No More Learning

His reputation in time was such, that his name was thought necessary to
the success of every poetical or literary performance, and, therefore,
he was engaged to contribute something, whatever it might be, to many
publications. He prefixed the Life of Polybius to the translation of sir
Henry Sheers; and those of Lucian and Plutarch, to versions of their
works by different hands. Of the English Tacitus he translated the first
book; and, if Gordon be credited, translated it from the French. Such a
charge can hardly be mentioned without some degree of indignation; but
it is not, I suppose, so much to be inferred, that Dryden wanted the
literature necessary to the perusal of Tacitus, as that, considering
himself as hidden in a crowd, he had no awe of the publick; and, writing
merely for money, was contented to get it by the nearest way.

In 1680, the Epistles of Ovid being translated by the poets of the time,
among which one was the work of Dryden[110], and another of Dryden and
lord Mulgrave, it was necessary to introduce them by a preface; and
Dryden, who on such occasions was regularly summoned, prefixed a
discourse upon translation, which was then struggling for the liberty
that it now enjoys. Why it should find any difficulty in breaking the
shackles of verbal interpretation, which must for ever debar it from
elegance, it would be difficult to conjecture, were not the power of
prejudice every day observed. The authority of Jonson, Sandys, and
Holiday, had fixed the judgment of the nation; and it was not easily
believed that a better way could be found than they had taken, though
Fanshaw, Denham, Waller, and Cowley, had tried to give examples of a
different practice.

In 1681 Dryden became yet more conspicuous by uniting politicks with
poetry, in the memorable satire, called Absalom and Achitophel, written
against the faction which, by lord Shaftesbury's incitement, set the duke
of Monmouth at its head.

Of this poem, in which personal satire was applied to the support of
publick principles, and in which, therefore, every mind was interested,
the reception was eager, and the sale so large, that my father, an old
bookseller, told me, he had not known it equalled but by Sacheverell's
Trial.

The reason of this general perusal Addison has attempted to derive from
the delight which the mind feels in the investigation of secrets; and
thinks that curiosity to decipher the names, procured readers to the
poem. There is no need to inquire why those verses were read, which, to
all the attractions of wit, elegance, and harmony, added the cooperation
of all the factious passions, and filled every mind with triumph or
resentment.

It could not be supposed that all the provocation given by Dryden, would
be endured without resistance or reply. Both his person and his party
were exposed, in their turns, to the shafts of satire, which, though
neither so well pointed, nor, perhaps, so well aimed, undoubtedly drew
blood.

One of these poems is called, Dryden's Satire on his Muse; ascribed,
though, as Pope says, falsely, to Somers, who was afterwards chancellor.
The poem, whosesoever it was, has much virulence, and some sprightliness.
The writer tells all the ill that he can collect both of Dryden and his
friends.

The poem of Absalom and Achitophel had two answers, now both forgotten;
one called Azaria and Hushai; the other, Absalom senior. Of these hostile
compositions, Dryden apparently imputes Absalom senior to Settle, by
quoting in his verses against him the second line. Azaria and Hushai was,
as Wood says, imputed to him, though it is somewhat unlikely that he
should write twice on the same occasion. This is a difficulty which
I cannot remove, for want of a minuter knowledge of poetical
transactions[111].

The same year he published The Medal, of which the subject is a
medal struck on lord Shaftesbury's escape from a prosecution, by the
_ignoramus_ of a grand jury of Londoners.

In both poems he maintains the same principles, and saw them both
attacked by the same antagonist. Elkanah Settle, who had answered
Absalom, appeared with equal courage in opposition to The Medal, and
published an answer called, The Medal Reversed, with so much success
in both encounters, that he left the palm doubtful, and divided the
suffrages of the nation. Such are the revolutions of fame, or such is
the prevalence of fashion, that the man, whose works have not yet been
thought to deserve the care of collecting them, who died forgotten in
an hospital, and whose latter years were spent in contriving shows for
fairs, and carrying an elegy or epithalamium, of which the beginning and
end were occasionally varied, but the intermediate parts were always the
same, to every house where there was a funeral or a wedding, might with
truth have had inscribed upon his stone:

Here lies the rival and antagonist of Dryden.

Settle was, for this rebellion, severely chastised by Dryden, under the
name of Doeg, in the second part of Absalom and Achitophel; and was,
perhaps, for his factious audacity, made the city poet, whose annual
office was to describe the glories of the mayor's day. Of these bards he
was the last, and seems not much to have deserved even this degree of
regard, if it was paid to his political opinions; for he afterwards wrote
a panegyrick on the virtues of judge Jefferies; and what more could have
been done by the meanest zealot for prerogative?

Of translated fragments, or occasional poems, to enumerate the titles, or
settle the dates, would be tedious, with little use. It may be observed,
that, as Dryden's genius was commonly excited by some personal regard, he
rarely writes upon a general topick.

Soon after the accession of king James, when the design of reconciling
the nation to the church of Rome became apparent, and the religion of the
court gave the only efficacious title to its favours, Dryden declared
himself a convert to popery. This, at any other time, might have passed
with little censure. Sir Kenelm Digby embraced popery; the two Reynolds's
reciprocally converted one another[112]; and Chillingworth himself was
awhile so entangled in the wilds of controversy, as to retire for quiet
to an infallible church. If men of argument and study can find such
difficulties, or such motives, as may either unite them to the church of
Rome, or detain them in uncertainty, there can be no wonder that a man,
who, perhaps, never inquired why he was a protestant, should, by an
artful and experienced disputant, be made a papist, overborne by the
sudden violence of new and unexpected arguments, or deceived by a
representation which shows only the doubts on one part, and only the
evidence on the other.

That conversion will always be suspected that apparently concurs with
interest. He that never finds his errour till it hinders his progress
towards wealth or honour, will not be thought to love truth only for
herself.

Yet it may easily happen that information may come at a commodious time;
and, as truth and interest are not by any fatal necessity at variance,
that one may by accident introduce the other. When opinions are
struggling into popularity, the arguments by which they are opposed or
defended become more known; and he that changes his profession would,
perhaps, have changed it before, with the like opportunities of
instruction. This was then the state of popery; every artifice was used
to show it in its fairest form; and it must be owned to be a religion of
external appearance sufficiently attractive.

It is natural to hope that a comprehensive is, likewise, an elevated
soul, and that whoever is wise is also honest. I am willing to believe
that Dryden, having employed his mind, active as it was, upon different
studies, and filled it, capacious as it was, with other materials, came
unprovided to the controversy, and wanted rather skill to discover the
right, than virtue to maintain it. But inquiries into the heart are not
for man; we must now leave him to his judge.

The priests, having strengthened their cause by so powerful an adherent,
were not long before they brought him into action. They engaged him to
defend the controversial papers found in the strong box of Charles the
second; and, what yet was harder, to defend them against Stillingfleet.

With hopes of promoting popery, he was employed to translate Maimbourg's
History of the League; which he published with a large introduction. His
name is, likewise, prefixed to the English Life of Francis Xavier; but I
know not that he ever owned himself the translator. Perhaps the use of
his name was a pious fraud, which, however, seems not to have had much
effect; for neither of the books, I believe, was ever popular.

The version of Xavier's Life is commended by Brown, in a pamphlet not
written to flatter; and the occasion of it is said to have been, that the
queen, when she solicited a son, made vows to him as her tutelary saint.
He was supposed to have undertaken to translate Varillas's History of
Heresies; and, when Burnet published remarks upon it, to have written an
answer[113]; upon which Burnet makes the following observation:

"I have been informed from England, that a gentleman, who is famous
both for poetry and several other things, had spent three months in
translating M. Varillas's History; but that, as soon as my Reflections
appeared, he discontinued his labour, finding the credit of his author
was gone. Now, if he thinks it is recovered by his answer, he will,
perhaps, go on with his translation; and this may be, for aught I know,
as good an entertainment for him as the conversation that he had set on
between the Hinds and Panthers, and all the rest of animals, for whom M.
Varillas may serve well enough as an author: and this history, and that
poem, are such extraordinary things of their kind, that it will be but
suitable to see the author of the worst poem become, likewise, the
translator of the worst history that the age has produced. If his grace
and his wit improve both proportionably, he will hardly find that he has
gained much by the change he has made, from having no religion, to choose
one of the worst. It is true, he had somewhat to sink from in matter of
wit; but, as for his morals, it is scarce possible for him to grow
a worse man than he was. He has lately wreaked his malice on me for
spoiling his three months' labour; but in it he has done me all the
honour that any man can receive from him, which is to be railed at by
him. If I had ill-nature enough to prompt me to wish a very bad wish for
him, it should be, that he would go on and finish his translation. By
that it will appear, whether the English nation, which is the most
competent judge in this matter, has, upon the seeing our debate,
pronounced in M. Varillas's favour, or in mine. It is true, Mr. D. will
suffer a little by it; but, at least, it will serve to keep him in from
other extravagancies; and if he gains little honour by this work, yet he
cannot lose so much by it as he has done by his last employment. "

Having, probably, felt his own inferiority in theological controversy, he
was desirous of trying whether, by bringing poetry to aid his arguments,
he might be'come a more efficacious defender of his new profession. To
reason in verse was, indeed, one of his powers; but subtilty and harmony,
united, are still feeble, when opposed to truth.

Actuated, therefore, by zeal for Rome, or hope of fame, he published The
Hind and Panther, a poem in which the church of Rome, figured by the
_milk-white hind_, defends her tenets against the church of England,
represented by the _panther_, a beast beautiful, but spotted.

A fable which exhibits two beasts talking theology, appears, at once,
full of absurdity; and it was accordingly ridiculed in the City Mouse and
Country Mouse, a parody, written by Montague, afterwards earl of Halifax,
and Prior, who then gave the first specimen of his abilities.

The conversion of such a man, at such a time, was not likely to pass
uneensured. Three dialogues were published by the facetious Thomas Brown,
of which the two first were called Reasons of Mr. Bayes's changing his
Religion; and the third, The Reasons of Mr. Hains the Player's Conversion
and Reconversion. The first was printed in 1688, the second not till
1690, the third in 1691. The clamour seems to have been long continued,
and the subject to have strongly fixed the publick attention.

In the two first dialogues Bayes is brought into the company of Crites
and Eugenius, with whom he had formerly debated on dramatick poetry. The
two talkers in the third are Mr. Bayes and Mr. Hains.

Brown was a man not deficient in literature, nor destitute of fancy; but
he seems to have thought it the pinnacle of excellence to be a _merry
fellow_; and, therefore, laid out his powers upon small jests or gross
buffoonery; so that his performances have little intrinsick value, and
were read only while they were recommended by the novelty of the event
that occasioned them. These dialogues are like his other works: what
sense or knowledge they contain is disgraced by the garb in which it is
exhibited. One great source of pleasure is to call Dryden "little Bayes. "
Ajax, who happens to be mentioned, is "he that wore as many cow-hides
upon his shield as would have furnished half the king's army with
shoe-leather. "

Being asked whether he had seen the Hind and Panther, Crites answers:
"Seen it! Mr. Bayes, why I can stir nowhere but it pursues me; it haunts
me worse than a pewter-buttoned serjeant does a decayed cit. Sometimes I
meet it in a bandbox, when my laundress brings home my linen; sometimes,
whether I will or no, it lights my pipe at a coffee-house; sometimes it
surprises me in a trunkmaker's shop; and sometimes it refreshes my memory
for me on the backside of a Chancery lane parcel. For your comfort too,
Mr. Bayes, I have not only seen it, as you may perceive, but have read it
too, and can quote it as freely upon occasion as a frugal tradesman
can quote that noble treatise The Worth of a Penny, to his extravagant
'prentice, that revels in stewed apples and penny custards. "

The whole animation of these compositions arises from a profusion of
ludicrous and affected comparisons. "To secure one's chastity," says
Bayes, "little more is necessary than to leave off a correspondence with
the other sex, which, to a wise man, is no greater a punishment than it
would be to a fanatick parson to be forbid seeing The Cheats and The
Committee; or for my lord mayor and aldermen to be interdicted the sight
of The London Cuckold. " This is the general strain, and, therefore, I
shall be easily excused the labour of more transcription.

Brown does not wholly forget past transactions: "You began," says Crites
to Bayes, "with a very indifferent religion, and have not mended the
matter in your last choice. It was but reason that your muse, which
appeared first in a tyrant's quarrel, should employ her last efforts to
justify the usurpations of the hind. " Next year the nation was summoned
to celebrate the birth of the prince. Now was the time for Dryden to
rouse his imagination, and strain his voice. Happy days were at hand,
and he was willing to enjoy and diffuse the anticipated blessings. He
published a poem, filled with predictions of greatness and prosperity;
predictions of which it is not necessary to tell how they have been
verified.

A few months passed after these joyful notes, and every blossom of popish
hope was blasted for ever by the revolution. A papist now could be no
longer laureate. The revenue, which he had enjoyed with so much pride and
praise, was transferred to Shadwell, an old enemy, whom he had formerly
stigmatised by the name of Og. Dryden could not decently complain that he
was deposed; but seemed very angry that Shadwell succeeded him, and has,
therefore, celebrated the intruder's inauguration in a poem exquisitely
satirical, called Mac Flecknoe[114]; of which the Dunciad, as Pope
himself declares, is an imitation, though more extended in its plan, and
more diversified in its incidents.

It is related by Prior, that lord Dorset, when, as chamberlain, he was
constrained to eject Dryden from his office, gave him, from his own
purse, an allowance equal to the salary. This is no romantick or
incredible act of generosity; a hundred a year is often enough given to
claims less cogent, by men less famed for liberality. Yet Dryden always
represented himself as suffering under a publick infliction; and once
particularly demands respect for the patience with which he endured the
loss of his little fortune. His patron might, indeed, enjoin him to
suppress his bounty; but, if he suffered nothing, he should not have
complained.

During the short reign of king James, he had written nothing for
the stage[115], being, in his opinion, more profitably employed in
controversy and flattery. Of praise he might, perhaps, have been less
lavish without inconvenience, for James was never said to have much
regard for poetry: he was to be flattered only by adopting his religion.

Times were now changed: Dryden was no longer the court-poet, and was to
look back for support to his former trade; and having waited about two
years, either considering himself as discountenanced by the publick,
perhaps expecting a second revolution, he produced Don Sebastian in 1690;
and in the next four years four dramas more.

In 1693 appeared a new version of Juvenal and Persius. Of Juvenal, he
translated the first, third, sixth, tenth, and sixteenth satires; and of
Persius, the whole work. On this occasion, he introduced his two sons to
the publick, as nurslings of the muses. The fourteenth of Juvenal was the
work of John, and the seventh of Charles Dryden. He prefixed a very ample
preface, in the form of a dedication to lord Dorset; and there gives an
account of the design which he had once formed to write an epick poem on
the actions either of Arthur or the Black Prince. He considered the
epick as necessarily including some kind of supernatural agency, and had
imagined a new kind of contest between the guardian angels of kingdoms,
of whom he conceived that each might be represented zealous for his
charge, without any intended opposition to the purposes of the supreme
being, of which all created minds must in part be ignorant.

This is the most reasonable scheme of celestial interposition that ever
was formed. The surprises and terrours of enchantments, which have
succeeded to the intrigues and oppositions of pagan deities, afford very
striking scenes, and open a vast extent to the imagination; but, as
Boileau observes, (and Boileau will be seldom found mistaken,) with this
incurable defect, that, in a contest between heaven and hell, we know at
the beginning which is to prevail; for this reason we follow Rinaldo to
the enchanted wood with more curiosity than terrour.

In the scheme of Dryden there is one great difficulty, which yet he
would, perhaps, have had address enough to surmount. In a war, justice
can be but on one side; and, to entitle the hero to the protection of
angels, he must fight in the defence of indubitable right. Yet some
of the celestial beings, thus opposed to each other, must have been
represented as defending guilt.

That this poem was never written, is reasonably to be lamented. It would,
doubtless, have improved our numbers, and enlarged our language; and
might, perhaps, have contributed, by pleasing instruction, to rectify our
opinions, and purify our manners.

What he required as the indispensable condition of such an undertaking, a
publick stipend, was not likely, in those times, to be obtained. Riches
were not become familiar to us; nor had the nation yet learned to be
liberal.

This plan he charged Blackmore with stealing; "only," says he, "the
guardian angels of kingdoms were machines too ponderous for him to
manage. "

In 1694, he began the most laborious and difficult of all his works, the
translation of Virgil; from which he borrowed two months, that he might
turn Fresnoy's Art of Painting into English prose. The preface, which he
boasts to have written in twelve mornings, exhibits a parallel of poetry
and painting, with a miscellaneous collection of critical remarks, such
as cost a mind, stored like his, no labour to produce them.

In 1697, he published his version of the works of Virgil; and, that no
opportunity of profit might be lost, dedicated the Pastorals to the lord
Clifford, the Georgicks to the earl of Chesterfield, and the Aeneid to the
earl of Mulgrave. This economy of flattery, at once lavish and discreet,
did not pass without observation.

This translation was censured by Milbourne, a clergyman, styled, by Pope,
"the fairest of criticks," because he exhibited his own version to be
compared with that which he condemned.

His last work was his Fables, published in 1699, in consequence, as is
supposed, of a contract now in the hands of Mr. Tonson; by which he
obliged himself, in considerationof three hundred pounds, to finish for
the press ten thousand verses.

In this volume is comprised the well-known ode on St. Cecilia's day,
which, as appeared by a letter communicated to Dr. Birch, he spent a
fortnight in composing and correcting. But what is this to the patience
and diligence of Boileau, whose Equivoque, a poem of only three hundred
and forty-six lines, took from his life eleven months to write it, and
three years to revise it?

Part of this book of Fables is the first Iliad in English, intended as a
specimen of a version of the whole. Considering into what hands Homer was
to fall, the reader cannot but rejoice that this project went no further.

The time was now at hand which was to put an end to all his schemes and
labours. On the first of May, 1701, having been some time, as he tells
us, a cripple in his limbs, he died, in Gerard street, of a mortification
in his leg.

There is extant a wild story relating to some vexatious events that
happened at his funeral, which, at the end of Congreve's Life, by a
writer of I know not what credit, are thus related, as I find the account
transferred to a biographical dictionary[116].

"Mr. Dryden dying on the Wednesday morning, Dr. Thomas Sprat, then bishop
of Rochester and dean of Westminster, sent the next day to the lady
Elizabeth Howard, Mr. Dryden's widow, that he would make a present of the
ground, which was forty pounds, with all the other abbey fees. The lord
Halifax, likewise, sent to the lady Elizabeth, and Mr. Charles Dryden
her son, that, if they would give him leave to bury Mr. Dryden, he would
inter him with a gentleman's private funeral, and afterwards bestow five
hundred pounds on a monument in the abbey; which, as they had no reason
to refuse, they accepted. On the Saturday following the company came:
the corpse was put into a velvet hearse; and eighteen mourning coaches,
filled with company, attended. When they were just ready to move, the
lord Jefferies, son of the lord chancellor Jefferies, with some of his
rakish companions, coming by, asked whose funeral it was; and, being
told Mr. Dryden's, he said, 'What, shall Dryden, the greatest honour
and ornament of the nation, be buried after this private manner! No,
gentlemen, let all that loved Mr. Dryden, and honour his memory, alight
and join with me in gaining my lady's consent to let me have the honour
of his interment, which shall be after another manner than this; and I
will bestow a thousand pounds on a monument in the abbey for him. ' The
gentlemen in the coaches, not knowing of the bishop of Rochester's
favour, nor of the lord Halifax's generous design, (they both having, out
of respect to the family, enjoined the lady Elizabeth and her son to
keep their favour concealed to the world, and let it pass for their own
expense,) readily came out of the coaches, and attended lord Jefferies up
to the lady's bedside, who was then sick. He repeated the purport of what
he had before said; but she absolutely refusing, he fell on his knees,
vowing never to rise till his request was granted. The rest of the
company, by his desire, kneeled also; and the lady, being under a sudden
surprise, fainted away. As soon as she recovered her speech, she cried,
'No, no. ' 'Enough, gentlemen,' replied he; 'my lady is very good; she
says, Go, go. ' She repeated her former words with all her strength, but
in vain, for her feeble voice was lost in their acclamations of joy;
and the lord Jefferies ordered the horsemen to carry the corpse to Mr.
Russel's, an undertaker in Cheapside, and leave it there till he should
send orders for the embalment, which, he added, should be after the royal
manner. His directions were obeyed, the company dispersed, and lady
Elizabeth and her son remained inconsolable. The next day Mr. Charles
Dryden waited on the lord Halifax and the bishop, to excuse his mother
and himself, by relating the real truth. But neither his lordship nor the
bishop would admit of any plea; especially the latter, who had the abbey
lighted, the ground opened, the choir attending, an anthem ready set,
and himself waiting, for some time, without any corpse to bury. The
undertaker, after three days' expectance of orders for embalment without
receiving any, waited on the lord Jefferies; who, pretending ignorance of
the matter, turned it off with an ill-natured jest, saying, that those
who observed the orders of a drunken frolick deserved no better; that he
remembered nothing at all of it; and that he might do what he pleased
with the corpse. Upon this, the undertaker waited upon the lady Elizabeth
and her son, and threatened to bring the corpse home, and set it before
the door. They desired a day's respite, which was granted. Mr. Charles
Dryden wrote a handsome letter to the lord Jefferies, who returned it
with this cool answer: 'that he knew nothing of the matter, and would be
troubled no more about it. ' He then addressed the lord Halifax and the
bishop of Rochester, who absolutely refused to do any thing in it. In
this distress Dr. Garth sent for the corpse to the College of Physicians,
and proposed a funeral by subscription, to which himself set a most noble
example. At last, a day, about three weeks after Mr. Dryden's decease,
was appointed for the interment. Dr. Garth pronounced a fine Latin
oration, at the college, over the corpse; which was attended to the abbey
by a numerous train of coaches. When the funeral was over, Mr. Charles
Dryden sent a challenge to the lord Jefferies, who refusing to answer it,
he sent several others, and went often himself; but could neither get a
letter delivered, nor admittance to speak to him: which so incensed
him, that he resolved, since his lordship refused to answer him like a
gentleman, that he would watch an opportunity to meet and fight off-hand,
though with all the rules of honour; which his lordship hearing, left the
town; and Mr. Charles Dryden could never have the satisfaction of meeting
him, though he sought it till his death with the utmost application. "

This story I once intended to omit, as it appears with no great evidence;
nor have I met with any confirmation, but in a letter of Farquhar; and he
only relates that the funeral of Dryden was tumultuary and confused. [117]

Supposing the story true, we may remark, that the gradual change of
manners, though imperceptible in the process, appears great, when
different times, and those not very distant, are compared. If, at this
time, a young drunken lord should interrupt the pompous regularity of a
magnificent funeral, what would be the event, but that he would be
justled out of the way, and compelled to be quiet? If he should thrust
himself into a house, he would be sent roughly away; and, what is yet
more to the honour of the present time, I believe that those who had
subscribed to the funeral of a man like Dryden, would not, for such an
accident, have withdrawn their contributions[118].

He was buried among the poets in Westminster Abbey, where, though the
duke of Newcastle had, in a general dedication prefixed by Congreve to
his dramatick works, accepted thanks for his intention of erecting him
a monument, he lay long without distinction, till the duke of
Buckinghamshire gave him a tablet, inscribed only with the name of
DRYDEN.

He married the lady Elizabeth Howard, daughter of the earl of Berkshire,
with circumstances, according to the satire imputed to lord Somers, not
very honourable to either party: by her he had three sons, Charles, John,
and Henry. Charles was usher of the palace to pope Clement the eleventh;
and, visiting England in 1704, was drowned in an attempt to swim across
the Thames at Windsor.

John was author of a comedy called The Husband his own Cuckold. He is
said to have died at Rome. Henry entered into some religious order. It is
some proof of Dryden's sincerity in his second religion, that he taught
it to his sons. A man conscious of hypocritical profession in himself, is
not likely to convert others; and, as his sons were qualified, in 1693,
to appear among the translators of Juvenal, they must have been taught
some religion before their father's change.

Of the person of Dryden I know not any account; of his mind, the portrait
which has been left by Congreve, who knew him with great familiarity, is
such as adds our love of his manners to our admiration of his genius. "He
was," we are told, "of a nature exceedingly humane and compassionate,
ready to forgive injuries, and capable of a sincere reconciliation with
those who had offended him. His friendship, where he professed it, went
beyond his professions. He was of a very easy, of very pleasing, access;
but somewhat slow, and, as it were, diffident in his advances to others:
he had that in his nature which abhorred intrusion into any society
whatever. He was, therefore, less known, and consequently his character
became more liable to misapprehensions and misrepresentations: he was
very modest, and very easily to be discountenanced in his approaches to
his equals or superiours. As his reading had been very extensive, so was
he very happy in a memory tenacious of every thing that he had read. He
was not more possessed of knowledge than he was communicative of it; but
then his communication was by no means pedantick, or imposed upon the
conversation, but just such, and went so far as, by the natural turn of
the conversation in which he was engaged, it was necessarily promoted
or required. He was extremely ready and gentle in his correction of the
errours of any writer who thought fit to consult him, and full as ready
and patient to admit of the reprehensions of others, in respect of his
own over-sights or mistakes. "

To this account of Congreve nothing can be objected but the fondness of
friendship; and to have excited that fondness in such a mind is no small
degree of praise. The disposition of Dryden, however, is shown in this
character rather as it exhibited itself in cursory conversation, than as
it operated on the more important parts of life. His placability and his
friendship, indeed, were solid virtues; but courtesy and good humour are
often found with little real worth. Since Congreve, who knew him well,
has told us no more, the rest must be collected, as it can, from other
testimonies, and particularly from those notices which Dryden has very
liberally given us of himself.

The modesty which made him so slow to advance, and so easy to
be repulsed, was certainly no suspicion of deficient merit, or
unconsciousness of his own value: he appears to have known, in its whole
extent, the dignity of his character, and to have set a very high value
on his own powers and performances. He probably did not offer his
conversation, because he expected it to be solicited; and he retired from
a cold reception, not submissive but indignant, with such reverence
of his own greatness as made him unwilling to expose it to neglect or
violation.

His modesty was by no means inconsistent with ostentatiousness: he is
diligent enough to remind the world of his merit, and expresses, with
very little scruple, his high opinion of his own powers; but his
self-commendations are read without scorn or indignation; we allow his
claims, and love his frankness.
Tradition, however, has not allowed that his confidence in himself
exempted him from jealousy of others. He is accused of envy and
insidiousness; and is particularly charged with inciting Creech to
translate Horace, that he might lose the reputation which Lucretius had
given him.

Of this charge we immediately discover that it is merely conjectural;
the purpose was such as no man would confess; and a crime that admits no
proof, why should we believe?

He has been described as magisterially presiding over the younger
writers, and assuming the distribution of poetical fame; but he who
excels has a right to teach, and he whose judgment is incontestable, may,
without usurpation, examine and decide.

Congreve represents him as ready to advise and instruct; but there
is reason to believe that his communication was rather useful than
entertaining. He declares of himself that he was saturnine, and not
one of those whose sprightly sayings diverted company; and one of his
censurers makes him say:

Nor wine nor love could ever see me gay;
To writing bred, I knew not what to say[119].

There are men whose powers operate only at leisure and in retirement, and
whose intellectual vigour deserts them in conversation; whom merriment
confuses, and objection disconcerts; whose bashfulness restrains their
exertion, and suffers them not to speak till the time of speaking is
past; or whose attention to their own character makes them unwilling to
utter at hazard what has not been considered, and cannot be recalled.

Of Dryden's sluggishness in conversation it is vain to search or to guess
the cause. He certainly wanted neither sentiments nor language; his
intellectual treasures were great, though they were locked up from his
own use. "His thoughts," when he wrote, "flowed in upon him so fast, that
his only care was which to choose, and which to reject. " Such rapidity of
composition naturally promises a flow of talk; yet we must be content to
believe what an enemy says of him, when he, likewise, says it of himself.
But, whatever was his character as a companion, it appears that he lived
in familiarity with the highest persons of his time. It is related by
Carte of the duke of Ormond, that he used often to pass a night with
Dryden, and those with whom Dryden consorted: who they were Carte has
not told; but certainly the convivial table at which Ormond sat was not
surrounded with a plebeian society. He was, indeed, reproached with
boasting of his familiarity with the great; and Horace will support him
in the opinion, that to please superiours is not the lowest kind of
merit.

The merit of pleasing must, however, be estimated by the means. Favour
is not always gained by good actions or laudable qualities. Caresses and
preferments are often bestowed on the auxiliaries of vice, the procurers
of pleasure, or the flatterers of vanity. Dryden has never been charged
with any personal agency unworthy of a good character: he abetted vice
and vanity only with his pen. One of his enemies has accused him of
lewdness in his conversation; but, if accusation without proof be
credited, who shall be innocent?

His works afford too many examples of dissolute licentiousness and abject
adulation; but they were, probably, like his merriment, artificial and
constrained; the effects of study and meditation, and his trade rather
than his pleasure.

Of the mind that can trade in corruption, and can deliberately pollute
itself with ideal wickedness, for the sake of spreading the contagion in
society, I wish not to conceal or excuse the depravity. Such degradation
of the dignity of genius, such abuse of superlative abilities, cannot be
contemplated but with grief and indignation. What consolation can be had,
Dryden has afforded, by living to repent, and to testify his repentance.

Of dramatick immorality he did not want examples among his predecessors,
or companions among his contemporaries; but, in the meanness and
servility of hyperbolical adulation, I know not whether, since the days
in which the Roman emperours were deified, he has been ever equalled,
except by Afra Behn, in an address to Eleanor Gwyn. When once he has
undertaken the task of praise, he no longer retains shame in himself, nor
supposes it in his patron. As many odoriferous bodies are observed to
diffuse perfumes, from year to year, without sensible diminution of bulk
or weight, he appears never to have impoverished his mint of flattery
by his expenses, however lavish. He had all the forms of excellence,
intellectual and moral, combined in his mind, with endless variation;
and, when he had scattered on the hero of the day the golden shower of
wit and virtue, he had ready for him whom he wished to court on the
morrow, new wit and virtue with another stamp. Of this kind of meanness
he never seems to decline the practice, or lament the necessity: he
considers the great as entitled to encomiastick homage, and brings praise
rather as a tribute than a gift, more delighted with the fertility of his
invention, than mortified by the prostitution of his judgment. It is,
indeed, not certain, that on these occasions his judgment much rebelled
against his interest. There are minds which easily sink into submission,
that look on grandeur with undistinguishing reverence, and discover no
defect where there is elevation of rank and affluence of riches.

With his praises of others, and of himself, is always intermingled a
strain of discontent and lamentation, a sullen growl of resentment, or
a querulous murmur of distress. His works are undervalued, his merit is
unrewarded, and "he has few thanks to pay his stars that he was born
among Englishmen. " To his criticks he is sometimes contemptuous,
sometimes resentful, and sometimes submissive. The writer who thinks his
works formed for duration, mistakes his interest when he mentions his
enemies. He degrades his own dignity by showing that he was affected by
their censures, and gives lasting importance to names, which, left to
themselves, would vanish from remembrance. From this principle Dryden did
not often depart; his complaints are, for the greater part, general; he
seldom pollutes his page with an adverse name. He condescended, indeed,
to a controversy with Settle, in which he, perhaps, may be considered
rather as assaulting than repelling; and since Settle is sunk into
oblivion, his libel remains injurious only to himself.

Among answers to criticks, no poetical attacks, or altercations, are to
be included; they are, like other poems, effusions of genius, produced as
much to obtain praise as to obviate censure. These Dryden practised, and
in these he excelled.

Of Collier, Blackmore, and Milbourne, he has made mention in the preface
to his Fables. To the censure of Collier, whose remarks may be rather
termed admonitions than criticisms, he makes little reply; being, at
the age of sixty-eight, attentive to better things than the claps of a
playhouse. He complains of Collier's rudeness, and the "horseplay of his
raillery;" and asserts, that "in many places he has perverted by his
glosses the meaning" of what he censures; but in other things he
confesses that he is justly taxed; and says, with great calmness and
candour, "I have pleaded guilty to all thoughts or expressions of mine
that can be truly accused of obscenity, immorality, or profaneness, and
retract them. If he be my enemy, let him triumph; if he be my friend,
he will be glad of my repentance. " Yet, as our best dispositions are
imperfect, he left standing in the same book a reflection on Collier of
great asperity, and, indeed, of more asperity than wit.

Blackmore he represents as made his enemy by the poem of Absalom and
Achitophel, which "he thinks a little hard upon his fanatick patrons;"
and charges him with borrowing the plan of his Arthur from the preface to
Juvenal, "though he had," says he, "the baseness not to acknowledge his
benefactor, but instead of it to traduce me in a libel. "

The libel in which Blackmore traduced him, was a Satire upon Wit; in
which, having lamented the exuberance of false wit, and the deficiency of
true, he proposes that all wit should be recoined before it is current,
and appoints masters of assay who shall reject all that is light or
debased:

'Tis true, that, when the coarse and worthless dross
Is purg'd away, there will be mighty loss:
E'en Congreve, Southern, manly Wycherley,
When thus refin'd, will grievous sufferers be;
Into the melting-pot when Dryden comes,
What horrid stench will rise, what noisome fumes!
How will he shrink, when all his lewd allay,
And wicked mixture, shall be purg'd away!

Thus stands the passage in the last edition; but in the original there
was an abatement of the censure, beginning thus:

But what remains will be so pure, 'twill bear
Th' examination of the most severe.

Blackmore, finding the censure resented, and the civility disregarded,
ungenerously omitted the softer part. Such variations discover a writer
who consults his passions more than his virtue; and it may be reasonably
supposed that Dryden imputes his enmity to its true cause.

Of Milbourne he wrote only in general terms, such as are always ready
at the call of anger, whether just or not: a short extract will be
sufficient. "He pretends a quarrel to me, that I have fallen foul upon
priesthood; if I have, I am only to ask pardon of good priests, and
am afraid his share of the reparation will come to little. Let him be
satisfied that he shall never be able to force himself upon me for an
adversary; I contemn him too much to enter into competition with him.

"As for the rest of those who have written against me, they are such
scoundrels that they deserve not the least notice to be taken of them.
Blackmore and Milbourne are only distinguished from the crowd by being
remembered to their infamy. "

Dryden, indeed, discovered, in many of his writings, an affected and
absurd malignity to priests and priesthood, which naturally raised him
many enemies, and which was sometimes as unseasonably resented as it was
exerted. Trapp is angry that he calls the sacrificer in the Georgicks
"the holy butcher:" the translation is, indeed, ridiculous; but Trapp's
anger arises from his zeal, not for the author, but the priest; as if any
reproach of the follies of paganism could be extended to the preachers of
truth.

Dryden's dislike of the priesthood is imputed by Langbaine, and, I think,
by Brown, to a repulse which he suffered when he solicited ordination;
but he denies, in the preface to his Fables, that he ever designed to
enter into the church; and such a denial he would not have hazarded, if
he could have been convicted of falsehood.

Malevolence to the clergy is seldom at a great distance from irreverence
of religion, and Dryden affords no exception to this observation. His
writings exhibit many passages, which, with all the allowance that can
be made for characters and occasions, are such as piety would not have
admitted, and such as may vitiate light and unprincipled minds. But there
is no reason for supposing that he disbelieved the religion which he
disobeyed. He forgot his duty rather than disowned it. His tendency to
profaneness is the effect of levity, negligence, and loose conversation,
with a desire of accommodating himself to the corruption of the times, by
venturing to be wicked as far as he durst. When he professed himself a
convert to popery, he did not pretend to have received any new conviction
of the fundamental doctrines of Christianity.

The persecution of criticks was not the worst of his vexations; he was
much more disturbed by the importunities of want. His complaints of
poverty are so frequently repeated, either with the dejection of weakness
sinking in helpless misery, or the indignation of merit claiming its
tribute from mankind, that it is impossible not to detest the age which
could impose on such a man the necessity of such solicitations, or not to
despise the man who could submit to such solicitations without necessity.

Whether by the world's neglect, or his own imprudence, I am afraid that
the greatest part of his life was passed in exigencies. Such outcries
were, surely, never uttered but in severe pain. Of his supplies or his
expenses no probable estimate can now be made. Except the salary of
the laureate, to which king James added the office of historiographer,
perhaps with some additional emoluments, his whole revenue seems to have
been casual; and it is well known that he seldom lives frugally who lives
by chance. Hope is always liberal; and they that trust her promises make
little scruple of revelling to-day on the profits of the morrow.

Of his plays the profit was not great; and of the produce of his other
works very little intelligence can be had. By discoursing with the
late amiable Mr. Tonson, I could not find that any memorials of the
transactions between his predecessor and Dryden had been preserved,
except the following papers:

"I do hereby promise to pay John Dryden, esq. or order, on the 25th of
March, 1699, the sum of two hundred and fifty guineas, in consideration
of ten thousand verses, which the said John Dryden, esq. is to deliver
to me, Jacob Tonson, when finished, whereof seven thousand five hundred
verses, more or less, are already in the said Jacob Tonson's possession.
And I do hereby further promise and engage myself, to make up the said
sum of two hundred and fifty guineas three hundred pounds sterling to the
said John Dryden, esq. his executors, administrators, or assigns, at the
beginning of the second impression of the said ten thousand verses.

"In witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand and seal, this 20th day
of March, 1698-9.

"JACOB TONSON.

"Sealed and delivered, being
first duly stampt, pursuant
to the acts of parliament for
that purpose, in the presence
of
"BEN. PORTLOCK,
"WILL. CONGREVE. "

"March 24, 1698.

"Received then of Mr. Jacob Tonson the sum of two hundred sixty-eight
pounds fifteen shillings, in pursuance of an agreement for ten thousand
verses, to be delivered by me to the said Jacob Tonson, whereof I have
already delivered to him about seven thousand five hundred, more or less;
he, the said Jacob Tonson, being obliged to make up the foresaid sum of
two hundred sixty-eight pounds fifteen shillings three hundred pounds,
at the beginning of the second impression of the foresaid ten thousand
verses;

"I say, received by me,

"JOHN DRYDEN.

"Witness, CHARLES DRYDEN. "

Two hundred and fifty guineas, at 1_l_, 1_s_. 6_d_. is 268_l_. 15_s_.

It is manifest, from the dates of this contract, that it relates to the
volume of Fables, which contains about twelve thousand verses, and for
which, therefore, the payment must have been afterwards enlarged.

I have been told of another letter yet remaining, in which he desires
Tonson to bring him money, to pay for a watch which he had ordered for
his son, and which the maker would not leave without the price.

The inevitable consequence of poverty is dependence. Dryden had probably
no recourse in his exigencies but to his bookseller. The particular
character of Tonson I do not know; but the general conduct of traders
was much less liberal in those times than in our own; their views were
narrower, and their manners grosser. To the mercantile ruggedness of that
race, the delicacy of the poet was sometimes exposed. Lord Bolingbroke,
who in his youth had cultivated poetry, related to Dr. King, of
Oxford, that one day, when he visited Dryden, they heard, as they were
conversing, another person entering the house. "This," said Dryden, "is
Tonson. You will take care not to depart before he goes away; for I
have not completed the sheet which I promised him; and if you leave me
unprotected, I must suffer all the rudeness to which his resentment can
prompt his tongue. "

What rewards he obtained for his poems, besides the payment of the
bookseller, cannot be known. Mr. Derrick, who consulted some of his
relations, was informed that his Fables obtained five hundred pounds from
the dutchess of Ormond; a present not unsuitable to the magnificence of
that splendid family; and he quotes Moyle, as relating that forty pounds
were paid by a musical society for the use of Alexander's Feast.

In those days the economy of government was yet unsettled, and the
payments of the exchequer were dilatory and uncertain: of this disorder
there is reason to believe that the laureate sometimes felt the effects;
for, in one of his prefaces he complains of those, who, being intrusted
with the distribution of the prince's bounty, suffer those that depend
upon it to languish in penury.

Of his petty habits or slight amusements, tradition has retained little.
Of the only two men, whom I have found, to whom he was personally known,
one told me, that at the house which he frequented, called Will's
Coffee-house, the appeal upon any literary dispute was made to him;
and the other related, that his armed chair, which in the winter had a
settled and prescriptive place by the fire, was in the summer placed in
the balcony, and that he called the two places his winter and his summer
seat. This is all the intelligence which his two survivers afforded me.

One of his opinions will do him no honour in the present age, though in
his own time, at least in the beginning of it, he was far from having it
confined to himself. He put great confidence in the prognostications
of judicial astrology. In the appendix to the Life of Congreve is a
narrative of some of his predictions wonderfully fulfilled; but I know
not the writer's means of information, or character of veracity. That he
had the configurations of the horoscope in his mind, and considered them
as influencing the affairs of men, he does not forbear to hint:

The utmost malice of the stars is past.
Now frequent _trines_ the happier lights among,
And _high-rais'd Jove_, from his dark prison freed,
Those weights took off that on his planet hung,
Will gloriously the new-laid works succeed.

He has, elsewhere, shown his attention to the planetary powers; and,
in the preface to his Fables, has endeavoured obliquely to justify his
superstition, by attributing the same to some of the ancients. The
letter, added to this narrative, leaves no doubt of his notions or
practice.

So slight and so scanty is the knowledge which I have been able to
collect concerning the private life and domestick manners of a man whom
every English generation must mention with reverence as a critick and a
poet.

Dryden may be properly considered as the father of English criticism, as
the writer who first taught us to determine upon principles the merit of
composition. Of our former poets, the greatest dramatist wrote without
rules, conducted through life and nature by a genius that rarely misled,
and rarely deserted him. Of the rest, those who knew the laws of
propriety had neglected to teach them.

Two Arts of English Poetry were written in the days of Elizabeth by Webb
and Puttenham, from which something might be learned, and a few hints had
been given by Jonson and Cowley; but Dryden's Essay on Dramatick Poetry
was the first regular and valuable treatise on the art of writing.

He who, having formed his opinions in the present age of English
literature, turns back to peruse this dialogue, will not, perhaps, find
much increase of knowledge, or much novelty of instruction; but he is to
remember that critical principles were then in the hands of a few, who
had gathered them partly from the ancients, and partly from the Italians
and French. The structure of dramatick poems was not then generally
understood. Audiences applauded by instinct, and poets, perhaps, often
pleased by chance.

A writer who obtains his full purpose loses himself in his own lustre.
Of an opinion which is no longer doubted, the evidence ceases to
be examined. Of an art universally practised, the first teacher is
forgotten. Learning once made popular is no longer learning; it has the
appearance of something which we have bestowed upon ourselves, as the dew
appears to rise from the field which it refreshes.

To judge rightly of an author, we must transport ourselves to his time,
and examine what were the wants of his contemporaries, and what were his
means of supplying them. That which is easy at one time was difficult at
another. Dryden at least imported his science, and gave his country
what it wanted before; or rather, he imported only the materials and
manufactured them by his own skill.

The Dialogue on the Drama was one of his first essays of criticism,
written when he was yet a timorous candidate for reputation, and,
therefore, laboured with that diligence which he might allow himself
somewhat to remit, when his name gave sanction to his positions, and his
awe of the publick was abated, partly by custom, and partly by success.
It will not be easy to find, in all the opulence of our language, a
treatise so artfully variegated with successive representations of
opposite probabilities, so enlivened with imagery, so brightened with
illustrations. His portraits of the English dramatists are wrought with
great spirit and diligence. The account of Shakespeare may stand as a
perpetual model of encomiastick criticism; exact without minuteness,
and lofty without exaggeration. The praise lavished by Longinus, on the
attestation of the heroes of Marathon by Demosthenes, fades away before
it. In a few lines is exhibited a character, so extensive in its
comprehension, and so curious in its limitations, that nothing can be
added, diminished, or reformed; nor can the editors and admirers of
Shakespeare, in all their emulation of reverence, boast of much more than
of having diffused and paraphrased this epitome of excellence, of having
changed Dryden's gold for baser metal, of lower value though of greater
bulk.

In this, and in all his other essays on the same subject, the criticism
of Dryden is the criticism of a poet; not a dull collection of theorems,
nor a rude detection of faults, which, perhaps, the censor was not able
to have committed; but a gay and vigorous dissertation, where delight
is mingled with instruction, and where the author proves his right of
judgment by his power of performance.

The different manner and effect with which critical knowledge may be
conveyed, was, perhaps, never more clearly exemplified than in the
performances of Rymer and Dryden. It was said of a dispute between two
mathematicians, "malim cum Scaligero errare, quam cum Clavio recte
sapere;" that "it was more eligible to go wrong with one, than right
with the other. " A tendency of the same kind every mind must feel at the
perusal of Dryden's prefaces and Rymer's discourses. With Dryden we are
wandering in quest of truth; whom we find, if we find her at all, drest
in the graces of elegance; and, if we miss her, the labour of the pursuit
rewards itself; we are led only through fragrance and flowers. Rymer,
without taking a nearer, takes a rougher way; every step is to be made
through thorns and brambles; and truth, if we meet her, appears repulsive
by her mien, and ungraceful by her habit. Dryden's criticism has the
majesty of a queen; Rymer's has the ferocity of a tyrant.

As he had studied with great diligence the art of poetry, and enlarged or
rectified his notions, by experience perpetually increasing, he had his
mind stored with principles and observations; he poured out his knowledge
with little labour; for of labour, notwithstanding the multiplicity of
his productions, there is sufficient reason to suspect that he was not
a lover. To write _con amore_, with fondness for the employment, with
perpetual touches and retouches, with unwillingness to take leave of his
own idea, and an unwearied pursuit of unattainable perfection, was, I
think, no part of his character.

His criticism may be considered as general or occasional. In his general
precepts, which depend upon the nature of things, and the structure
of the human mind, he may, doubtless, be safely recommended to the
confidence of the reader; but his occasional and particular positions
were sometimes interested, sometimes negligent, and sometimes capricious.
It is not without reason that Trapp, speaking of the praises which he
bestows on Palamon and Arcite, says, "Novimus judicium Drydeni de poemate
quodam Chauceri, pulchro sane illo, et admodum laudando, nimirum quod non
modo vere epicum sit, sed Iliada etiam atque Aeneada aequet, imo superet.
Sed novimus eodem tempore viri illius maximi non semper accuratissimas
esse censuras, nec ad severissimam critices normam exactas: illo judice
id plerumque optimum est, quod nunc prae manibus habet, et in quo nunc
occupatur. "

He is, therefore, by no means constant to himself. His defence and
desertion of dramatick rhyme is generally known. Spence, in his remarks
on Pope's Odyssey, produces what he thinks an unconquerable quotation
from Dryden's preface to the Aeneid, in favour of translating an epick
poem into blank verse; but he forgets that when his author attempted the
Iliad, some years afterwards, he departed from his own decision, and
translated into rhyme.

When he has any objection to obviate, or any license to defend, he is not
very scrupulous about what he asserts, nor very cautious, if the present
purpose be served, not to entangle himself in his own sophistries. But,
when all arts are exhausted, like other hunted animals, he sometimes
stands at bay; when he cannot disown the grossness of one of his plays,
he declares that he knows not any law that prescribes morality to a
comick poet.

His remarks on ancient or modern writers are not always to be trusted.
His parallel of the versification of Ovid with that of Claudian has been
very justly censured by Sewel[120]. His comparison of the first line of
Virgil with the first of Statius is not happier. Virgil, he says, is
soft and gentle, and would have thought Statius mad, if he had heard him
thundering out:

Quae superimposito moles geminata colosso.

Statius, perhaps, heats himself, as he proceeds, to exaggerations
somewhat hyperbolical; but undoubtedly Virgil would have been too hasty,
if he had condemned him to straw for one sounding line. Dryden wanted an
instance, and the first that occurred was imprest into the service.

What he wishes to say, he says at hazard; he cited Gorbuduc, which he
had never seen; gives a false account of Chapman's versification; and
discovers, in the preface to his Fables, that he translated the first
book of the Iliad without knowing what was in the second.

It will be difficult to prove that Dryden ever made any great advances
in literature. As, having distinguished himself at Westminster under the
tuition of Busby, who advanced his scholars to a height of knowledge very
rarely attained in grammar-schools, he resided afterwards at Cambridge,
it is not to be supposed, that his skill in the ancient languages was
deficient, compared with that of common students; but his scholastick
acquisitions seem not proportionate to his opportunities and abilities.
He could not, like Milton or Cowley, have made his name illustrious
merely by his learning. He mentions but few books, and those such as lie
in the beaten track of regular study; from which, if ever he departs, he
is in danger of losing himself in unknown regions.

In his Dialogue on the Drama, he pronounces, with great confidence, that
the Latin tragedy of Medea is not Ovid's, because it is not sufficiently
interesting and pathetick. He might have determined the question upon
surer evidence; for it is quoted by Quintilian as the work of Seneca; and
the only line which remains of Ovid's play, for one line is left us, is
not there to be found. There was, therefore, no need of the gravity of
conjecture, or the discussion of plot or sentiment, to find what was
already known upon higher authority than such discussions can ever reach.

His literature, though not always free from ostentation, will be commonly
found either obvious, and made his own by the art of dressing it; or
superficial, which, by what he gives, shows what he wanted; or erroneous,
hastily collected, and negligently scattered.

Yet it cannot be said that his genius is ever unprovided of matter, or
that his fancy languishes in penury of ideas. His works abound with
knowledge, and sparkle with illustrations. There is scarcely any science
or faculty that does not supply him with occasional images and lucky
similitudes; every page discovers a mind very widely acquainted both with
art and nature, and in full possession of great stores of intellectual
wealth. Of him that knows much, it is natural to suppose that he has read
with diligence; yet I rather believe that the knowledge of Dryden was
gleaned from accidental intelligence and various conversation, by a quick
apprehension, a judicious selection, and a happy memory, a keen appetite
of knowledge, and a powerful digestion; by vigilance that permitted
nothing to pass without notice, and a habit of reflection that suffered
nothing useful to be lost. A mind like Dryden's, always curious, always
active, to which every understanding was proud to be associated, and of
which every one solicited the regard, by an ambitious display of himself,
had a more pleasant, perhaps a nearer way to knowledge than by the silent
progress of solitary reading. I do not suppose that he despised books,
or intentionally neglected them; but that he was carried out, by the
impetuosity of his genius, to more vivid and speedy instructors; and
that his studies were rather desultory and fortuitous than constant and
systematical.

It must be confessed, that he scarcely ever appears to want
book-learning, but when he mentions books; and to him may be transferred
the praise which he gives his master Charles:

His conversation, wit, and parts,
His knowledge in the noblest useful arts,
Were such, dead authors could not give,
But habitudes of those that live,
Who, lighting him, did greater lights receive:
He drained from all, and all they knew,
His apprehensions quick, his judgment true:
That the most learn'd with shame confess,
His knowledge more, his reading only less.

Of all this, however, if the proof be demanded, I will not undertake to
give it; the atoms of probability, of which my opinion has been formed,
lie scattered over all his works; and by him who thinks the question
worth his notice, his works must be perused with very close attention.

Criticism, either didactick or defensive, occupies almost all his prose,
except those pages which he has devoted to his patrons; but none of his
prefaces were ever thought tedious. They have not the formality of a
settled style, in which the first half of the sentence betrays the other.
The clauses are never balanced, nor the periods modelled; every word
seems to drop by chance, though it falls into its proper place. Nothing
is cold or languid; the whole is airy, animated, and vigorous; what is
little, is gay; what fe great, is splendid. He may be thought to mention
himself too frequently; but, while he forces himself upon our esteem, we
cannot refuse him to stand high in his own. Every thing is excused by the
play of images, and the sprightliness of expression. Though all is easy,
nothing is feeble; though all seems careless, there is nothing harsh; and
though since his earlier works more than a century has passed, they have
nothing yet uncouth or obsolete.

He who writes much will not easily escape a manner, such a recurrence of
particular modes as may be easily noted. Dryden is always "another and
the same;" he does not exhibit a second time the same elegancies in the
same form, nor appears to have any art other than that of expressing
with clearness what he thinks with vigour. His style could not easily be
imitated, either seriously or ludicrously; for, being always equable and
always varied, it has no prominent or discriminative characters. The
beauty who is totally free from disproportion of parts and features,
cannot be ridiculed by an overcharged resemblance.

From his prose, however, Dryden derives only his accidental and secondary
praise; the veneration with which his name is pronounced by every
cultivator of English literature, is paid to him as he refined the
language, improved the sentiments, and tuned the numbers of English
poetry.

After about half a century of forced thoughts, and rugged metre, some
advances towards nature and harmony had been already made by Waller and
Denham; they had shown that long discourses in rhyme grew more pleasing
when they were broken into couplets, and that verse consisted not only in
the number but the arrangement of syllables.

But though they did much, who can deny that they left much to do? Their
works were not many, nor were their minds of very ample comprehension.
More examples of more modes of composition were necessary for the
establishment of regularity, and the introduction of propriety in word
and thought.

Every language of a learned nation necessarily divides itself into
diction scholastick and popular, grave and familiar, elegant and gross:
and from a nice distinction of these different parts arises a great part
of the beauty of style. But if we except a few minds, the favourites of
nature, to whom their own original rectitude was in the place of rules,
this delicacy of selection was little known to our authors; our speech
lay before them in a heap of confusion, and every man took for every
purpose, what chance might offer him.

There was, therefore, before the time of Dryden no poetical diction, no
system of words at once refined from the grossness of domestick use, and
free from the harshness of terms appropriated to particular arts. Words
too familiar, or too remote, defeat the purpose of a poet. From those
sounds which we hear on small or on coarse occasions, we do not easily
receive strong impressions, or delightful images; and words to which
we are nearly strangers, whenever they occur, draw that attention on
themselves which they should transmit to things.

Those happy combinations of words which distinguish poetry from prose had
been rarely attempted; we had few elegancies or flowers of speech; the
roses had not yet been plucked from the bramble; or different colours had
not been joined to enliven one another.

It may be doubted whether Waller and Denham could have overborne the
prejudices which had long prevailed, fend which even then were sheltered
by the protection of Cowley. The new versification, as it was called, may
be considered as owing its establishment to Dryden; from whose time it is
apparent that English poetry has had no tendency to relapse to its former
savageness.