119 
 
 written since tte year 1800 have been avowedly written 
 ■with hardly a thought of being acted ; I shoidd be sorry 
 to say 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 
 apology for the offensive characteristics of these produc- 
 tions is possible, and, if it were possible, I for one have 
 no care to attempt it. The coarseness of Dryden's plays 
 is unpardonable. It does not come under any of the 
 numerous categories of excuse which can be devised for 
 other offenders in the same kind. It is deliberate, it is 
 unnecessary, it is a positive defect in art. When the 
 culprit in his otherwise dignified and not unsuccessful 
 confiteor 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 purpose of appreciation and defence 
 at the price of being queasy and qualmish. He has ex- 
 posed his legs to the arrows of any criticaster who chooses 
 
120 DRTDEN. [chap. 
 
 to aim at him, and the criticasters have not failed to jump 
 at the chance of so nohle a quarry. Yet I, for my part, 
 shall still maintain that the merits of Dryden's comedies 
 are by no means inconsiderable ; indeed, that when Shake- 
 speare, 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 confession 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 undoubtedly preceded and pro- 
 bably suggested the crowning triumph of English comedy, 
 the sublime apotheosis of the coquette in MiUamant. To 
 produce that triumph Dryden himself was indeed unable. 
 But from sheer literary skill (the dominant faculty in him) 
 he produced in Doralice, and in Melantha, and in Elori- 
 mel, something not wholly unlike it. So, too, in the 
 central figure of the Spanish Friar he achieved in the same 
 way, by sheer literary faculty and by the skilful manipula- 
 tion of his predecessors, 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 literary 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 com- 
 
Ti.] LATER DKAMAS AND PROSE WORKS. 121 
 
 mand, by dint of- practice, of language, and metre, and 
 situation that lie could, like the magicians of Egypt, make 
 serpents almost like, or quite like those of the true 
 dramatic Moses. Shakespeare'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, Dryden's dramatic work is a tour de force, 
 but then it is such a tour de force as the world has hardly 
 elsewhere seen. He was " bade to toU on to make them 
 sport," and he obeyed the bidding with perhaps less reluc- 
 tance 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 fu'st 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 
 
122 DRTDEN. [chap. 
 
 aTjove all things the instrument of the average purposOi 
 Poetry is more or less intolerable if it be not intrinsically 
 and peculiarly good ; prose is the necessary vehicle of 
 thought. Up to Dryden's time no such generally available 
 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 parenthesis, 
 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 everyday use — 
 for the essayist and the pamphleteer, the preacher and the 
 lay orator, the historian and the critic. This was what 
 Dryden did with little assistance from any forerunner, if 
 it were not Tillotson, to whom, as we know from Con- 
 greve, he acknowledged 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 
 
VI.] LATER DRAMAS AND PROSE WORKS. 123 
 
 muoli indebtedness on tte part of the poet. The some- 
 time archbishop's sermons are excellent in their combina- 
 tion 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 fault of the elders had been, first, the 
 ino rdinate len gth of their sentences ; secondly — and this 
 was rather a cause of the first fault than an additional 
 error — t heir indulgenc e 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 always exposed, of slipping into clumsy 
 classicisms on one side, or inelegant vernacular on the 
 other. Dryden avoided all these faults, though his avoid- 
 ance 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 favoured 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 ex- 
 cellence, 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 
 pulpit, 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 
 
124 DRYDBN. [chap. 
 
 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 consider- 
 able audience and an influence of great width, the critical 
 spirit being extensively diffused at the time. This critical 
 spirit was to a great extent a reflection of that which, 
 beginning with Malherbe and continuing with the institu- 
 tion and regulation of the Academy, had for some time 
 been remarkable in France. Not long after the Eestora- 
 tion one of the subtlest and most accomplished of all 
 French critics took up his residence in England, and gave 
 further impulse to the fashion which Charles himself and 
 many other cavaliers had already 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 now-a-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 histo- 
 rians 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 information furnished him, 
 are extraordinarOy acute and accurate. The relish for 
 literary discussion which Saint Evremond shows ■ was no 
 peculiarity of his, though he had it in super-eminent mea- 
 sure. It was fashionable in France, and he helped to make 
 it fashionable in England. 
 
VI.] LATER DEAMAS XSD PEOSE WOEKS. 125 
 
 I have seen this style of criticism dismissed contemptu- 
 ously as " trifling ;" but this is only an instance of the 
 strange power of reaction. Because for many years the 
 plan of criticising hy rule and line was almost exclusively 
 pursued, and, as happens in the case of almost aU exclu- 
 sive pursuits, was followed too far, it seems to some people 
 now-a-days, that criticism ought to he confined to the ex- 
 pression in more or less elegant language of the feelings of 
 admiration or dislikewhich the subject criticised may excite 
 in the critic's mind. The critic ought to give this impres- 
 sion, but he ought not to leave the other task unattempted, 
 and the result of leaving it unattempted is to be found in the 
 loose and haphazard judgments which now too often com- 
 pose 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 expression, 
 the limits to be imposed on the choice and disposition of 
 this or that subject. Ifo doubt this often resulted in 
 looking merely at the stopwatch, as Sterne's famous phrase 
 has it. Eut 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, 
 
126 DEYDEN. [chap. 
 
 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 
 years later. It takes the form of a dialogue between in- 
 terlocutors, who are sufficiently identified with Dorset, 
 Sedley, Sir Eobert Howard, and Dryden himself. The 
 argument turns on various questions of comparison between 
 classical French and English dramas, and especially be- 
 tween English dramas of the old and of the newer type, 
 the latter 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 pane- 
 gyrics upon Shakespeare. 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 sometimes said to have performed 
 for the bookseller Herringman. There is still something 
 of the older, lengthy sentence, and of the tendency to 
 elongate it by joint on joint as fresh thoughts recur to the 
 writer. But these elongations rarely sacrifice clearness; 
 and there is an almost total absence on the one hand of 
 the cumbrous classical constructions of the elders; on 
 the other, of the quaint colloquialisms which generally 
 make their appearance when this more ambitious style is 
 discarded. The Essay was quickly foUowed by a kind 
 of reply from Sir Eobert 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 angry with 
 
VI.] LATEE DRAMAS AST) PROSE WORKS. 127 
 
 Sir Eobert, wlio had indeed somewhat justified Shad well's 
 caricature of him as " Sir Positive At-All," and this anger 
 is not without effects on the style of the defence. 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 seems to have 
 passed, somewhat late in life, through a period of flip- 
 pancy. He was, for a few years, decidedly prosperous, 
 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 Kochester, 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 resi- 
 piscence 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 Trollus 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 weU done. The Epistle to the Whigs, 
 which forms the preface to the Medal, is a piece of poli- 
 tical writing such as there had been hitherto but very little 
 in English, and it was admirably followed up by the Viti- 
 dication of the Duke of Guise. On the other hand, the 
 
128 DRYDEN. [chap. 
 
 preface to Eelir/io Laid, thougli partly also polemical, is a 
 model of 'wliat may be called the expository style. Dryden 
 obtained no great credit for his controversy -with Stilling- 
 fleet, his Life of St. Francis Xavier, or his History of 
 the League, all of which were directly or indirectly contro- 
 versial, and concerned with the political events of the 
 time. As his lengthiest prose works, however, 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 
 prefixed. The sketch of Satire which forms the preface to 
 the Juvenal, is one of the best of its author's performances. 
 The ^neid 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 indebtedness 
 of the Queen Anne men to Dryden in prose as well as iA 
 poetry. It would be a keen critic who, knowing Addison 
 only from the Spectator, could detect his hand in this per- 
 formance. 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, how- 
 ever, 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 
 
VI.] LATER DRAMAS ASD PROSE WORKS. 129 
 
 it is the last, and one of the best examples of his literary 
 criticism. 
 
 It has heen 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 he his, it is not, 
 as in the case of most writers, because of some obvious 
 trick of arrangement 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 interested him; to answer accusations 
 which he thought unjust ; to propitiate powerful patrons ; 
 sometimes, perhaps, merely to discharge commissions with 
 which he had been intrusted. He found no good instru- 
 ment ready to his hand for these purposes, and so, with 
 that union of the practical and literary spirit which dis- 
 tinguished him so strongly, he set to work to make one. 
 But he had no special predilection 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, pro- 
 vided him with an ample vocabulary, a strong, terse 
 method of expression, and a dislike to archaism, 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 balancing of one part of 
 a sentence by another, which attracted so many of his 
 
 K 
 
130 DEYDEN. [chap. 
 
 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. Slip- 
 shod diction and cant vulgarities revolted 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. Tet on the whole his style, if com- 
 pared either with Hooker and Clarendon, Bacon and 
 Milton on the one hand, or with Addison, and stiU 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. Tet 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 Dry den'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 function, 
 however, the style seems to be well adapted. 
 
 Ifow 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, 
 
VI.] LATEE DRAMAS XHCD PKOSB WORKS. 131 
 
 but to any purpose for wliich. it migbt be required, and in 
 whicli 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 
 enlarge the sphere and develope the energies of English 
 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 Shakespeare 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 
 fiist 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, a.s 
 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 com- 
 mands I shall draw some envy on myself. Besides, in per- 
 forming them, it will be first necessary to speak somewhat of 
 Shakespeare and Fletcher, his rivals in poesy ; and one of them, 
 in my opinion, at least his equal, perhaps his superior. To 
 begin then with Shakespeare. He was the man who of all 
 modern, and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most 
 comprehensive soul. All the images of nature were still pre- 
 sent to him, and he drew them not laboriously, but luckily : 
 when he describes anything, you more than, see it, you feel it 
 too. Those who accuse him to have wanted learning, give him 
 K 2 
 
132 DBTDEN. [chap. 
 
 the greater commendation : he was naturally learned ; he 
 needed not the spectacles of books to read nature ; he looked 
 inwards, 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 degenerating into clenches, his serious swelling into 
 bombast. But he is 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 solent inter viburna cupressi. 
 
 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 Shakespeare; and however 
 others are now generally preferred before him, yet the age 
 wherein he lived, which had contemporaries with him, Fletcher 
 and Jonson, never equalled them to him in their esteem : and 
 in the last king's court, when Ben's reputation was at highest. 
 Sir John Suckling, and with him the greater part of the 
 courtiers, set our Shakespeare far above him. 
 
 As for the religion of our poet,' 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 avarice, their worldly interest, de- 
 served 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 inuch 
 esteem with good and holy men in orders ; for the scandal 
 which is given by particular priests, reflects not on the sacred 
 function. 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 
 
 ' Chaucer. 
 
VI,] LATER DRAMAS AND PROSE WORKS. 133 
 
 that we involve not the innocent with the guilty in the same 
 condemnation. The good cannot be too much honoured, nor 
 the had too coarsely used ; for the corruption of the test 
 becomes the worst. When a clergyman 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 deserved by particular priests, yet brings the 
 whole order into contempt. Is then the peerage of England 
 anything dishonoured, when a peer suffers for his treason ? 
 If he be libelled, or any way defamed, he has his scandalura 
 magnatnm to punish the offender. They who use this kind of 
 argument, seem to be conscious to themselves of somewhat 
 which has deserved the poet's lash, and are less 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 opinion 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 stand- 
 ing up for the laws of his land, and the other for the honour 
 (as he called it) of God's church ; which ended in the murder of 
 the Prelate, and in the whipping of his Majesty from post to 
 pillar for his penance. The learned and ingenious Dr. Drake 
 has saved me the labour of enquiring into the esteem and re- 
 verence 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 leBsit is justification sufficient in the civil law. If 
 I answer him in his own language, self-defence, I am sure, 
 must be allowed me ; and if I caiTy it farther, even to a sharp 
 recrimination, somewhat may be indulged to human frailty. 
 Yet my resentment has not wrought so far, but that I have 
 
134 DEYDEN. [ch. vi. 
 
 followed Chaucer in his character of a holy man, and have en- 
 lai'ged 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 time. In the mean while I take up 
 Chaucer where I left him. 
 
 These must suffice for examples of the matter as well 
 as of tlie manner of tlie 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 
 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 thinking 
 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 con- 
 siderations. 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 interesting for their matter as for their form. The 
 importance of the study of that form in the cultivation of 
 a robust English style has never been denied. 
 
CHAPTEE VII. 
 
 PEnlOD OF TRANSLATION. 
 
 It is in many cases a decidedly difficult problem to settle 
 the exact influence whicli 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 
 nearly 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, according to the general judgment, his best as 
 I venture to think, is built, with an audacity to which 
 only great genius or great foUy could lead, on the hnes of 
 Shakespeare. His longest and most ambitious poem follows 
 with a surprising faithfulness the Unes of Chaucer. His most 
 eifective 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 
 
13S DEYDEK [chap. 
 
 hang his verse upon. Absalom and Aehitopliel is little 
 more than a loosely connected string of characters, each 
 owing no douht something, and what is more, a great deal 
 to the poet, but originally given to, and not invented by 
 him. 'So fashion of poetry can be farther aloof from 
 Dryden's than that which, as in the case of SheUey, spins 
 great poems purely out of its own brain. His strong and 
 powerful mind could grind the corn supplied to it into 
 the finest flour, but the corn must always be suppliedr 
 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 ofiice than an incapacity 
 fox the other. "What is more to the purpose, this pecu- 
 liarity is very closely connected with Dryden's fitness for 
 the position which he held. The man who is to control 
 the peaceable revolution of a literature, who is to shape 
 a language \o 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 aU the better off for 
 not being too spontaneous 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 development 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 appel- 
 lation. It seems always to have been, if not necessary, 
 at any rate satisfactory to him, to foUow some lines which 
 had been already laid down, to accept a departure from 
 some previous work, to match himself closely with some 
 existing performance. It appears almost as if, in his ex- 
 
vn] PERIOD OF TRANSL^lTION. 137 
 
 traordinary care for the manner of his poetical work, he 
 felt it an advantage to be relieved of much trouhle about 
 the matter. The accusations of plagiarism which his 
 'frantic 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 accu- 
 sations. He had a habit of catching up phrases sometimes 
 from the works of men to whom he was anything but 
 complimentary, and inserting them, much improved it 
 is true for the most part, in his own work. I have come 
 across a curious instance of this, which I do not remember 
 to have seen anywhere noticed. One of the most morti- 
 fying incidents in Dryden's literary career was the already 
 mentioned composition 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 
 Eochester, who afterwards made himself obnoxious to 
 Dryden's wrath in a still more unpardonable manner. 
 Under these circumstances 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 temperament made the work of transla- 
 tion 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 public taste better than Dryden. The call 
 for translations of the ancients was quite natural and 
 
138 DRYDBN. [chap. 
 
 intelligible. Direct classical study was considerably on 
 tlie wane. So far indeed as one sex was concerned, it had 
 practically gone out of fasbion altogether, and women 
 of the accomplishments 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. Business, 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 Uterary 
 models and patterns ; 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 Dryden had 
 himself created. In 1693 he gave to the world the whole 
 of Persius and much of Juvenal, the latter being com- 
 pleted by his sons and some friends. In the same year 
 some more versions of Ovid and a little of Homer ap- 
 peared; and in 1693 also his greatest work of translation, 
 the VirgU, was begun. This was the only one of Dryden's 
 works for which he leceived not whoUy inadequate remu- 
 neration, and this remuneration was attained chiefly by the 
 method of subscription. Besides these authors, his transla- 
 tions include extracts from Theocritus and Lucretius, a very 
 few Odes of Horace, and a considerable portion of the 
 Metamorphoses of Ovid, which appeared last of all in the 
 well-known volume of Fables. The merits and pecu- 
 liarities of Dryden's translation are easily estimated. It 
 has been excellently remarked in the Preface of a recent 
 prose translation of the Odyssey, that there can be no 
 final translation of Homer, because the taste and literary 
 
VII.] PERIOD OP TRANSLATION. 139 
 
 habits of eacii age demand diflferent qualities in poetry. 
 There is no need to limit this remark to Homer, or indeed 
 to poetry. The work of the translator is to bridge over 
 the interval between his author and his public, and there- 
 fore the construction and character of the bridge must 
 necessarily diifer, according to the instruction and de- 
 mands of the public. 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 stiU less grateful. What they wanted, and what he 
 could give them as no other man then living could, was 
 the matter of the original, tolerably unadulterated, and 
 dressed up iu the splendid diction 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 in- 
 deed obvious enough. Those illustrations displayed " old 
 Nassau's hook-nosed head on pious .Eneas' shoulders." 
 The text itself displayed the head of Dryden on the 
 shoulders of VirgU. 
 
 Even before the Miscellany of 1684, translations from 
 Dryden's hands had been published. There appeared in 
 1680 a version of Ovid's Heroides, 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 manner 
 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 
 
140 DRTDEN. , [chap. 
 
 also lays down a canon as to the necessary equipment of 
 a translator, which, if it could be despotically enforced, 
 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 ex- 
 pressions, 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 peculiarities 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 Macaretis 
 may be given as an instance, — 
 
 And now appeared the messenger of death ; 
 
 Sad were his looks, and scarce he drew his hreath, 
 
 To say, " Tour father sends you " (with that word 
 
 His trembling hands presented me a sword ;) 
 
 " Tour 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 infernal 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 ? 
 
VII.] 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 ofispring 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 did 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 
 authors, and those of 1693 and 1694 added yet more. 
 Altogether, besides Ovid and Virgil, specimens of Horace, 
 Homer, Theocritus, and Lucretius are in these translations, 
 whUe the more ambitious and complete versions of Juvenal 
 and Virgil swell the total (in Scott's edition) to four 
 volumes, containing perhaps some 30,000 liues. 
 
 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 
 altogether and equally successful. The Juvenal and the 
 Virgil deserve separate notice ; the others may be briefly 
 reviewed. AU of them are, according to the general 
 conception of translation which Dryden had formed, 
 ■iecidedly loose, and by no means adhere to the original. 
 
142 DRYDEN. [chap. 
 
 Indeed, Dryden not unfrequently inserts wliole 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 quae 
 dedit (" I puff the prostitute 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, — 
 
 Happ7 the man, and happy he alone, 
 
 He, who can call to-day hia 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 heen, and I have had my hour. 
 
 Fortune, that with malicious joy 
 Does man, her slave, oppress, 
 Proud of her ofiice to destroy. 
 Is seldom pleased to Wess : 
 Still various and unconstant still. 
 But with an inclination to be SI, 
 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. 
 And shakes the wings and will not stay, 
 
VII.] PERIOD or TEANSLATIOK 143 
 
 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 in rags, will keep me warm. 
 
 What is't to me. 
 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 piimace 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 tlie 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 
 has, justly or unjustly, tainted the whole in the eyes of 
 most critics. It reproduces only too nakedly the original 
 
144 DEYDBN. [chap. 
 
 where it would be better left alone, and it faUs 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 trans- 
 lation of the great Roman satirist, and this, although much 
 of it id 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 weU 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&ciently 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 
 it. StiU the poetical resemblances between the two men 
 are sufficiently close to make the expectation of a 
 
vii.] PEBIOD OF TRANSLATION. 145 
 
 valuable version pretty confident, nor is that expectation 
 disappointed. For a wonder Dryden resists, for the most 
 j)art, 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 repre- 
 sent the original, and the chief fault noticeable in it — a 
 fault not uncommon with Dryden in translating — is an 
 occasional lapse into an unpoetical vernacular, with the 
 object, doubtless, of representing the text more vividly to 
 English readers. The Persius is in this respect better 
 than the Jiwenal, 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 aSTorthamptonshire and 
 Huntingdonshire, at the houses of Mrs. Creed and of 
 Driden of Chesterton. There is, indeed, a universally 
 repeated tradition that the first lines were vmtten with a 
 diamond on a window in this latter mansion. The house 
 was pulled down some seventy years ago, and a curious 
 argument against the truth of the legend has been made 
 
146 DEYDEN. [chap. 
 
 out of the fact that the pane was not preserved. Demo- 
 lition, however, is not usually careful of its prey. Much 
 was certainly written at Denham Court, in Buckingham- 
 shire, the seat of Sir WUliam 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 connexion with the Exeter family. He 
 had, it may be mentioned, always been fond of writing in 
 the country. Tonson, the publisher, was exceedingly 
 anxious that the book should be dedicated to WUliam 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 honour of the dedication ; but each division 
 of the work was inscribed to a separate patron. The 
 Eclogues feU to the lot of Lord Clifford, Dryden's co-reli- 
 gionist, 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 acknowledgment of a present 
 from Chesterfield, is at least decisive against the supposed 
 connexion between Lady Elizabeth and the Earl having 
 been known to the poet. Mulgrave, now Marquis of 
 Normanby, had the ^Tieid. 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 Eome, 
 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, who was of all poets the least 
 Homeric, and Virgil to Drj'den., than whom not many 
 
Til.] PERIOD OF TEANSLATION. 147 
 
 poets have been more un-Virgilian. 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" aU the best passages is quite unfair. But 
 Wordsworth had no special faculty of criticism m the 
 classical languages, and was of aU recorded poets the 
 most niggardly of praise, and the most prone to deprecia- 
 tion of others. Of the three ]parts as wholes the Georgics 
 are perhaps done best, the Eclogues worst, the .iEneid 
 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 Virgil especially requires, 
 and of which Dryden was sufficiently master in his more 
 original work, has often failed him here, but the bolder 
 and more masculine passages are represented with a great 
 deal of success. Those who believe, as I confess I myself be- 
 lieve, that all translation is unsatisfactory, 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 reservation is made, there 
 remains plenty of fairly disposable praise for this. Dry- 
 den's most considerable undertaking of a single and com- 
 plete 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 before. The passage I 
 have chosen is the weU-known opening of the descent 
 into hell in the sixth book, which has not many superiors 
 either in the original or in the version. The subject was 
 L 2 
 
148 DRTDElir. [chap. 
 
 one tliat Dryden could handle -well, -whereas his Dido 
 sometimes shows traces of iacongruity, — 
 
 She said, and passed along the gloomy space ; 
 
 The prince pursned her steps with equal pace. 
 
 Ye realms, yet unrevealed to human sight ! 
 
 Te gods, who rule the regions of the night ! 
 
 Te 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 donbtfnl and malignant light. 
 
 When Jove in dusky clouds involves the skies. 
 
 And the faint crescent shoots by fits before their eyes. 
 
 Jnst in the gate, and in the jaws of hell, 
 
 Eevengeful Cares and sullen Sorrows dweU, 
 
 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 imnumbered 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 Chimaera vomits empty flame. 
 
 The chief unsheathed his shining steel, prepared, 
 
 Though seized with sudden fear, to force the guard, 
 
 Oflfering 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. 
 
Til.] PEBIOD OF TEANSLATION. 149 
 
 Owing to the existence of some letters to Tonson, 
 Walsh, and others, more is known about the pecuniary- 
 side of this transaction than ahout most of Dryden's 
 money 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 profitable 
 to the poet. A hundred and two five-guinea subscribers 
 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 shillings upon every 
 book remains with me," the proportion in which the sub- 
 scriptions were divided between author and publisher is 
 unknown. He had, however, as Malone thinks, 50Z. for 
 each book of the JEneid, — as Mr. Christie and Mr. Hooper 
 think, 50Z. for each two books, — and no doubt there was 
 some similar payment for the Eclogues and Geoi'gics. 
 Altogether Pope heard that he made 1200Z. by the Virgil. 
 Presents too were doubtless sent him by Clifibrd and Mul- 
 grave, as well as by Chesterfield. But Tonson'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 there 
 were at least forty shillings brass." Then he expects 
 " 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 Tonson 
 
150 DEYDEN. [chap. 
 
 for refusing subscriptions (wLicli shows that a consider- 
 able portion of the subscription-money must haye 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 wiU be glad of it." Elsewhere there is a half- 
 apologetic allusion to a " sharp " letter which seems not to 
 have been preserved. But Dryden 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 Towcester 
 carrier, to get bills to pay a suspicious watchmaker who 
 would not take gold, and the like. He too was the inter- 
 mediary by which Dryden sent letters to his sons who 
 were now in Eome, and he is accused of great carelessness 
 and perhaps something worse in connexion with these 
 letters. 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 
 possess, and, they are, with those to Mrs. Steward, almost 
 the only letters of his which give much personal detail.' 
 
 1 As, for instance, how (he is writing from Northamptonshire) 
 n party of benighted strangers came in, and he had to give up his 
 
VII.] PBBIOD OF TRANSLATION. 151 
 
 Perhaps it is not superfluous to say tliat allusions in them 
 to his wife are frequent, and show nothing either of any 
 ill-feeling hetween 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 
 history has to show, but affectionate and motherly 
 enough. 
 
 During the period which the last two chapters cover, Dry- 
 den had as usual not failed to undertake several minor and 
 miscellaneous literary tasks. Eleonora, in 1692, was one of 
 his least successful pieces in a literary point of view, but per- 
 haps the most successful of all as a piece of journeywork. 
 The poem is an elegy on the Countess of Abingdon : it was 
 ordered by her husband, and paid for munificently. 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 afterwards a poem to Sir God- 
 frey Kneller, which may or may not have been exchanged 
 for something of the other artist's craft, showed that 
 Dryden had in no way lost his faculty of splendid flat- 
 tery. Perhaps before and perhaps after this came the 
 incomparable address Ho Congreve on the failure of the 
 Double Dealer, which is and deserves to be one of 
 Dryden's best-known works. Congreve and Southerne, 
 the leading comic writer and the leading tragic writer of 
 
 bed to them, to which bed they would have gone supperless, had 
 he not " taken a very lasty pike that day." 
 
152 DRYDEN. [cH. vii. 
 
 tne younger generation, were among the principal of the 
 hand of sons (in Ben Jonson's phrase) whom Dryden 
 had now gathered round him. In one of his letters 
 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 Pres- 
 noy's Art of Painting, with a prefatory essay eaUed a 
 "Parallel of Poetry and Paintiug." There is not very 
 much intrinsic value in this parallel, but it has an acci- 
 dental interest of a curious kind. Dryden tells us that it 
 occupied him for twelve mornings, and we are therefore 
 able to calculate his average rate of working, since neither 
 the matter nor the manner of the work betokens any extra- 
 ordinary c^re, nor could it have required extraordinary re- 
 search. The essay would fill between thirty and forty 
 pages of the size of this present. Either in 1 695 or in 1696 
 the poet also wrote a life of Luoian, intended to accompany 
 a translation of the Dialogues made by various hands. 
 This too, which did not appear tiU 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 JSneid to Mulgrave took. This is 
 not unworthy to rank with the " Essay on Dramatic 
 Poesy " and the " Discourse on Satire." 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 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 brUliantly successful of aU. his 
 poetical experiments. His translations themselves were 
 in many cases rather paraphrases than translations. He now 
 conceived 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 
 Cowley, 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, Dryden had happened to hit on the 
 idea of " transversing " MaUory, we might have had an 
 additional star of the first magnitude in English literature, 
 though his ability to produce a wholly original epic 
 may be doubted. At sixty-seven, writing hard for sub- 
 sistence, 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 
 
154 DRTDEN. [chap. 
 
 which, including as it did many Ovidian translations, and 
 much other verse, he gave the name of Fables, using that 
 word in its simple sense of stories. It is not surprising 
 that this book took the town by storm. Enthusiastic critics, 
 even at the beginning of the present century, assigned to 
 Theodore and Sonoria " a place on the very topmost shelf 
 of English poetry." Such arrangements depend, of course, 
 upon the definition of poetry 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 contemporaries were unable to 
 apply. To us Chaucer is no longer an ingenious and in- 
 telligent but illegible barbarian. We read the Canterbury 
 Tales with as much relish, and with nearly as little diffi- 
 culty, as we read Spenser, or MUton, or Pope, or Byron, 
 or our own living poets. Palamon and Arcite has, there- 
 fore, 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 unfortunate per- 
 sons whose only way of showing appreciation of one 
 thing is by depreciation of something else, an acquaintance 
 with the Knight's 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, 
 according to the contract with Tonson, was to contain 
 10,000 verses. The payment was 300Z., of which 230 
 guineas were paid down at the time of agreement, when 
 three-fourths of the stipulated number of lines werp 
 actually handed over to the publisher. On this occasion, 
 
VIII.] THE FABLES. 155 
 
 at least, Jacob had not to complain of an unduly small 
 consideration. Por Dryden gave Lim not 2500, but 
 nearly 5000 verses more, without, as far as is known, 
 receiving any increase of his fee. The remainder of the 
 3001. 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 accurate, was sufficiently near the 
 truth. It is odd that one of the happiest humours of 
 Tom the First (Shadwell) occurring 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 veriest Jew in 
 Christendom." So that Tonson was not alone in the adop- 
 tion of the method. As the book finally appeared, the 
 Fables contained, besides prefatory matter and dedications, 
 five pieces from Chaucer (Palamon and Arcite, the Cock 
 and the Fox, the Flower and the Leaf, the Wife of Bath's 
 Tale,th.e Character of a Good Parson), three from Boccaccio 
 (Sigismonda and Guiscardo, Tlieodore and Honoria, 
 Cymon and Iphigenia), the first book of the Iliad, 
 some versions of Ovid's Metamorphoses in continuation 
 of others previously published, an Epistle 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 stopping short 
 of conceit, which were such favourites with him, and which 
 
156 DRYDEN. [chap. 
 
 he managed perhaps better than any other writer. He holds 
 of the Ormond family, he tells the Duke, 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, Publicola, 
 and the history of Peru are brought in perhaps somewhat 
 by the head and shoulders ; but this was simply 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 Palamon 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 subjects 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. Hobbs, have always some connexion," 
 he was led to think of Boccaccio. The preface continues 
 with critical remarks upon aU three authors and their 
 position in the history of their respective literatures, re- 
 marks 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, MUbourn, and Collier. 
 Not much need be said about the causes of either of these 
 debates. Macaulay has told the Collier story well, and, 
 on the whole, fairly enough, though he is rather too com- 
 plimentary to the literary value of Collier's work. That 
 redoubtable divine had all the right on his side, beyond a 
 
VIII.] THE FABLES. 157 
 
 douTst, tut he sometimes carried his argument a good deal 
 too far. Dryden, however, could not defend himself, and 
 he knew this, and did not attempt it, though he could 
 not always refrain, now and afterwards, from indulging in 
 little flings at Collier. Blackmore had two causes of 
 quarrel with Dryden — one the same as Collier's, the other 
 a political one, the poetical knight being a staunch Whig. 
 Milbourn 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 aU the translations. 
 FalaTYion 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 Virgil's. M"owadays 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 revolutions, 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 freedom, but he has kept closer to the 
 dimensions of the original than is his wont. His three 
 books do not much exceed the length of the original tale. 
 In the different parts, however, he has used his own dis- 
 
158 DEYDEN. [chap. 
 
 cretion in amplifying or contracting exactly as he thinks 
 proper, and the comparison of different passages with the 
 original thus brings out in a manifold way the idiosyncra- 
 sies 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, hut he is beaten when it comes to " the por- 
 traiture which was upon the waU." Sometimes he has 
 simply adopted Chaucer'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 
 
 Amiddea of the temple sate Misotauoe, 
 And Discomfort and soiy Countenanoe, 
 
 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 
 
YHi.] THE FABLES. 159 
 
 almost entirely delightful, and, as has been said already, 
 it will even bear the strain of comparison. For the loss 
 is counterbalanced 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 versification was a mere delusion. 
 
 The Nun's Fried'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 suggested that a great loss has been sustained 
 by his not having 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. Tlie Cock and the Fox itself is inferior to 
 many of the branches ot 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 profusion of learned names and citations 
 characteristic of the fourteenth century, which the trans- 
 lator has in some cases thought it better to omit. It may 
 not be quite clear whether Chaucer, who generally had a 
 kind of satirical undercurrent of intention in him, was 
 serious ia 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 remembered that he had a de- 
 cided 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. 
 
160 DRYDEN. [chap. 
 
 The third of Dryden's Chaucerian versions is one of the 
 most charming of all, and this, though the variations from 
 the original are considerahle, and though that original is 
 itself one of the most delightful works of the kind.' I 
 have read, perhaps as much as most Englishmen, the 
 French fourteenth-century poetry on which so much of 
 Chaucer's is modelled, hut I hardly know either in French 
 or English a poem more characteristic, and more delight- 
 fully characteristic of the fourteenth century than the 
 Flower and the Leaf. The delight in a certain amiable kind 
 of natural heauty, the transference of the signs and symbols 
 of that beauty to the service of a fantastic and yet not un- 
 natural poetry of love, the introduction of abstract and 
 supernatural beings to carry out sometimes by allegory 
 and sometimes by personification the object of the poet, 
 are all exemplified 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. Tet 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 de- 
 scriptions 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 weU 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 dis- 
 
 ' I do not here concern myself witt the hypothesis of the 
 spuriousness of this poem. 
 
viii.] THE FABLES. 161 
 
 turbing 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 and Montague, 
 have cast aside as nonsense worthy only of children the 
 gracious shadowy imaginations of medieeval thought, we in 
 the nineteenth century can hardly put ourselves 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 recognizing good 
 literature wherever he met it, but the quite extraordinary 
 faculty of making other people recognize it too by trans- 
 lating it into the language which they were capable of 
 comprehending. A passage may be worth quoting : — 
 
 To this the dame replied : " Pair 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, 
 
 Ajid if he £nds 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 spEice 
 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. 
 
 M 
 
162 DRYDEN. [chap. 
 
 Know farther, every lady clothed in white, 
 
 And crowned with oak and laurel every knight, 
 
 Are servants to the Leaf, by liveries known 
 
 Of innocence ; and I myself am one. 
 
 Saw yon 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, ftfr the spotless name of maid she bears, 
 
 That Agnus castus 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 ; 
 
 Firm 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 Cara- 
 terhury Tales. The enemies of our poet would doubtless 
 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 supposes 
 to have been peculiarly tempting to Dryden. In the 
 
Viri.] THE FABLES. 163 
 
 actual tale as given in the Fables there is some alloy of 
 this kind, but nothing that could he at all shocking to the 
 age. The length of the story is in proportion more 
 amplified 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 Dryden'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 miich blunter : — 
 
 May widows wed as often as they can, 
 And ever for the better change their man. 
 
 TJie Cliaraeter of a Good Parson admits itself to be 
 "enlarged" from Chaucer, and indeed the termination, 
 to the extent of some forty lines, is whoUy new, and 
 written with special reference to the circumstances of the 
 time. To this character there is a pleasant little story 
 attached. It sfeems 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 dis- 
 plays a much greater antipathy to parsons than that 
 which, if we may believe Lord Macaulay, who perhaps 
 M 2 
 
'164 DKYDEN. [chap. 
 
 borrowed tlie idea from StiUingfleet 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 hear 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 BoHngbroke. 
 Nor, had there stiU been a censorship of the press, is it at 
 all prohable that this postscript would have been passed 
 for publication. The following verses are sufficiently 
 pointed : — 
 
 OoD quest, au 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, Uke 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, 
 explains itself sufficiently. The story of Tancred and 
 Sigismunda perhaps afforded room for "loose descrip- 
 tions : " 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 
 
Tin.] THE FABLES. 165 
 
 amplified, the speeclx 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 Toioe) 
 First recommended Guisoard to my choice : 
 Direotgd thus by thee, I looked, and found 
 A man I thought deserving to be crowned ; 
 First by my father pointed to my eight, 
 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. 
 If in thy doting and decrepit age. 
 Thy sauli a stranger in thy youth to rage, 
 
166 DETDEN. [chap. 
 
 Begins in cruel deeds to take delight, 
 Gorge with my blood thy barbarous appetite j 
 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 ths only relief to a commonplace tale of 
 violence and treachery, in which neither the motives nor 
 the characters 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, ajid still inspires my wit, 
 
 have probably bribed a good many readers, and certainly 
 the whole volume of the Fables is an ample justifica- 
 tion of the poet's boast, not only as regards beauty of one 
 kind, but of aU. 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 the power of love, to which the story yokes 
 
VIII.] THE FABLES. 167 
 
 itself most naturally. Nor is any praise too Mgli for the de- 
 scription of tlie actual scene in wliicli Cymon is converted 
 from Ms 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 introduced into it, the story, as a story, remains of but 
 second-rate interest, 
 
 Nothing of this sort can be said of Theodore and 
 Honoria. 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 phantom 
 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 
 victim'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 
 altogether too much of the chronicle in it to be fully im- 
 pressive. Here Dryden's process of amplification has 
 been of the utmost service. At almost every step of the 
 story be has introduced new touches which transform it 
 altogether, and leave it at the close a perfect piece of nar- 
 rative 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 her, dreams of what she has seen, and thinks 
 
168 DRYDEN. [chap. 
 
 over what she has dreamt, at last, ahd only at last, re- 
 solving to subdue her pride and consent to Theodore's suit. 
 Boccaccio's heroine goes straight home in a husiness-like 
 manner, and sends " a trusty damsel " that very evening 
 to inform her lover that she surrenders. This is, to say 
 the least, sudden. 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 admirable. 
 
 The purely original poems remain to be noticed. Of 
 the Epistle to John Driden we know that Dryden him- 
 seK thought highly, while the person to whom it was 
 addressed was so pleased with it that he gave him " a 
 noble present," said by family tradition to have been 
 500Z., 'but which Malone, ex sua eonjectura, reduces to 
 lOOZ. 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 con- 
 tains, in allusion to Driden's bachelorhood, one of those 
 objurgations on matrimony which have been interpreted in 
 a personal sense, but which are, in aU probability, merely 
 the commonplaces of the time. Besides wives, phy- 
 sicians 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 Blackmore'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 sportsman- 
 ship. Then there is what might be called a " Character of 
 
viii.] THE FABLES. 169 
 
 a good MemlDei" of Parliament," fashioned, of course, to 
 suit the case of the person addressed, who, though not 
 exactly a Jacobite, was a niemher 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 posterity 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 better," was not far 
 wrong. 
 
 The Only piece that remains to be noticed is better 
 known even than the Hpistle to Jolin Driden. Alex- 
 ander's Feast was the second ode which Dryden wrote for 
 the "Festival of St. Cecilia." He received for it 40Z., 
 which, as he tells his sons that the writing of it " would 
 be noways beneficial," was probably unexpected, if the 
 statement 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 another asserts that he was a fortnight in com- 
 posing or correcting it. But, as has been frequently 
 pointed out, the two statements are by no means incom- 
 patible. Another piece of gossip about this famous ode 
 is that Dryden at first vsTote Lais instead of Thais, which 
 " smaU mistake " he bids Tonson in a letter to remember 
 to alter. Little criticism oi 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 
 
170 DRTDEN. [chap. 
 
 thought it the best of all his poetry, and he had a re- 
 markable faculty of self-criticisni. 
 
 This volume of poems was not only the last that Dryden 
 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 re- 
 fining. The citations already given wiU 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 irregular 
 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, Tillotsonin prose. 
 But he was none the less constantly teaching himself. His 
 vocabulary is naturally a point of great importance 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 ten- 
 dency been strengthened by the influence of MUton. 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 the Galilean, 
 
Till.] THE FABLES. 171 
 
 in action and re-action with his full command of EngUsh, 
 vernacular and literary, produced a dialect which, if not the 
 most graceful that the language has ever known, is per- 
 haps the strongest and most nervous. Little change takes 
 place in the last twenty years, though the tendency to 
 classicism and archaism, strengthened it maybe by the work 
 of translation, not unfrequently reappears. In versifica- 
 tion 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 obtain- 
 ing this end was, as a matter of course, the isolation of 
 the couplet and the avoidance of overlappiug the dif- 
 ferent lines one upon the other. The effect of this over- 
 lapping, by depriving the eye and voice of the expectation 
 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 reflections 
 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 several 
 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 into which, as 
 
172 DETDEN. , [chap. 
 
 we know, it did actually fall when it passed out of the 
 hands of its first great practitioners. There might also he 
 a fear that it would not always be possible to compress 
 the sense of a complete clause within the narrow limits of 
 twenty syllables. To meet these difficulties Dryden re- 
 sorted to three mechanical devices, — the hemistich, the 
 Alexandrine, and the triplet ; all three of which could be 
 used indifferently to eke out the space or to give variety 
 of souiid. The use of the hemistich, or fragmentary line, 
 appears to have been based partly on the well-known prac- 
 tice of Virgil, partly on the necessities of dramatic com- 
 position where the unbroken English couplet is to English 
 ears intolerable. In poetry proper the hemistich is any- 
 thing but pleasing, and Dryden becoming convinced 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, judiciously 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 Dry den's own lines are unmatched ex- 
 amples of that " energy divine " which has been attributed 
 to him. In an essay on the Alexandrine in English poetry, 
 which yet remains to be written, and which would be not 
 the least valuable of contributions to poetical criticism, 
 this use of the verse would have to be considered, as well 
 as its regular recurrent employment 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 Poly- 
 olbion and oiFifine at the Fair, side by side, would, I think, 
 reveal capacities somewhat unexpected even in this form 
 
VIII.] COERESPONDENCB. 173 
 
 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 closing verses of the Spenserian stave 
 as used by Spenser himself, by Shelley, and by the present 
 Laureate, and Ln 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 with- 
 out affection. Except in the very rare cases when its 
 contents come in, in point of sense, as a kind of paren- 
 th.esis 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 
 accompany 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 aU 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 
 haUs, 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 cor- 
 respondence extends over the last eighteen months of the 
 
174 DRTDEN. [chap. 
 
 poet's life, beginning in October, 1698, and not ending till 
 a week or two before bis 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 epistles, sometimes addressed to Mr. Steward (Dryden 
 not infrequently spells it Stewart and Stuart), and some- 
 times 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 received," an incident upon which, if I were a 
 commentator, I should build a legend of conjugal happi- 
 ness quite as plausible, and probably quite as well founded, 
 as the legend of conjugal unhappiness which has actually 
 been constructed. Then there are injurious allusions to a 
 certain parson's wife at Tichmarsh, who is "just the con- 
 trary " 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, sometimes with our old English poet Chaucer." 
 More acknowledgments of presents follow, and then a 
 visit is promised, with the prayer that Mrs; Steward wUl 
 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 fashion, a history of his journey back to London, 
 
Tin.] COERESPONDENCB. 175 
 
 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 Eibadavia wine," a stirrup cup 
 of the latter being probably intended. In November oc- 
 curs 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 
 occasional 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 
 expressions 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 idleness or forgetfulness on my part. What has 
 hind'red me from writeing to you, was neither ill health, nor, a 
 worse thing, ingratitude ; but a flood of little businesses, which 
 yet are necessary to my subsistance, 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 anything for me, though 
 they promise largely ; and perhaps they think I will advance as 
 they go backward, in which they will be much deceiv'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 im- 
 prove the language, and especially the poetry, and will be con- 
 tent 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 Oatho- 
 lique ; they are all so divided 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 affairs, the Earl of Dorsett, and 
 
176 DKTDBN. [CH. viii. 
 
 your cousin Montague, hare both seen the two poems, to the 
 Duchess of Ormond and my worthy cousin Driden ; and are of 
 opinion, 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 dishonour after our death. 
 
 There is this day to be acted a new tragedy, made by Mr. 
 Hopkins, and, as I believe, in rhimo. He has formerly written 
 a play in verse, called Boadicea, 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. Oongreve ia 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 Prance and we are hand and glove. 'Tis 
 thought the king will endeavour to keep up a standing army, 
 and make the stLrr 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 Detden. 
 For Mrs. Stewart, Att 
 
 Cotterstock, near Oundle, 
 
 In Northamptonshire, 
 
 These. 
 To be left at the Post-house in Oundle. 
 
CHAPTEE IX. 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 Drydbn'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 tor- 
 mented him sorely. The Fables were published in No- 
 vember, 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 Philis- 
 tines, 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 unfortunately fruitless. In the early spring of 
 1700, or, according to the calendar of the day, in the last 
 months of 1699, some of Dryden's admirers got up a 
 
178 DEYDEN. [chap. 
 
 lienefit performance for him at the Duke's Theatre, 
 rietcher's Pilgrim was selected for the occasion, revised 
 by Yanbrugh, and with the addition of a lyrical scene by 
 Dryden himself. He also wrote for the occasion a secular 
 masque to celebrate the opening of the 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 
 uncertain, 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 AprU Dryden 
 was very ill with gout. One toe became much inflamed, 
 and not being 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 prolonging a maimed existence. The mortifi- 
 cation spreading further, 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 an- 
 nounced that " John Dryden, Esq., the famous poet, lies 
 a-dying,'' and at three o'clock the next morning he died 
 very quietly and peacefully. 
 
 His funeral was sufficiently splendid. Halifax is said 
 to have at first offered to discharge the whole cost himself, 
 but other friends were anxious to share it, among whom 
 Dorset and Lord Jeffreys, the Chancellor's son, are spe- 
 cially 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 Westminster 
 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 CurU a wUd account of the matter. 
 
IX.] CONOLtrSION. 179 
 
 of which, it is sufficient to say that it lacks the slightest 
 corroboration, and is intrinsically improbahle, if not im- 
 possible. It may be found in most of the biographies, 
 and Malone has devoted his usual patient industry to its 
 demolition. Sometime passed before any monument 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. Sometime later Congreve complimented the Duke 
 of Newcastle on having given order for a monument, a 
 compHment which his Grace obtained at a remarkably 
 cheap rate, for the order, if given, was never executed. 
 Finally, twenty years after his death, the Duke of Buck- 
 inghamshire, better known under his former title of Lord 
 Mulgrave, came to the rescue, it is said, owing to a re- 
 flection 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 Eome 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 stUl 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 abeady 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 hus- 
 N 2 
 
180 DHTDBN. [chap. 
 
 band 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) between the Eestoration and the accession of Anne. 
 Even the famous line in Absalom and AcMtqphel, which 
 has caused such scandal, is a commonplace as old at least 
 as Jean de Meung and the Roman de la Rose. When 
 Malone, on the authority of a Lady Dryden who lived a 
 hundred years later, but without a tittle of documentary 
 evidence, teUs 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 unhappiness thereon is sufficiently 
 absurd. 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 teU no tale of disunion. Of his 
 children it is allowed that he was excessively fond, and 
 his personal amiability is testified to with one consent by 
 all his friends who have left testimonies on the subject. 
 Congreve and " Granville the Polite " both mention his 
 
IX.] CONCLUSION. 181 
 
 modest and unassuming demeanour, and the obKgingness 
 of his disposition. Pope, it is true, has brought against 
 him the terrible accusation that he was " not a genteel 
 man," being " 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 certainly was no argument against gentility. 
 Eochester, Mulgrave, Dorset, Sedley, Etherege, Eoscommon, 
 make a very odd assortment of ungenteel poetical friends. 
 It is astonishing, when one comes to examine the 
 matter, how vague and shadowy our personal knowledge 
 of Diyden is. A handful of anecdotes, many of them 
 undated 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 fcesh colour 
 are points in which tradition is pretty well supported by 
 the portraits which 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 which 
 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 summer, by the fiie in winter, passing 
 criticisms and paying good-natured compliments on 
 matters literary. He had, he tells Mrs. Steward, a very 
 vulgar stomach — thus partially justifying Pope's accusa- 
 tions — and liked a chine of bacon better than marrow 
 
182 DETDEN. [chap. 
 
 puddings. He dignified Samuel 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 Mulgrave 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 everybody cheated at play in 
 those days ; and Mulgrave's disinclination to pay his trades- 
 men, 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 caUed 
 because of the unalterable 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 tor- 
 mentors 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 sitting up all night writing 
 the ode on St. Cecilia's Day. Another 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 vexation at the liberty 
 taken with him by Prior and Montague has been already 
 mentioned more than once, but may be regarded with 
 very considerable suspicion. Most famous perhaps of all 
 
IX.] CONCLUSION. 183 
 
 sucli legends is that which, tells of the unlucky speech, 
 " Cousin Swift, you will never he a poet," than which 
 never was there anything more true or more unfortu- 
 nate. Yet the enmity which, though it has been ex- 
 aggerated, 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 demon- 
 strated 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 aU, 
 could not have raised the volume's price a penny. Next 
 to Shad well's criticism on Macflecknoe, I think this may 
 be allowed to be the happiest example recorded in con- 
 nexion 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 association 
 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 cofiee-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 Dryden can be pictured even by the most imagi- 
 
184 DBYDEN. [chap. 
 
 native lover 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 commonplace 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 discussion 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 
 influenced it as the man of letters whom we have been 
 discussing. 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 compli- 
 ment, we may say that he, at any rate during his last decade, 
 
 In 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 
 and artistic superiority to them. Other great men of letters. 
 
li.] CONCLUSION. 183 
 
 with perhaps the single exception of Voltaire, have usually, 
 when they represented their time at all, represented but a 
 smaU part of it. With Dryden this was not the case. 
 Ifot only did the immense majority of men of letters 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 haK a century, and what is 
 more, they contain the germs and indicate the direction of 
 almost the whole literary movement fornearly 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 admitted 
 to have been a time of shameless coarseness in language 
 and manners ; of virulent and bloodthirsty party-spirit ; 
 of almost unparalleled self-seeking and political dis- 
 honesty; and of a flattering servility to which, in the same 
 way, hardly any parallel can be found. Its chief re- 
 deeming 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 wiU which to 
 this day is refreshing to read of; and when, as sometimes 
 happened, they lost the battle, they took their punishment, 
 as with perhaps some arrogance we are wont to say, like 
 Englishmen. Dryden had the merits and the defects 
 
186 DRYDE::?. [chap. 
 
 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 
 character of the latter, while admitting his intellectual 
 greatness. An article to which I have more than once 
 referred in the Quarterly Revieio puts the facts once more 
 in a clear and fair light. But Mr. Green's twice-published 
 history 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 the trouble may judge for himself of the private 
 conduct of Dryden. His behaviour as a public man has 
 
IX.] CONCLUSION. 187 
 
 also been dealt ■with, pretty fully ; and I think we may 
 safely conclude that in neither case can the verdict be a 
 really unfavourable one. Dry den, no doubt, was not 
 austerely virtuous. He was not one of the men who lay 
 down a comprehensive 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 excessive in following it. On the 
 other hand, all trustworthy testimony concurs in praising 
 his amiable and kindly disposition, his freedom from 
 literary arrogance, and his willingness to encourage and 
 assist youthful aspirants in literature. 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 remembered he not only made 
 an ample apology, but such amends as were possible by 
 earnestly dissuading otiiers from following 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 accomplished it. With our different estimate of the 
 value of old English literature, we cannot indeed adopt 
 Johnson's famous metaphor, and say that "he found 
 
188 DETDEN. [chap. 
 
 English of brick and left it of marble. " The comparison 
 of Hamlet and Macbeth to " brick," with Bon Selastian 
 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 Shakespeare and 
 Bacon, not even the English of such survivals' as MUtoB 
 and Taylor, but the English of persona 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 highest applica- 
 tions, 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 imper- 
 fections. The forty years' work which 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 construc- 
 tions, better style. He may, in no one branch, have 
 attained the entire and flawless perfection which dis- 
 tinguishes Pope as far as he goes. But the range of 
 
ix.j CONCLUSION. 189 
 
 Dryden is to the range of Pope as 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 accomplished, and what 
 advantages he left to his successors, he must be pro- 
 nounced, 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 ia 
 the preceding chapters, wiU 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 
 subjects, but in a method of treatment, then it seems to 
 me that all difiiculty vanishes. We get out of the hope- 
 less and sterile controversies as to whether SheUey was 
 a greater poet than Dryden, or Dryden a greater poet than 
 SheUey. Por my part, I yield to no man living in rational 
 admiration for either, but I decline altogether to assign 
 marks to each in a competitive examination. There are, 
 as it seems to me, many mansions in poetry, and the great 
 
190 DRTDBN. [chap. 
 
 poets live apart in them. What constitutes a great poet 
 is supremacy in his own line of poetical expression. Such 
 supremacy must of course he shown in work of sufficient 
 hulk and variety, on the principle that one swallow does 
 not make a summer. "We cannot call Lovelace a great 
 poet, or Barnahe Barnes j 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 manner ; 
 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 
 poetical differentia, the power of making the common un- 
 common by the use of articulate language in metrical 
 arrangement 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 Jiim 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 dififering titles of the red and white, 
 Who heaven's alternate heauir^ 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 
 
 •#ords, the rhythm and cadence of the line, and the manner 
 in which the images are presented, write " This is a poet, 
 and probahly a great poet," across them, and that he would 
 he 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 moU 
 rayonriants, the mots de lumiere are never lacking ; 
 that the suggested images of heauty never fail tor long to- 
 gether ; then he is justified in striking out the " probably" 
 and writing " This is a great poet." If he tries to go fur- 
 ther, and to range his great poets in order of merit, he will 
 almost certainly faO. He cannot count up the beauties in 
 one, and then the beauties in the other, and strike the 
 •balance accordingly. He can only say, "There is the 
 faculty of producing those beauties ; it is exercised under 
 such conditions, and with such results, that there is no 
 doubt, of its being a native and resident faculty, not a 
 mere casual inspiration 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 dissimilar 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 
 
192 DBTDEN. • chap. 
 
 great poets, for the reason that in Dryden's own words he 
 is larger and more comprehensive than any of them. But 
 with the exception of Shakespeare, 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 possible 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 tlie exquisite lyrics scattered about the plays ; 
 that the special pleader of Religio Laid should be the tale- 
 teller of Palamon and Arcite, are things which, the more 
 carefully I study other poets and their comparatively 
 limited perfection, 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 ! 
 O Life ! Time ! with an intenser liking than that which 
 it feels for anything of Dryden's. But that arises from 
 the pure accident that I was horn 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 relation 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 
 ^schylus, in SheUey and in Spenser, in Heine and in 
 Hugo. 
 
 THE END. 
 
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