No More Learning

<


## p. 30 (#52) ##############################################

30
Dryden
exemplify by his own dramatic works the supreme freedom
claimed by the greatest masters of the art; but he was not to
end his theatrical career without having come nearer than he
had as yet approached to his own ideals.
From this point of view, two tragedies may be passed by in
which the unbalanced, but not wholly uninspired, powers of Lee
cooperated with the skill and experience of Dryden? Oedipus
(acted 1678), though provided with an underplot, threw down a
futile challenge to both Sophocles and Corneille. In The Duke
of Guise (acted in December 1682), Dryden's share seems to have
been mainly confined to the furbishing up of what he had written
many years before? Whatever he might say in the elaborate
Vindication of the Duke of Guise (printed in 1683), the political
intention of the play, as a picture of the now discomfited intrigues
of Shaftesbury in favour of Monmouth, was palpable, and not
disproved by the fact that the authority of Davila had been more
or less closely followed, or by the other fact that the parallel
might, in some respects, have been pressed further than would
have been pleasing to king Charles3.
In Albion and Albanius, Dryden committed himself to a still
lower descent-hardly to be excused by the 'thought-depressing'
quality of opera mentioned by Dryden (who, on this head, agreed
with Saint-Évremond) in the interesting preface which gives a short
account of the early history of musical drama. After many delays,
the chief of them being due to the death of Charles II, in com-
pliment to whom the opera had been first put together, it was at
last performed on 3 June 1685. Ten days later, the news arrived
of Monmouth's landing at Lyme, and the unlucky piece, with its
jingling rimes, music by L. Grabut and all, was finally withdrawn.
Saintsbury describes it as, to all intents and purposes, a masque;
but it lacks all the beauties of which that kind of composition is
capable, and which are not made up for by the grotesquely
ridiculous supernatural machinery to which here, as in The Duke
of Guise, the author condescended to have recourse. Dryden was
not, however, deterred from carrying out his intention of writing
the ‘dramatic opera’ of King Arthur or The British Worthy, to
which Albion and Albanius had been designed as a prelude. It
was produced in 1691, with music by Purcell; but, notwith-
standing the claim put forth in the preface, little or no proof is
6
6
>
1 As to Lee, see post, chap. VII.
2 See ante, p. 16.
3 The not very skilful passage in honour of the king's brother of Navarre'
(act v, so. 1) must have been foisted in as a tribute to the duke of York.
C


## p. 31 (#53) ##############################################

Don Sebastian and Cleomenes
31
furnished of Dryden's familiarity with Arthurian romance; and,
in spite of the magic, there is not much fire in the piece,
while the figure of the blind Emmeline is an unpleasing experi-
ment. Perhaps, as the tag suggests, the poet was, for once, almost
losing heart.
After the close of king James II's reign, however, two plays
were produced by Dryden, which may be regarded as a worthy
consummation of his dramatic development. Yet Don Sebastian
(acted 1690) is incorrectly regarded as marking his emancipation
from the traditions either of tragicomedy or of the heroic play,
though it is blank verse which, in this piece, alternates with
prose. On the contrary, the serious action of Don Sebastian is
a romantic fiction-an attempt to account by a love-story, ending
with a most astonishing recognition, both for the well known dis-
appearance of Don Sebastian in the battle of Alcazar and for the
rumour that he lived for some time afterwards as an anchorite.
The comic action of the mufti is repulsive, though noticeable as
illustrating Dryden's animus against all kinds of clergy? The
only real attempt at drawing character is to be found in the
figure of Dorax, particularly in a scene which has met with
universal praise
Although the tragedy Cleomeness, the Spartan Hero (acted
1692) is not usually deemed equal to its predecessor, it is finely
conceived, and, on the whole, finely carried through on the lines of
French classical tragedy, without any comic or other adventitious
admixture. The character of the hero (performed by Betterton),
though probably modelled on Hengo in Fletcher's Bonduca, is
drawn with vivacity, and, in the earlier part of the rather long
drawn out catastrophe, with pathos. Plutarch's abundant material
is supplemented from other sources; and, though, viewing Dryden's
dramatic work as a whole, it is impossible to regret that he should
not earlier have engaged in a wholehearted imitation of French
tragedy, his one complete attempt in that direction must be pro-
nounced a noble play. With it, our survey of his career as a
dramatist may fitly end; for it is unnecessary to do more than
refer to the Secular Masque written by him, together with a
prologue and epilogue, to grace the revival, for his own benefit,
of Fletcher's Pilgrim, which actually took place in June 1700,
little more than a fortnight after the beneficiary's death. The
1. Priests of all religions are the same,' Absalom and Achitophel, part 1, v. 99.
? Act iv, sc. 3.
3 Dryden, with Corneille and Racine in his ear, accentuates Cleoménes.


## p. 32 (#54) ##############################################

32
Dryden
6
>
6
tone of gentle pessimism audible in the masque recurs in the
epilogue, where, without the acrimony with which he had assailed
'Quack Maurus' (Sir Richard Blackmore) in the prologue, he
defends himself against the censures preferred against the con-
temporary drama in Jeremy Collier’s Short View of the Immorality
and Profanity of the English Stage (1698). Dryden's defence-
truthful so far as it goes (which is not very far)—is the evil
influence of ways of thought and life brought over by a 'banished
court'; a far nobler attitude than this of uneasy apology had been
the open avowal of shame made by him many years earlier in the
ode To the Pious Memory of Mrs Anne Killigrew (1686)".
Dryden's association with the stage was not a source of pride
to himself, and can be regarded only with qualified satisfaction by
the admirers of his poetic genius. That he attained to a very
notable degree of success in almost every branch of dramatic
literature which he essayed cannot be held surprising ; but it
was only in the heroic play, in which he strained every nerve to
'surpass the life,' that he distanced all his rivals and followers.
Although, at times, carried away by the impetus of his own genius,
Dryden could not often put his heart into his dramatic com-
position, least of all into the comic side of it. He wearied of play-
writing from the outset—frequently passing from one kind of play
to another, and back again, but rarely satisfied with any phase of
his endeavours. When, after a long interval of absence he returned
to the arena in whose contests he had taken a prominent part,
- about whose theory and practice he had speculated widely and
written at length, but which, at times, like Ben Jonson he was
led to call the 'loathed stage, it was with a sense of fatigued
unwillingness which even the most overworked and blasé of
modern playwrights, 'still condemned to dig in those exhausted
mines,' would be slow to avow?
This, of course, is not to say that Dryden failed to enrich
English dramatic literature by much magnificent writing-more
especially in his heroic plays-or to deny that at least one comedy
Dryden's best balanced utterance on the subject is, perhaps, that in the preface
to the Fables (Essays, ed. Ker, vol. II, pp. 272—3); but neither does this ring true.
As to Collier's attack (and as to previous invective against the stage) see Ward, A. W. ,
History of English Dramatic Literature, etc. , vol. ni, pp. 509 ff. , and cf. , for an account
of the controversy, The Life of Jeremy Collier' in vol. I of the 1845 edition of
his Ecclesiastical History, pp. xv ff. Of Collier, something will be said in vol. ix of
the present work.
See the account of the reasons which had made him utterly weary of the theatre,
in the preface to Don Sebastian (Works, ed. Saintsbury, vol. vni, p. 307), where he
applies to himself the phrase cited above.
1


## p. 33 (#55) ##############################################

Prologues and Epilogues 33
3
(as we may call The Spanish Fryar) and one tragedy (Au for
Love) from his hand permanently hold their own among dramatic
masterpieces of their respective kinds. It is of greater importance
that, in Taine's words, Dryden's work as a dramatist 'purified and
clarified his own style' by teaching him closeness of dialectics and
precision in the use of words; that, in it and by it, under the
guidance of Corneille, he learnt the art of political oratory and
debate, and, at the same time, attained to that mastery of the
heroic couplet of which he was to make superb use in his satirical
poems. Dryden, who, in these poems, was to show an unsurpassed
power of drawing character, rightly recognised in its presentation
the supreme function of the dramatist; but, the secret of exhibiting
the development of character by action he was not able, unless
exceptionally, to compass, and it was thus that he came to fall
short of the highest dramatic excellence.
Reserving, for the moment, a reference to the lyrics in Dryden's
dramas, we must not take leave of these without a word as to his
3
prologues and epilogues. There was no species of composition in
which he more conspicuously excelled, or in which those who
came after him more decidedly failed to reach his eminence; but
many circumstances help to account for the signal success with
which, in the present instance, he exerted his innate power of 'im-
proving' every literary opportunity that came in his way. The age
.
which preceded Dryden's was, above everything, a pamphleteer-
ing age;. and his own generation had retained at least a full
freedom of unlicensed allusion—whether political or other. When
we further remember that the mode of the day was a frankness of
\ tongue in which dukes and duchesses did their utmost to imitate
linkmen and orangewomen, it is not difficult to understand why
the prologue and epilogue, instead of adhering to their humbler
task of commending to attention and favour a particular play,
became accepted vehicles of political praise and blame, intermixed
with current social satire of all sorts. In the relatively small area
of restoration London, of which the court was the acknowledged
centre, these sallies were always transparent and always welcome.
The licence which the prologues, and, still more, the epilogues,
allowed themselves was, consequently, wide, and was duly repre-
hended by censors of the stage like Jeremy Collier. Their delivery
was generally entrusted to stage favourites, who were assured of
a hearing and 'might say what they liked. Very frequently, as in
the case of many of Dryden's, these addresses were composed by
leading authors for less known writers, or, again, by personages
3
E. L. VIII.
CH. I.


## p. 34 (#56) ##############################################

34
Dryden
who wished to remain free from direct responsibility. Their
importance may, perhaps, have been exaggerated; but, printed as
broadsides, they must often have added to the attractions of a
performance, and have been carried home as an enduring re-
membrance. Thus, the composition of them was assiduously
cultivated, and remunerated by a handsome feel
The examples of this kind of composition remaining from
Dryden's hand amount to nearly one hundred. They attest his
inventive powers in the way of conception and arrangement
including the variety of ‘prologues made to be dialogues,' burlesqued
in The Rehearsal in the 'prodialogue' between Thunder and
Lightning”; they also attest his power, both of more playful
sarcasm (as in his multiform jests against the critics) and of
condensed invective or admonition. Among them may be included
three prologues spoken on definite political occasions, unconnected
with the production of particular stage-plays; one of these, the
Prologue to the Duchess (of York] on her return from Scotland
(1682) is a charming example of reckless flattery.
We now resume our general summary of Dryden’s life and
literary work from the time of the beginning of his labours as
a dramatist, which it seemed most convenient to survey con-
tinuously. His simultaneous appointments in 1668 as poet laureate
(in succession to D'Avenant) and as historiographer royal (for
which latter post his qualifications, doubtless, were found in Annus
Mirabilis) imposed no duties 'hereafter to be done,' nor were any
performed by him in either of his official capacities; for his trans-
lation of Maimbourg's History of the League (1684), at the request
of Charles II, can hardly be regarded as a service to English
historiography. Thus, he went on writing for and about the stage,
adding to his modest income by dedications, prologues, intro-
ductory essays and prefaces. But, though criticism often meant
controversy, and a constantly growing reputation drew the eyes of
Londoners and strangers on the famous man of letters, as he sat in
his accustomed seat in Will's coffee house, at the corner of Russell
street and Bow street, Covent Garden, everything seems to show
6
1 The usual fee was five guineas, till Dryden charged Southerne ten for a
prologue and epilogue to The Loyal Brother, or The Loyal Prince (see Scott-
Saintsbury's edition, vol. 1, p. 245). Both are very hard on the • Whiggs,' and Dryden
scarcely ever wrote anything coarser.
? Cited in A Study of the Prologue and Epilogue in English Literature from
Shakespeare to Dryden, by G. 8. B. (1884), to which the reader may be referred for a
careful treatment of an interesting subject.


## p. 35 (#57) ##############################################

The · Rose-alley Ambuscade'
35
that, by disposition, and in his ways of life, he was a quiet and
retiring man, plain in his habiliments, and averse from the broils
which disgraced the republic of letters. Those in which, in his
earlier days, he was implicated do not seem to have been of his
own seeking; but the existing methods of literary, and, more
especially, theatrical, competition, and the consequent necessity of
securing the patronage of leaders of society and fashion, made it
all but impossible to be in the town' and not of it. Noblemen of
Rochester's stamp, and others of a more sober sort, took pride in
displaying their more or less arbitrary patronage of men of letters.
This condition of things may almost be said to have culminated in
the ‘Rose-alley ambuscade,' one of the most shameless episodes in
English literary history. On the suspicion of his having assisted
John Sheffield, earl of Mulgrave (afterwards duke of Buckingham-
shire) in a passage in his Essay on Satire reflecting on Rochester's
'want of wit,' Dryden was brutally assaulted by hirelings of that
patron of letters, who had recently transferred his favours, such as
they were, to other writers (1679) 1.
It would not serve any purpose to dwell upon the general mori-
geration of Dryden, who, in this as in other respeots, was 'hurried
down' the times in which he lived, to the leaders of politics and
fashion, to the king's ministers, favourites and mistresses, or upon
the flatteries which, in dedications and elsewhere, he heaped upon
the king himself, and upon his brother the duke. The attempts,
however, which have been made to show that his pen was 'venal'
-in any sense beyond that of his having been paid for his compli-
ments, or, at least, for a good many of them—may be said to have
broken down; and the fact that he may have received payment
from the king for writing The Medal does not prove that he was
inspired by the expectation of personal profit when he first attacked
the future medallist in Absalom and Achitophel.
In undertaking the composition of this great satire, whether or
not at the request of Charles II, Dryden had found his great
literary opportunity; and, of this, he took advantage in a spirit far
removed from that of either the hired bravos or the spiteful
lampooners of his age. For this opportunity he had been uncon-
sciously preparing himself as a dramatist; and it was in the
nature of things, and in accordance with the responsiveness of his
There is small comfort in & parallel; but, in noting the light thrown by this
incident upon the relations between society and letters in Dryden's age, it may be
added that the date of a not dissimilar brutal insult to Voltaire by a member of the
house of Rohan was 1725.
3_2


## p. 36 (#58) ##############################################

36
Dryden
6
9)
genius to the calls made upon it by time and circumstance, that,
in the season of a great political crisis, he should have rapidly per-
ceived his chance of decisively influencing public opinion by an
exposure of the aims and methods of the party of revolution.
This he proposed to accomplish, not by a poetic summary of the
rights of the case, or by a sermon in verse on the sins of factious-
ness, corruption and treason, but by holding up to the times and
their troubles, with no magisterial air or dictatorial gesture, a
mirror in which, under a happily contrived disguise, the true friends
and the real foes of their king and country should be recognised.
This was the “Varronian' form of satire afterwards commended
by him, with a well warranted self-consciousness, as the species,
mixing serious intent with pleasant manner, to which, among the
ancients, several of Lucian's Dialogues and, among the moderns,
the Encomium Moriae of Erasmus belong. Of the same kind is
“Mother Hubberd's Tale" in Spenser, and (if it be not too vain
to mention anything of my own) the poems of "Absalom” and
“MacFlecknoel. ”'
The political question at issue, in the troubled times of which
the names 'whig' and 'tory' still survive as speaking mementoes,
was that of the succession of the Catholic heir to the throne, or of
his exclusion in favour of some other claimant-perhaps the king's
son Monmouth, whom many believed legitimate (the Absalom of
the poem). For many months, Shaftesbury, who, after serving and
abandoning a succession of governments, had passed into opposi-
tion, had seemed to direct the storm. Two parliaments had been
called in turn, and twice the Exclusion bill had been rejected by
the lords. Then, as the whig leader seemed to have thrown all hesi-
tation to the winds, and was either driving his party or being driven
by it into extremities from which there was no return, a tremor of
reaction ran through the land, the party round the king gathered
confidence, and, evidence supposed sufficient to support the charge
having been swept in, Shaftesbury was committed to the Tower on
a charge of high treason. It was at this time of tension, while a
similar charge was being actually pressed to the gallows against
a humbler agent of faction (the ‘Protestant joiner’ Stephen College),
that Dryden's great effort to work upon public opinion was made.
Part I of Absalom and Achitophel, which seems to have been
taken in hand quite early in 1681, was published on 17 November
in that year. Shaftesbury, it is known, was then fearing for his
life. A week later, in spite of all efforts to the contrary, the bill
14 Discourse concerning the Original and Progress of Satire (Essays, ed. Ker,
vol. 11, p. 67).
-


## p. 37 (#59) ##############################################

Absalom and Achitophel
37
was ignored by the Middlesex grand jury. Great popular rejoicing
followed, and a medal was struck in Shaftesbury's honour, repre-
senting the sun emerging from the clouds, with the legend Laeta-
mur. But, this momentary triumph notwithstanding, the game
was all but up; and, within a few months, Monmouth, in his turn,
was under arrest, and Shaftesbury a fugitive in Holland.
Without a mention of this well known sequence of events, the
fact might, perhaps, be overlooked that part 1 of Absalom and
Achitophel' is complete in itself, being intended to help in pro-
ducing a direct result at a given moment, and that it is in no sense
to be regarded as a mere instalment of a larger whole, or as an in-
troduction to it. Part II was a mere afterthought, and, being only
to a relatively small extent by Dryden, should, in the first instance,
be left out of consideration.
Absalom and Achitophel veils its political satire under the
transparent disguise of one of the most familiar episodes of Old
Testament history, which the existing crisis in English affairs
resembled sufficiently to make the allegory apposite and its inter-
pretation easy. The attention of the English public, and, more
especially, that of the citizens of London, with whom the decision
of the immediate political issue lay, was sure to be arrested by a
series of characters whose names and distinctive features were
borrowed from the Old Testament; and the analogy between
Charles II's and David's early exile and final triumphant establish-
ment on the throne was a commonplace of restoration poetry.
Indeed, the actual notion of an adaptation of the story of Achito-
phel's wiles as the Picture of a wicked Politician' was not new to
English controversial literature; in 1680, a tract entitled Absalom's
Conspiracy had dealt with the supposed intentions of Monmouth;
and a satire published in 1681, only a few months before Dryden's
poem, had applied the name Achitophel, with some other oppro-
brious names, to Shaftesbury. For the rest, Dryden, with the
grandezza habitual to him, was careless about fitting the secondary
figures of his satire exactly with their Scriptural aliases, or boring
the reader by a scrupulous fidelity or even consistency of detail.
Absalom and Achitophel remains the greatest political satire
in our literature, partly because it is frankly political, and not in-
tended, like Hudibras, by means of a mass of accumulated detail,
to convey a general impression of the vices and follies, defects and
extravagances, of a particular section or particular sections of the
nation. With Dryden, every hit is calculated, and every stroke
1 It was not, of course, when first published, called part r’ at all.
: E. g. in the allegorical use of the names Hebron and Jordan.
2
1
6


## p. 38 (#60) ##############################################

38
Dryden
goes home; in each character brought on the scene, those features
only are selected for exposure or praise which are of direct
significance for the purpose in hand. It is not a satirical narrative
complete in itself which is attempted; the real dénouement of the
piece falls not within, but outside, its compass; in other words, the
poem was to lead up, as to an unavoidable sequitur, to the trial
and conviction of its hero. The satirist, after the fashion of a
great parliamentary orator, has his subject and his treatment of it
well in hand; through all the force of the invective and the fervour
of the praise, there runs a consciousness of the possibility that the
political situation may change. This causes a constant self-control
and wariness in the author, who is always alive to his inspiration
and never unmindful of his cue. Instead of pouring forth a stream
of Aristophanic vituperation or boyish fun in the vein of Canning,
he so nicely adapts the relations of the more important of his
characters to the immediate issue that the treatment, both of the
tempter Achitophel and of the tempted Absalom, admitted of
manipulation when, before the appearance of the poem in a
second edition', the condition of affairs had changed.
Chapter and verse could, without difficulty, be found for every
item in Johnson's well known panegyric of Absalom and Achitophel
in his Life of Dryden. The incomparable brilliancy of its diction
and versification are merits which, to be acknowledged, need only
to be mentioned. Still, its supreme excellence lies in its de-
scriptions of character, which, no doubt, owed something to his
dramatic practice, and more to the development which this kind of
writing had experienced during a whole generation of English
prose literature, reaching its full height in Clarendon. Dryden's
exquisite etchings cannot be compared with the finest of the
full-length portraits from the hand of the great historical writer;
but, thanks, no doubt, in part, to the Damascene brightness and
keenness into which the poet had tempered his literary instrument,
and thanks, also, to the imaginative insight which, in him, the literary
follower of the Stewarts, was substituted for the unequalled experi-
ence of their chosen adviser, Clarendon, the characters of the poem
live in the memory with unequalled tenacity. How unmistakably is
the preeminence of Achitophel among the opponents of the royal
government signalised by his being commissioned, like his prototype 2
when charged with the temptation and corruption of mankind, to
1 The story according to which the tribute to Shaftesbury's merits as a judge was
inserted because he had presented one of Dryden's sons to the Charterhouse was
a fabrication as baseless as it was stupid. See Malone, u. s. pp. 148—9.
? We remember who, according to Johnson, was 'the first Whig. '


## p. 39 (#61) ##############################################

Absalom and Achitophel.
The Medal 39
master the shaken virtue of Absalom! Yet, when the satire proceeds
from the leader to the followers, what composite body of malcontents
was ever analysed, even by a minister driven to bay, with surer
discernment and more perfect insight? The honest whigs, the utili-
tarian radicals, the speculators who use party for their private ends,
the demagogues and mob-orators who are the natural product of
faction—all are there; but so, too, are the republicans on principle,
headed by survivors of the fanatics who believed in their own
theocracy. Of course, the numerical strength of the party is made
up by the unthinking crowd that takes up a cry–in this case, the
cry ‘No Popery. Of the chiefs of the faction, for the most part, a
few incisive lines, or even a damning epithet, suffice to dispose;
but there are exceptions, suggested by public or by private con-
siderations. In the latter class, Dryden's own statement obliges
us to include Zimri (Buckingham)—a character which he declares
to be 'worth the whole poem. ' What he says of his intentions in
devising this masterpiece of wit, and of his success in carrying
them into execution, illustrates at once the discretion with which
he applied his satirical powers, and the limitation which his nature,
as well as his judgment, imposed upon their use. Moral indignation
was not part of Dryden's satirical stock? Even the hideously true
likeness of Titus Oates (Corah) preserves the accent of sarcasm
which had suited the malicious sketch of Shimei, the inhospitable
sheriff of the city; it is as if the poet's blame could never come with
so full a tone as the praise which, in the latter part of the poem,
is gracefully distributed among the chief supporters of the crown.
The poem ends with a speech from king David, only in part repro-
ducing the speech of Charles II to the Oxford parliament (March
1681), of which the king is said to have suggested the insertion.
Though, as has been seen, the Middlesex grand jury was proof
against Dryden's satire, which provoked a number of replies not
calling for notice here, the reaction with which he had identified
himself was not long in setting in-80 much so that, in March 1682,
the duke of York was not afraid to show himself in England.
It was about this time that Dryden, it is said at the king's
suggestion, published The Medal, or A Satire against Sedition.
Into this poem, which, likewise, called forth a variety of replies
attesting its effectiveness, the didactic element enters more largely
i See A Discourse concerning the Original and Progress of Satire (u. s. p. 93).
2 Buckingham may not have wholly disliked the lines, though he retorted on them
clumsily (if Wood is right in ascribing to bim Poetical Reflections, etc. , by a Person
of Quality, 1681). Pope's verses on Buckingham can hardly be said to have bettered
Dryden's; for the added pathos is really hollow.


## p. 40 (#62) ##############################################

40
Dryden
than it had done in the case of its more famous predecessor; but
the principal point of attack is again selected with great judgment.
Shaftesbury's hypocrisy is the quality for which the hero of the
puritan citizens is more especially censured; while his worshippers
are derided, not because they are few, but because they are many.
The inimitable apostrophe to the mobile, metrically, as well as
in other respects, is one of the most magnificent mockeries to be
found in verse:
Almighty crowd! thou shortenest all dispute;
Power is thy essence, wit thy attribute !
Nor faith nor reason make thee at a stay,
Thou leap'st o'er all eternal truths in thy Pindaric way!
Among the whig writers who came forward to reply to The
Medal was Thomas Shadwell, whose contributions to the dramatic
literature of the age are noticed elsewhere? Dryden and the
“True Blue Poet' had been on friendly terms, and the former had
written a prologue for Shadwell's comedy A True Widow so
recently as 1679. But, in The Medal of John Bayes, the source,
as has been seen, of not a few longlived scurrilities against
Dryden, and (if this was by the same hand) in The Tory Poets,
Shadwell contrived to offend his political adversary beyond
bearing. Johnson and others have, however, blundered in sup-
posing the whig writer's appointment to the poet laureateship,
which was not made till 1689, to be alluded to in Mac Flecknoe;
or, A Satire on the True Blue Protestant Poet, T. S. , which was
published in October 1682. Unlike Absalom and Achitophel and
its offshoot The Medal, Mac Flecknoe is a purely personal satire
in motive and design. Richard Flecknoe was an Irishman, formerly
in catholic orders, who (if a note to The Dunciad is to be trusted)
had 'laid aside the mechanic part of priesthood' to devote himself
to literature. It is difficult to understand why (except for the fact
that he had been a priest) Dryden should have determined to
make this harmless, and occasionally agreeable, writer of verse
a type of literary imbecility? Flecknoe must be supposed to
have died not long before Dryden wrote his satire, in which the
1 See post, chap. VI.
2 See, also, A Discourse concerning the Original and Progress of Satire (u. s. p. 27)
where the collocation from Spenser to Flecknoe' appears as an equivalent to ‘from the
top to the bottom of all poetry.
' Some curious early lines by Marvell entitled Fleckno,
an English Priest at Rome, describe him as reciting his verses in a lodging, “three
stair-cases high' (Grosart's Fuller Worthies edition of The Complete Works of Andrew
Marvell, vol. 1, pp. 229 ff. ). They first appeared in 1681, and may, possibly, have
suggested Dryden's choice. ' Though he reprinted the poem with corrections in 1684,
he does not appear to have acknowledged it as his before 1692.


## p. 41 (#63) ##############################################

Mac Flecknoe
41
'aged prince' is represented as abdicating his rule over the
realms of Nonsense' in favour of Shadwell. This humorous fancy
forms the slight action of the piece, which terminates with a mock
catastrophe suggested by one of Shadwell's own comedies. Thus,
with his usual insight, Dryden does not make any attempt to lengthen
out what is in itself one of the most successful examples of the species
-the mock heroic-which it introduced into English literature.
Pope, as is well known, derived the idea of his Dunciad from Mac
Flecknoe; but, while the later poem assumed the proportions of an
elaborate satire against a whole tribe of dunces as well as against
one egregious dunce, Dryden's is a jeu d'esprit, though one brilliant
-enough to constitute an unanswerable retort upon unwarrantable
provocation. " Slight as it is, Mac Flecknoe holds a place of its
1
own among Dryden's masterpieces in English satirical poetry.
This cycle of Dryden's writings is completed by his share in the
Second Part of Absalom and Achitophel, published in November
1682, a few weeks after Mac Flecknoe, and in the same month as
Religio Laici. Dryden could therefore hardly have had time for ex-
tensive collaboration with Nahum Tate, a painstaking and talented
writer who, with enduring success, adapted King Lear and took part
in a version of the Psalms with Nicholas Brady', and who, in his
turn, was poet laureate (from 1692 to 1715). Tate, who had the
gift of being able to accommodate himself to diverse styles, not un-
skilfully copied Dryden's—here and there taking over lines bodily
from part 1; but it is clear that, apart from the characters of Doeg
and Og (Settle and Shadwell) and the powerful lines preceding
them, which include the denunciation of Judas (Robert Ferguson
'the Plotter'), the masterhand added not a few touches, from the
opening couplet onwards. Elkanah Settle, whose reputation was
greater in his own day than it has been with posterity, had invited
the lash by a long reply to Absalom and Achitophel entitled Ab-
salom Senior, or Achitophel Transpros'd, in which others are said
to have assisted him. The characters of the two lampooners remain
the non plus ultra of haughty satirical contempt. Instead oí
the wary assailant of political and social leaders like Achitophel
and Zimri, we are now confronted by the writer of genius spurning,
1 The scornful reference in part II, v. 403 to Sternbold and Hopkins's version is by
Dryden.
* Cf. ante, p. 26. It is in this that occurs the curious charge, which, however,
Dryden declared false, that, at one time, he
would have been his own loath'd thing, call'd priest.
A second reply attributed to Settle seems not to have been his. See Malone, u. s.
pp. 160—3.


## p. 42 (#64) ##############################################

42
Dryden
with ruthless scorn, the brotherhood in letters of a Doeg or an Og;
what is best and strongest in the satirist seems now up in arms.
Religio Laici, which, for reasons easily guessed, was not
reprinted by Dryden in his lifetime after the third edition (1683),
is classed (by Scott) among his political and historical poems; but
its primary interest is personal, as must have been his primary
motive in composing it. He wished to know where, in the matter
of religion, he stood. Now, for Dryden, there was but one way of
realising any position which he held or any line of conduct on
which he had determined. This was to place it before himself with
the aid of his pen, at whose bidding, if the expression may be
allowed, his thoughts at once fell into lucid order, ready for argu-
mentative battle. Though Johnson's wish may, in some degree,
be father to the thought, when he declares Religio Laici to be
almost the only poem by Dryden which may be regarded as a
voluntary effusion, Saintsbury has rightly insisted on the spon-
taneous character of the poem. This spontaneity is, indeed, all
but essential to the conception of the work; nor was there any
possible motive or reason for simulating it.
The title, of course, was anything but original. Lord Herbert
of Cherbury's treatise De Religione Laici had been published in
1633, Sir Thomas Browne's Religio Medici ten years later. With
Dryden, though not with Browne, the emphasis rests on the second
noun of the title. Amidst the disputations and controversies of
learned theologians, a plain word seems not uncalled for from one
who can contribute nothing but commonsense and goodwill, un-
alloyed by self-opinionatedness. Thus, the layman's religion is
expounded with the requisite brevity, and with notable directness
and force, lighted up by a few of the satirical flashes which had
become second nature to the writer, but not by any outburst of
uncontrollable fervour. : He takes his stand on revelation, but is
careful to summarise the natural proofs of the truth of Christianity.
The old objection to supernatural religion, that it has not been
revealed to all men, he is content to answer by a pious hope,
expressed in words both forcible and beautiful. He puts aside
the difficulty of the damnatory clauses of the Athanasian creed by
conjecturing a very human explanation of their origin, and, after
citing a liberal French priest? in support of the contention that
the authority of the Bible is weakened by mistakes of transcribers
j
1 Father (Richard) Simon (author of Histoire critique du Vieux Testament (1678)
and other works), for the benefit of whose young English translator, Henry Dickinson,
the poem had originally been composed.


## p. 43 (#65) ##############################################

Religio Laici
43
and commentators, approaches the crucial question: what authority,
then, is to decide ? An infallible authority it must be, and the
only church which makes such a claim fails to satisfy the tests of
infallibility or omniscience. Better, therefore, accept authority
where it is ancient, universal and unsuspected, and leave aside
matters which cannot be thus settled-
For points obscure are of small use to learn,
But common quiet is the world's concern.
Religio Laici, it is needless to demonstrate at length, represents
merely a halfway house on the road which Dryden was following.
Reverence for authority was an instinct implanted in his nature;
his observation of the conflicts of public life had disgusted him
with the contrary principle of resistance, and, at the same time,
had impressed upon him the necessity of waiving minor difficulties
for the sake of the things that really mattered. If the layman's
simple creed should fail, in the long run, to satisfy the layman
himself, it could easily be relinquished; for, as the designedly
pedestrian conclusion of the poem avers, it was meant merely for
what it was—a plain personal utterance.
And, thus, the reader of Dryden's writings in their sequence is
not startled on reaching the passage in his biography which has
given rise to much angry comment and anxious apology, without, in
truth, calling for anything of either. In February 1685, Charles II
died. Dryden's literary services had materially contributed to
carry safely through some of the most dangerous stages of the
conflict the cause of the legitimate succession, on wbich Charles
had gone near to staking the stability of his throne. The poet's
efforts against the party which he had again and again denounced
as revolutionary had estranged from him old literary associates-
some of them more pliable than himself—and had left him,
more than ever, a reserved and, probably at least, a lonely man.
But, whatever the king's personal interest in Dryden's literary
activity, the royal bounty flowed but very intermittently, and
neither the three hundred a year due to the poet laureate nor an
additional pension of one hundred (granted some time before 1679)
was paid with any approach to regularity. Not until 1684, after
he had addressed a letter of complaint? to Rochester (Laurence
Hyde) at the treasury, was a portion of the arrears paid, while he
1 This is the letter containing the celebrated passage : • 'Tis enough for one age to
have neglected Mr Cowley, and starved Mr Butler. ' In The Hind and the Panther,
part mi, vv. 247 ff. , the abandonment of Butler is absurdly laid at the door of the
church of England.
6


## p. 44 (#66) ##############################################

44
Dryden
was appointed to a collectorship of the customs, with a minute
salary but (probably) a more substantial amount of fees. In these
circumstances, Dryden, whose play-writing had usually been a
labour of necessity, and for whom, as a political satirist, there was
no opening in the period of reaction following the esclandre of the
Rye House plot, had to do such taskwork as came to his hand-
prefaces, like that to a new translation of Plutarch; prose trans-
lations of his own, like that of Maimbourg's History already
mentioned; and verse translation, from Ovid, Vergil, Horace and
Theocritus, inserted in the first volume of Miscellany Poems
printed in 1684 and 1685 (the latter under the title Sylvae? ). The
hope long cherished by Dryden of writing an epic poem for which
he had already been in search of subjects, receded more and more
into the background"; and, of the muses whom he was constrained
to serve, we may well believe that,
little was their Hire, and light their Gain 3.
When, early in 1685, Charles II died, Dryden honoured his
memory with a Pindaric ode, Threnodia Augustalis, to which
the poet gave a semi-official character by describing himself as
servant to his late Majesty and to the present King. ' The ode,
which has some fine turns, without altogether escaping bathos,
treats a not very promising subject (which baffled Otway“) with
Dryden's usual skill in the selection of qualities warranting
praise; the inequalities of the metre, on which Scott wittily dwells,
are less violent than those to be found in the far more celebrated
Alexander's Feast. Dryden's other effort as poet laureate,
7- Britannia Rediviva: a Poem on the Prince born on the 10th of
June, 1688, is written in the couplet of which he was master; but
the occasion-for surely never was the news of a royal birth
received as was that of the prince to be known in later years as
the Old Pretender-could not be met without artificiality of tone.
Before the publication of this poem, in which are to be found
1 Collective publications of this kind had gone out of fashion since the early days
of Elizabeth, and the practice was thus revived at a time when translation ran original
composition hard in the race for popularity. Altogether, four volumes of this
Miscellany were published in Dryden's lifetime; but they were carried on by the
publisher Tonson, by whose name they were sometimes known, till 1708. The fashion,
which contributed materially to keep alive a taste for poetry, continued into the
middle of the eighteenth century, and reached its height with Dodsley's celebrated
collection (1748).
2 See A Discourse of Satire (Essays, ed. Ker, vol. II, p. 38).
3 Threnodia Augustalis, v. 377.
4 See his Windsor Castle, and The Beginning of a Pastoral on the Death of his late
Majesty.


## p. 45 (#67) ##############################################

Dryden's Conversion
45
a
>
many allusions to the doctrines of the church of Rome together
with a reference to the ‘still impending Test,' Dryden had himself
become a Roman Catholic. As already hinted, the supposition
that this step was, or might have been expected by him to be, to
the advantage of his worldly interests is not worth discussing.
The intellectual process which led to it, and to the ultimate
completion of which Religio Laici points, was neither unprece-
dented nor unparalleled; moreover, whatever they may have
expected (which nobody can tell) neither Dryden nor his wife or
eldest son (if, as is supposed but not proved, they had become
Roman Catholics before him) gained anything by their conversion’.
That he should have chosen a time for joining the church of Rome
when the prospects of her adherents in England seemed bright
was in keeping with his disposition; for he had, as an acute critica
says, 'a sovereign intellect but a subject will. But there is no
single known fact in his life to support the conclusion that he
changed his faith for the sake of gain. Nor can his consistent
adherence to the church which had now received him be explained
away by the insinuation that another change would not have been
of any use to him. It is sometimes forgotten that his political
was consistent with his religious loyalty, and that, under the new
régime, he declined to take the oaths which might have secured
to him the continuance of at least a measure of royal favour.
The effect of Dryden's conversion upon his spiritual life lies
beyond the range of literary criticism. It is, however, certain
that, to the aspiration 'good life be now my task,' there corresponds,
at a time very near that of his change of faith, a confession which,
in depth of feeling, and in severity of self-judgment, stands almost
alone in his published writings. The spring and force of by far
the most beautiful among his longer lyrics, the ode To the Pious
Memory of the Accomplisht Young Lady, Mrs Anne Killigrew
(printed in 1686, the year after that of her death), are characteristic
of Dryden's genius; but, in the spirit of the poem, especially of
the well known fourth stanza“, we recognise that it was composed
at a time when his whole nature was moved by unwonted impulses.
A fainter recurrence of these may, perhaps, be traceable in some
>
1 Even the recognition by the new king of the additional pension granted by
Charles II to Dryden preceded his conversion, whether or not he bad, before that date,
at ,
2 Skelton, John, John Dryden. In Defence (1865), p. 22.
8 The Hind and the Panther, part 1, v. 76.
O Gracious God! how far have we
Prophan'd thy Heaven’ly Gift of Poesy, eto.


## p. 46 (#68) ##############################################

46
Dryden
passages of his later writings; on the other hand, it cannot be
averred that, in these writings, as a whole, there is any indication,
as there is certainly no pretence, of a change which purifies what
is intentionally impure, or refines what is intentionally gross
The new king was not in a position to disdain the aid of any
fresh ally; and the services of Dryden's pen were speedily claimed
by the side which he had joined. But the desired version of the
Histoire de l' Hérésie (1374 to 1569) by Antoine Varillas, never
saw the light-hardly, as Burnet contended, because of his
criticisms of the French historian and publicist? Dryden's assist-
ance was also engaged in defence of a paper written by Anne
Hyde, duchess of York, giving reasons for her conversion to the
church of Rome, which James II had published with two state-
ments found among his deceased royal brother's papers, acknow-
ledging the authority of that church. Stillingfleet had commented
on the publication as a whole, and now replied in a Vindication on
which, in his turn, Dryden, denounced by Stillingfleet as a 'grim
logician,' commented in an apologia of an altogether novel de-
scription.
The Hind and the Panther was published in 1687, and is said
to have been written at Rushton in Northamptonshire, a sylvan
neighbourhood. If Dryden’s conversion does not present any
psychological difficulties, it also seems natural that he should
have speedily proceeded to explain to the world a position not
new to it, but strange and, therefore, in a sense, new, to himself.
That The Hind and the Panther cannot be harmonised with
Religio Laici is, of course, part of the situation, although the two
poems are not inconsistent with each other as stages of a mental
evolution. To suggest that the later work was written to ensure
the favour of James II (from whom it does not appear what Dryden
had to expect beyond punctuality), is to ignore a very plain historical
consideration. In April 1687—a fortnight before the publication
of the poem-James II put forth the declaration for liberty of
conscience, which extended to nonconformists in general, and
was, in fact, the catholic king's bid for the support of the
protestant dissenters in his struggle with the establishment. On
the other hand, the convert Dryden's personal confession of faith
was, at the same time, an eirenicon to the church of England from
1 See, on this head, Beljame, A. , Le Public et les Hommes de Lettres en Angleterre
au 18me siècle (Paris, 1883), p. 219.
• As to Varillas's work, see the chapter on Historical Writers in vol. ix (post)
(Burnet).


## p. 47 (#69) ##############################################

The Hind and the Panther
47
the catholic side, and a summons to her to join hands with the
church of Rome against the protestant nonconformists. Inasmuch
as a similar royal declaration had been issued in Scotland two
months earlier, and the dispensing power had received a solemn
judicial affirmation in the previous year, Dryden could not have
been taken by surprise by the king's recent action. He could,
therefore, hardly have put forth a 'libel of policy’ less likely to
commend itself to the king and those who advised him in accordance
with his wishes, or have given a more palpable proof either of ob-
tuseness—a quality not characteristic of him-or of candour.
The poem is far the longest of Dryden's original productions
in verse; but it is carried on with unmistakable vigour to its
somewhat abrupt close, and, in its concluding, as well as in its
opening, part, displays the reverse of a falling off in power of
either invention or expression. Criticism has chiefly directed
itself against the plan of the work, which Johnson, for instance,
terms injudicious and incommodious, rather than to the conduct
1
of the arguments, which cannot be described as inadequate or
uneven1
The Hind and the Panther (as would be obvious, even were
it not made additionally clear by the first lines of part 1) does
- not pretend to be more than a fable, a product of an artificial
stage of poetry, which confines its attention to human nature and
introduces animals merely in a parabolical way: so animals would
have spoken or acted, had they been men. All references, how-
ever interesting, to the beast-epos, an independent literary cycle,
into which satirical meanings and types were not introduced till
a comparatively late date, are, therefore, more or less out of place
in this connection. Still less can there be any question here of the
transfer of a whole world of human sentiment and character into
the outward conditions of animal life as in Edmond Rostand's
Chantecler—not for purposes of analogy, but in order to read a
poetical significance into the whole system of animated nature.
| How a theological argument may be carried on in verse without the skill and
effectiveness to be found in The Hind and the Panther, is exemplified by A Poem on
the Real Presence and the Rule of Faith, printed as an appendix to Henry Turbervil's
Manual of Controversies clearly Demonstrating the Truth of the Catholic Religion, with
several Sentences out of the Pathers (4th edition, 1686). The sentences are stated to be
collected by J. D. , the Author's Friend. ' It does not follow that the poem is by
*J. D. '; and I cannot, in any case, think that the latter, though it is chiefly directed
against Stillingfleet, shows signs of Dryden's handiwork. The composition is extremely
anoven; and, while it is just possible that Dryden may have turned Turbervil's
anadorned prose into verse, leaving the file to do its work later, the probability is the
other way, for the numbers' did not come to Dryden in this halting fashion.


## p. 48 (#70) ##############################################

48
Dryden
6
The Hind and the Panther is allegorical only in its mise-en-scène
and distribution of characters; as a fable, its fault is that it falls
short of the moderate amount of imaginary verisimilitude required
by this literary species. On the face of it, therefore, Prior and
Charles Montague, the authors of The Hind and the Panther
Transvers'd to the Story of the Country Mouse and the City Mouse
(1687) were justified in ridiculing in the preface to their squib the
incongruity of animals indulging in theological controversy and
Biblical criticism, as was Johnson in repeating the same cavil in
different words? But Dryden had often, in regard both to the
drama and to other branches of literature, defended the cause of
English freedom'; and, in his free use of the machinery of the
fable for satirical and didactic purposes, he was following the
examples of Chaucer and Spenser. Still, poetry and theological
controversy are illmatched associates, and Dryden was at little
pains to mitigate the harshness of the union, dropping the fabulous
vestment which he had cast round his disputants so soon as he
chose, in order to resume it at his convenience.
Of the two justly celebrated “fables' proper included in part II
of this poem, the earlier--that of the swallows—attests the inde-
pendence of Dryden's attitude towards the court, where the censure
of father Petre (the Martin), though supposed to be delivered by
an adversary, cannot have been welcome. In the story of 'the
Pigeon's and the Buzzard's love,' the character of Burnet (the
Buzzard), ranks with the most powerful of the poet's satirical
efforts. Unlike Stillingfleet, who is dealt with earlier in the same
part of the poem, Burnet, though he is called 'invulnerable in his
impudence,' lay broadly open to attack, and, according to his wont,
had voluntarily descended into the arena with bis Reasons against
Repealing the Test? .
The Hind and the Panther, for reasons which have been made
apparent, could not bring the poet into favour with any party;
and critics like Martin Clifford and ‘Tom’ Brown could fall upon
him as they pleased. When, in contravention of the hopes uttered
· Much of the ridionle in this burlesque, which revived the methods of The
Rehearsal on a much less appropriate occasion, is trivial, and some of it is so vulgarly
personal, that Dryden, if the story be true, may very well have taken offence at it. The
preface was said to have been by Montague.
* Burnet, who seems originally to have had a friendly feeling towards Dryden,
revenged himself when mentioning the proposal, in 1669, of a tax on playhouses,
by describing the great master of dramatic poesy' as 'a monster of immodesty and
impurity of all sorts' (History oj his own Time, edition 1833, vol. I, p. 495). Burnet
did not cultivate precision of style; but it seems clear, even without the note in the
edition of 1754, that he referred to Dryden as a play-writer only.
>


## p. 49 (#71) ##############################################

Miscellaneous Later Work
49
in Britannia Rediviva, the change of régime ensued, and William
and Mary held sway in her father's stead, Dryden's places and
pensions were taken from him, and Shadwell wore the laurel. It
seems to have been about this time that Dryden became indebted
to Dorset for substantial support; but he manifestly continued to
add to his income by literary labours. That the vitality and fresh-
ness of his powers still remained undiminished is shown by the
variety of his productions in these years. Not long before the end
of James II's reign, he had written the playful Letter to Sir George
Etherege, which alone among his complimentary epistles and ad-
dresses (extending over many years of his life) is in Hudibrastic
metre. In 1690, as has been seen, he successfully resumed work
for the stage. There does not seem to have been any indisposition
on the part of the new court to show goodwill to him as a play-
wright; but, in commanding The Spanish Fryar to be performed
on one of her first appearances in public, queen Mary chose more
fortunately for him than for herself. Meanwhile, the connection
between the publisher Jacob Tonson and Dryden was productive of
much literary work, though, when there was a pecuniary pressure
upon Dryden, the relations between them frequently tried his
patience and, at times, roused him to wrath? Besides the trans-
lations from classical poets already mentioned as included in the
earliest volumes of the Miscellany, Dryden, with the assistance of
his two elder sons, brought out, in 1693, a complete translation
of Juvenal and Persius, prefaced by one of the most delightful of
his essays. In its earlier portions, A Discourse concerning the
Original and Progress of Satire may, after the manner of such
prolegomena, have been put together so as to suit the amount of
information to the appetite of the reader; but the comparison
between the three Roman satirists contains some admirable
criticism, and the easy and graceful style is enjoyable from be-
ginning to end. The essay prefixed to Dryden's translation (1695)
of Du Fresnoy's Parallel of Poetry and Painting (the French
prose version printed by the author with his original Latin poem
De Arte Graphica) is, perhaps, more obviously written to order.
It contains an elaboration of the theory that the true imitation of
nature consists of the pursuit of the ideal in art-a view on which
Dryden had insisted in his early disquisitions on dramatic poetry? ,
but which, though it might have commended itself to Goethe, has
until recently been regarded as out of date.
1 Witness the triplet ander Jacob's portrait, perhaps the ugliest of all Dryden's
. word-pictures. '
? This is clearly put by Ker, introduction to Essays, vol. 1, pp. lxviii-ix.
E. L. VIII. CH. I.
4
2


## p. 50 (#72) ##############################################

50
Dryden
In the third and fourth Miscellanies (1693 and 1694) appeared
Dryden's version of book I, and of certain other portions, of the
Metamorphoses, with the parting of Hector and Andromache out of
the Iliad as well as a translation of the third Georgic? . In 1694,
the idea of a translation of the whole of Vergil seems to have
suggested itself to Dryden ; and the completed work was brought
out by subscription in 16972. The enterprise and its success made
much talk in the world of letters, and, from still remote Hanover,
Leibniz commented on the prize of £1000-Pope was told that it
was £1200-which had fallen to the fortunate 'Mr Dryden's' lot.
But, though Dryden, without pushing his interests unduly, was not
forgetful of them, he did himself honour by steadily refusing to
dedicate his magnum opus to the king, to whom he had declined
to swear allegiances. The actual dedication of the Aeneis to
Normanby (Mulgrave) is one of Dryden's longest, but not one of
his most interesting, efforts of the sort'.
The longlived favour shown by the English reading public to
translations from the classics was largely due to the fact that the
intellectual education of boys belonging to the higher classes was
still largely carried on by exercising them in translation from the
classics into English prose or verse; Dryden himself, it will be
remembered, had been trained in this way at Westminster. This
practice must have encouraged freedom of rendering as well as
elegance of composition in translation; and Dryden, possessed of
a genius singularly open to suggestion and facile in execution, was
of all translators most certain to excel in the art thus conceived.
From the point of view of exact scholarship, nothing can be said in
favour of a method which does not show any reverence for the
text, and very little for the style, of the original author. But
Dryden's contemporaries were perfectly willing that the glorious
rush of his poetic style should dominate the Vergil of the Georgics
and the Vergil of the Aeneid alike, as it had the Roman satirists
before them; and the breadth and boldness of some of the finest
Vergilian passages lent themselves readily to reproduction by the
* In the Miscellany of 1694 also appeared the epistle To Sir Godfrey Kneller,
a painter to whom Dryden must have been attracted by his success in seizing the
distinctive features of a quite extraordinary number of sitters. The reference to the
*Chandos' portrait of Shakespeare, of which Kneller had sent Dryden & copy, is
commonplace in thought.
See Appendix to second impression.
8 He had been pressed to dedicate the work to the king by his publisher, who
caused the engraved representation of pius Aeneas to be provided for the purpose with
a hooked nose, still visible in certain of the extant copies.
* It contains, however, some valuable observations on metrical form; and it is in
this essay that Dryden speaks of having ‘long had by me the materials of an English
Prosodia' (Essays, ed. Ker, vol. II, p. 217).


## p. 51 (#73) ##############################################

Fables Ancient and Modern
51
English poet, although others remained, whose majesty and depth
of sentiment he could not infuse into his couplets -.
The freedom which Dryden had assumed as a translator of the
Roman poets he carried a step further in the reproductions of
Chaucer and of Chaucer's frequent source, Boccaccio, which were
not published till two months (or rather less) before his death.
They were accompanied by versions of the first book of the Iliad
and of certain parts of the Metamorphoses, and some original
poems; and the whole volume, with a preface dated 1699, has the
curious title Fables, Ancient and Modern. Dryden earned the
gratitude of all lovers of English literature, when, near the close of
his brilliant career, and after recurring to the classical exemplars
of his youth, he turned to our old English poet,' Chaucer. He de-
scribes himself in the preface as having been moved by the thought
that there was much in Chaucer (it was certainly not the noblest or
the raciest elements in his genius) in which he resembled Ovida.
But he also observes that, of the great English poets who had found
no immediate successor in their insight into the poetic genius of our
language, the catena Milton-Spenser-Chaucer was closely linked,
and that, in going back to Chaucer, he went back to one whom he
accounted the first great writer in English poetical literature. For
the sake of the spirit of this tribute, worthy alike of him who paid
and of him who received it, Dryden may readily be forgiven some
of the blemishes (if they be justly deemed such) in the execution of
his task. In a few instances (far fewer than are to be found in
the earlier translations), effects are heightened which there was
no reason for heightening, and turns of phrase are introduced
incompatible not so much with the dignity as with the natural
simplicity of thought (naïvete) characteristic of all that Chaucer
wrote. (Curiously enough, this criticism, if just, is not appli-
cable to the tales from Boccaccio, who was anything but naïf. )
It has been cleverly said that Dryden 'scrubbed up' Chaucer-
a process which suits fine old plate, but not the total effect of a
beautiful old house. The amplifications which Dryden openly
1 The attack upon Dryden of Luke Milbourne (1698) was, probably, the result
of jealousy, as he had issued a version of book 1 of the Aeneid, said to be now lost.
His Notes, for which he paid dear, contain some other specimens of his translations
from Vergil.
Essays, ed.