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.
praise, was transferred to Shadwell, an old enemy, whom he had formerly
stigmatised by the name of Og.
Samuel Johnson - Lives of the Poets - 1
As it was written against the
papists, it would naturally, at that time, have friends and enemies; and
partly by the popularity which it obtained at first, and partly by the
real power both of the serious and risible part, it continued long a
favourite of the publick.
It was Dryden's opinion, at least for some time, and he maintains it in
the dedication of this play, that the drama required an alternation of
comick and tragick scenes; and that it is necessary to mitigate, by
alleviations of merriment, the pressure of ponderous events, and the
fatigue of toilsome passions. "Whoever," says he, "cannot perform both
parts, is but half a writer for the stage. "
The Duke of Guise, a tragedy, 1683, written in conjunction with Lee, as
Oedipus had been before, seems to deserve notice only for the offence
which it gave to the remnant of the covenanters, and in general to the
enemies of the court, who attacked him with great violence, and were
answered by him; though, at last, he seems to withdraw from the conflict,
by transferring the greater part of the blame or merit to his partner. It
happened that a contract had been made between them, by which they were
to join in writing a play; and "he happened," says Dryden, "to claim the
promise just upon the finishing of a poem, when I would have been glad of
a little respite. _Two_-thirds of it belonged to him; and to me only the
first scene of the play, the whole fourth act, and the first half, or
somewhat more, of the fifth. "
This was a play written professedly for the party of the duke of York,
whose succession was then opposed. A parallel is intended between the
leaguers of France, and the covenanters of England: and this intention
produced the controversy.
Albion and Albanius, 1685, is a musical drama or opera, written, like
the Duke of Guise, against the republicans. With what success it was
performed, I have not found[103].
The State of Innocence and Fall of Man, 1675, is termed, by him, an
opera: it is rather a tragedy in heroick rhyme, but of which the
personages are such as cannot decently be exhibited on the stage. Some
such production was foreseen by Marvel, who writes thus to Milton:
Or if a work so infinite be spann'd,
Jealous I was, lest some less skilful hand
(Such as disquiet always what is well,
And by ill-imitating would excel,)
Might hence presume the whole creation's day
To change in scenes, and show it in a play.
It is another of his hasty productions; for the heat of his imagination
raised it in a month.
This composition is addressed to the princess of Modena, then dutchess of
York, in a strain of flattery which disgraces genius, and which it was
wonderful that any man, that knew the meaning of his own words, could use
without self-detestation. It is an attempt to mingle earth and heaven, by
praising human excellence in the language of religion.
The preface contains an apology for heroick verse and poetick license; by
which is meant not any liberty taken in contracting or extending words,
but the use of bold fictions and ambitious figures.
The reason which he gives for printing what was never acted, cannot be
overpassed: "I was induced to it in my own defence, many hundred copies
of it being dispersed abroad without my knowledge or consent, and every
one gathering new faults, it became, at length, a libel against me. "
These copies, as they gathered faults, were apparently manuscript; and
he lived in an age very unlike ours, if many hundred copies of fourteen
hundred lines were likely to be transcribed. An author has a right to
print his own works, and needs not seek an apology in falsehood; but he
that could bear to write the dedication, felt no pain in writing the
preface.
Aureng Zebe, 1676, is a tragedy founded on the actions of a great prince
then reigning, but over nations not likely to employ their criticks upon
the transactions of the English stage. If he had known and disliked
his own character, our trade was not in those times secure from his
resentment. His country is at such a distance, that the manners might be
safely falsified, and the incidents feigned; for remoteness of place is
remarked, by Racine, to afford the same conveniencies to a poet as length
of time.
This play is written in rhyme; and has the appearance of being the
most elaborate of all the dramas. The personages are imperial; but the
dialogue is often domestick, and, therefore, susceptible of sentiments
accommodated to familiar incidents. The complaint of life is celebrated;
and there are many other passages that may be read with pleasure.
This play is addressed to the earl of Mulgrave, afterwards duke of
Buckingham, himself, if not a poet, yet a writer of verses, and a
critick. In this address Dryden gave the first hints of his intention to
write an epick poem. He mentions his design in terms so obscure, that he
seems afraid lest his plan should be purloined, as, he says, happened to
him when he told it more plainly in his preface to Juvenal. "The design,"
says he, "you know is great, the story English, and neither too near the
present times, nor too distant from them. "
All for Love, or the World well Lost, 1678, a tragedy, founded upon the
story of Antony and Cleopatra, he tells us, "is the only play which
he wrote for himself:" the rest were given to the people. It is, by
universal consent, accounted the work in which he has admitted the fewest
improprieties of style or character; but it has one fault equal to many,
though rather moral than critical, that, by admitting the romantick
omnipotence of love, he has recommended as laudable, and worthy of
imitation, that conduct which, through all ages, the good have censured
as vitious, and the bad despised as foolish.
Of this play the prologue and the epilogue, though written upon the
common topicks of malicious and ignorant criticism, and without any
particular relation to the characters or incidents of the drama, are
deservedly celebrated for their elegance and sprightliness.
Limberham, or the kind Keeper, 1680, is a comedy, which, after the third
night, was prohibited as too indecent for the stage. What gave offence,
was in the printing, as the author says, altered or omitted. Dryden
confesses that its indecency was objected to; but Langbaine, who yet
seldom favours him, imputes its expulsion to resentment, because it "so
much exposed the keeping part of the town. "
Oedipus, 1679, is a tragedy formed by Dryden and Lee, in conjunction,
from the works of Sophocles, Seneca, and Corneille. Dryden planned the
scenes, and composed the first and third acts.
Don Sebastian, 1690, is commonly esteemed either the first or second of
his dramatick performances. It is too long to be all acted, and has many
characters and many incidents; and though it is not without sallies
of frantick dignity, and more noise than meaning, yet, as it makes
approaches to the possibilities of real life, and has some sentiments
which leave a strong impression, it continued long to attract attention.
Amidst the distresses of princes, and the vicissitudes of empire, are
inserted several scenes which the writer intended for comick; but which,
I suppose, that age did not much commend, and this would not endure.
There are, however, passages of excellence universally acknowledged; the
dispute and the reconciliation of Dorax and Sebastian has always been
admired.
This play was first acted in 1690, after Dryden had for some years
discontinued dramatick poetry.
Amphitryon is a comedy derived from Plautus and Moliere. The dedication
is dated Oct. 1690. This play seems to have succeeded at its first
appearance; and was, I think, long considered as a very diverting
entertainment.
Cleomenes, 1692, is a tragedy, only remarkable as it occasioned an
incident related in the Guardian, and allusively mentioned by Dryden in
his preface. As he came out from the representation, he was accosted thus
by some airy stripling: "Had I been left alone with a young beauty, I
would not have spent my time like your Spartan. " "That sir," said Dryden,
"perhaps, is true; but give me leave to tell you, that you are no hero. "
King Arthur, 1691, is another opera. It was the last work that Dryden
performed for king Charles, who did not live to see it exhibited; and
it does not seem to have been ever brought upon the stage[104]. In the
dedication to the marquis of Halifax, there is a very elegant character
of Charles, and a pleasing account of his latter life. When this was
first brought upon the stage, news that the duke of Monmouth had landed
was told in the theatre; upon which the company departed, and Arthur was
exhibited no more.
His last drama was Love Triumphant, a tragicomedy. In his dedication to
the earl of Salisbury he mentions "the lowness of fortune to which he
has voluntarily reduced himself, and of which he has no reason to be
ashamed. "
This play appeared in 1694. It is said to have been unsuccessful. The
catastrophe, proceeding merely from a change of mind, is confessed by the
author to be defective. Thus he began and ended his dramatick labours
with ill success.
From such a number of theatrical pieces, it will be supposed, by most
readers, that he must have improved his fortune; at least, that such
diligence, with such abilities, must have set penury at defiance. But
in Dryden's time the drama was very far from that universal approbation
which it has now obtained. The playhouse was abhorred by the puritans,
and avoided by those who desired the character of seriousness or decency.
A grave lawyer would have debased his dignity, and a young trader would
have impaired his credit, by appearing in those mansions of dissolute
licentiousness. The profits of the theatre, when so many classes of the
people were deducted from the audience, were not great; and the poet had,
for a long time, but a single night. The first that had two nights was
Southern; and the first that had three was Howe. There were, however, in
those days, arts of improving a poet's profit, which Dryden forbore to
practise; and a play, therefore, seldom produced him more than a hundred
pounds, by the accumulated gain of the third night, the dedication, and
the copy.
Almost every piece had a dedication, written with such elegance and
luxuriance of praise, as neither haughtiness nor avarice could be
imagined able to resist. But he seems to have made flattery too cheap.
That praise is worth nothing of which the price is known.
To increase the value of his copies, he often accompanied his work with a
preface of criticism; a kind of learning then almost new in the English
language, and which he, who had considered, with great accuracy, the
principles of writing, was able to distribute copiously as occasions
arose. By these dissertations the publick judgment must have been much
improved; and Swift, who conversed with Dryden, relates that he regretted
the success of his own instructions, and found his readers made suddenly
too skilful to be easily satisfied.
His prologues had such reputation, that for some time a play was
considered as less likely to be well received, if some of his verses did
not introduce it. The price of a prologue was two guineas, till, being
asked to write one for Mr. Southern, he demanded three: "Not," said he,
"young man, out of disrespect to you; but the players have had my goods
too cheap[105]. "
Though he declares, that in his own opinion, his genius was not
dramatick, he had great confidence in his own fertility; for he is said
to have engaged, by contract, to furnish four plays a year.
It is certain, that in one year, 1678[106], he published All for Love,
Assignation, two parts of the Conquest of Granada, sir Martin Mar-all,
and the State of Innocence, six complete plays; with a celerity of
performance, which, though all Langbaine's charges of plagiarism should
be allowed, shows such facility of composition, such readiness of
language, and such copiousness of sentiment, as, since the time of Lopez
de Vega, perhaps no other author has possessed.
He did not enjoy his reputation, however great, nor his profits, however
small, without molestation. He had criticks to endure, and rivals to
oppose. The two most distinguished wits of the nobility, the duke of
Buckingham and earl of Rochester, declared themselves his enemies.
Buckingham characterized him, in 1671, by the name of Bayes, in the
Rehearsal; a farce which he is said to have written with the assistance
of Butler, the author of Hudibras; Martin Clifford, of the Charter-house;
and Dr. Sprat, the friend of Cowley, then his chaplain. Dryden and his
friends laughed at the length of time, and the number of hands, employed
upon this performance; in which, though by some artifice of action it yet
keeps possession of the stage, it is not possible now to find any thing
that might not have been written without so long delay, or a confederacy
so numerous.
To adjust the minute events of literary history, is tedious and
troublesome; it requires, indeed, no great force of understanding, but
often depends upon inquiries which there is no opportunity of making, or
is to be fetched from books and pamphlets not always at hand.
The Rehearsal was played in 1671[107], and yet is represented as
ridiculing passages in the Conquest of Granada and Assignation, which
were not published till 1678; in Marriage a-la-mode, published in 1673;
and in Tyrannick Love, in 1677. These contradictions show how rashly
satire is applied[108].
It is said that this farce was originally intended against Davenant, who,
in the first draught, was characterized by the name of Bilboa. Davenant
had been a soldier and an adventurer.
There is one passage in the Rehearsal still remaining, which seems to
have related originally to Davenant. Bayes hurts his nose, and comes in
with brown paper applied to the bruise; how this affected Dryden, does
not appear. Davenant's nose had suffered such diminution by mishaps among
the women, that a patch upon that part evidently denoted him.
It is said, likewise, that sir Robert Howard was once meant. The design
was, probably, to ridicule the reigning poet, whoever he might be.
Much of the personal satire, to which it might owe its first reception,
is now lost or obscured. Bayes, probably, imitated the dress, and
mimicked the manner, of Dryden: the cant words which are so often in
his mouth may be supposed to have been Dryden's habitual phrases, or
customary exclamations. Bayes, when he is to write, is blooded and
purged: this, as Lamotte relates himself to have heard, was the real
practice of the poet.
There were other strokes in the Rehearsal by which malice was gratified:
the debate between love and honour, which keeps prince Volscius in a
single boot, is said to have alluded to the misconduct of the duke
of Ormond, who lost Dublin to the rebels, while he was toying with a
mistress.
The earl of Rochester, to suppress the reputation of Dryden, took Settle
into his protection, and endeavoured to persuade the publick that its
approbation had been to that time misplaced. Settle was awhile in high
reputation: his Empress of Morocco, having first delighted the town, was
carried in triumph to Whitehall, and played by the ladies of the court.
Now was the poetical meteor at the highest; the next moment began its
fall. Rochester withdrew his patronage; seeming resolved, says one of his
biographers, "to have a judgment contrary to that of the town;" perhaps
being unable to endure any reputation beyond a certain height, even when
he had himself contributed to raise it.
Neither criticks nor rivals did Dryden much mischief, unless they gained
from his own temper the power of vexing him, which his frequent bursts of
resentment give reason to suspect. He is always angry at some past, or
afraid of some future censure; but he lessens the smart of his wounds by
the balm of his own approbation, and endeavours to repel the shafts of
criticism by opposing a shield of adamantine confidence.
The perpetual accusation produced against him, was that of plagiarism,
against which he never attempted any vigorous defence; for, though he
was, perhaps, sometimes injuriously censured, he would, by denying part
of the charge, have confessed the rest; and, as his adversaries had the
proof in their own hands, he, who knew that wit had little power against
facts, wisely left in that perplexity which generality produces a
question which it was his interest to suppress, and which, unless
provoked by vindication, few were likely to examine.
Though the life of a writer, from about thirty-five to sixty-three,
may be supposed to have been sufficiently busied by the composition of
eight-and-twenty pieces for the stage, Dryden found room in the same
space for many other undertakings. But, how much soever he wrote, he was
at least once suspected of writing more; for, in 1679, a paper of verses,
called an Essay on Satire, was shown about in manuscript; by which the
earl of Rochester, the dutchess of Portsmouth, and others, were so much
provoked, that, as was supposed, (for the actors were never discovered,)
they procured Dryden, whom they suspected as the author, to be
way-laid and beaten. This incident is mentioned by the duke of
Buckinghamshire[109], the true writer, in his Art of Poetry; where he
says of Dryden:
Though prais'd and beaten for another's rhymes,
His own deserve as great applause sometimes.
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.
papists, it would naturally, at that time, have friends and enemies; and
partly by the popularity which it obtained at first, and partly by the
real power both of the serious and risible part, it continued long a
favourite of the publick.
It was Dryden's opinion, at least for some time, and he maintains it in
the dedication of this play, that the drama required an alternation of
comick and tragick scenes; and that it is necessary to mitigate, by
alleviations of merriment, the pressure of ponderous events, and the
fatigue of toilsome passions. "Whoever," says he, "cannot perform both
parts, is but half a writer for the stage. "
The Duke of Guise, a tragedy, 1683, written in conjunction with Lee, as
Oedipus had been before, seems to deserve notice only for the offence
which it gave to the remnant of the covenanters, and in general to the
enemies of the court, who attacked him with great violence, and were
answered by him; though, at last, he seems to withdraw from the conflict,
by transferring the greater part of the blame or merit to his partner. It
happened that a contract had been made between them, by which they were
to join in writing a play; and "he happened," says Dryden, "to claim the
promise just upon the finishing of a poem, when I would have been glad of
a little respite. _Two_-thirds of it belonged to him; and to me only the
first scene of the play, the whole fourth act, and the first half, or
somewhat more, of the fifth. "
This was a play written professedly for the party of the duke of York,
whose succession was then opposed. A parallel is intended between the
leaguers of France, and the covenanters of England: and this intention
produced the controversy.
Albion and Albanius, 1685, is a musical drama or opera, written, like
the Duke of Guise, against the republicans. With what success it was
performed, I have not found[103].
The State of Innocence and Fall of Man, 1675, is termed, by him, an
opera: it is rather a tragedy in heroick rhyme, but of which the
personages are such as cannot decently be exhibited on the stage. Some
such production was foreseen by Marvel, who writes thus to Milton:
Or if a work so infinite be spann'd,
Jealous I was, lest some less skilful hand
(Such as disquiet always what is well,
And by ill-imitating would excel,)
Might hence presume the whole creation's day
To change in scenes, and show it in a play.
It is another of his hasty productions; for the heat of his imagination
raised it in a month.
This composition is addressed to the princess of Modena, then dutchess of
York, in a strain of flattery which disgraces genius, and which it was
wonderful that any man, that knew the meaning of his own words, could use
without self-detestation. It is an attempt to mingle earth and heaven, by
praising human excellence in the language of religion.
The preface contains an apology for heroick verse and poetick license; by
which is meant not any liberty taken in contracting or extending words,
but the use of bold fictions and ambitious figures.
The reason which he gives for printing what was never acted, cannot be
overpassed: "I was induced to it in my own defence, many hundred copies
of it being dispersed abroad without my knowledge or consent, and every
one gathering new faults, it became, at length, a libel against me. "
These copies, as they gathered faults, were apparently manuscript; and
he lived in an age very unlike ours, if many hundred copies of fourteen
hundred lines were likely to be transcribed. An author has a right to
print his own works, and needs not seek an apology in falsehood; but he
that could bear to write the dedication, felt no pain in writing the
preface.
Aureng Zebe, 1676, is a tragedy founded on the actions of a great prince
then reigning, but over nations not likely to employ their criticks upon
the transactions of the English stage. If he had known and disliked
his own character, our trade was not in those times secure from his
resentment. His country is at such a distance, that the manners might be
safely falsified, and the incidents feigned; for remoteness of place is
remarked, by Racine, to afford the same conveniencies to a poet as length
of time.
This play is written in rhyme; and has the appearance of being the
most elaborate of all the dramas. The personages are imperial; but the
dialogue is often domestick, and, therefore, susceptible of sentiments
accommodated to familiar incidents. The complaint of life is celebrated;
and there are many other passages that may be read with pleasure.
This play is addressed to the earl of Mulgrave, afterwards duke of
Buckingham, himself, if not a poet, yet a writer of verses, and a
critick. In this address Dryden gave the first hints of his intention to
write an epick poem. He mentions his design in terms so obscure, that he
seems afraid lest his plan should be purloined, as, he says, happened to
him when he told it more plainly in his preface to Juvenal. "The design,"
says he, "you know is great, the story English, and neither too near the
present times, nor too distant from them. "
All for Love, or the World well Lost, 1678, a tragedy, founded upon the
story of Antony and Cleopatra, he tells us, "is the only play which
he wrote for himself:" the rest were given to the people. It is, by
universal consent, accounted the work in which he has admitted the fewest
improprieties of style or character; but it has one fault equal to many,
though rather moral than critical, that, by admitting the romantick
omnipotence of love, he has recommended as laudable, and worthy of
imitation, that conduct which, through all ages, the good have censured
as vitious, and the bad despised as foolish.
Of this play the prologue and the epilogue, though written upon the
common topicks of malicious and ignorant criticism, and without any
particular relation to the characters or incidents of the drama, are
deservedly celebrated for their elegance and sprightliness.
Limberham, or the kind Keeper, 1680, is a comedy, which, after the third
night, was prohibited as too indecent for the stage. What gave offence,
was in the printing, as the author says, altered or omitted. Dryden
confesses that its indecency was objected to; but Langbaine, who yet
seldom favours him, imputes its expulsion to resentment, because it "so
much exposed the keeping part of the town. "
Oedipus, 1679, is a tragedy formed by Dryden and Lee, in conjunction,
from the works of Sophocles, Seneca, and Corneille. Dryden planned the
scenes, and composed the first and third acts.
Don Sebastian, 1690, is commonly esteemed either the first or second of
his dramatick performances. It is too long to be all acted, and has many
characters and many incidents; and though it is not without sallies
of frantick dignity, and more noise than meaning, yet, as it makes
approaches to the possibilities of real life, and has some sentiments
which leave a strong impression, it continued long to attract attention.
Amidst the distresses of princes, and the vicissitudes of empire, are
inserted several scenes which the writer intended for comick; but which,
I suppose, that age did not much commend, and this would not endure.
There are, however, passages of excellence universally acknowledged; the
dispute and the reconciliation of Dorax and Sebastian has always been
admired.
This play was first acted in 1690, after Dryden had for some years
discontinued dramatick poetry.
Amphitryon is a comedy derived from Plautus and Moliere. The dedication
is dated Oct. 1690. This play seems to have succeeded at its first
appearance; and was, I think, long considered as a very diverting
entertainment.
Cleomenes, 1692, is a tragedy, only remarkable as it occasioned an
incident related in the Guardian, and allusively mentioned by Dryden in
his preface. As he came out from the representation, he was accosted thus
by some airy stripling: "Had I been left alone with a young beauty, I
would not have spent my time like your Spartan. " "That sir," said Dryden,
"perhaps, is true; but give me leave to tell you, that you are no hero. "
King Arthur, 1691, is another opera. It was the last work that Dryden
performed for king Charles, who did not live to see it exhibited; and
it does not seem to have been ever brought upon the stage[104]. In the
dedication to the marquis of Halifax, there is a very elegant character
of Charles, and a pleasing account of his latter life. When this was
first brought upon the stage, news that the duke of Monmouth had landed
was told in the theatre; upon which the company departed, and Arthur was
exhibited no more.
His last drama was Love Triumphant, a tragicomedy. In his dedication to
the earl of Salisbury he mentions "the lowness of fortune to which he
has voluntarily reduced himself, and of which he has no reason to be
ashamed. "
This play appeared in 1694. It is said to have been unsuccessful. The
catastrophe, proceeding merely from a change of mind, is confessed by the
author to be defective. Thus he began and ended his dramatick labours
with ill success.
From such a number of theatrical pieces, it will be supposed, by most
readers, that he must have improved his fortune; at least, that such
diligence, with such abilities, must have set penury at defiance. But
in Dryden's time the drama was very far from that universal approbation
which it has now obtained. The playhouse was abhorred by the puritans,
and avoided by those who desired the character of seriousness or decency.
A grave lawyer would have debased his dignity, and a young trader would
have impaired his credit, by appearing in those mansions of dissolute
licentiousness. The profits of the theatre, when so many classes of the
people were deducted from the audience, were not great; and the poet had,
for a long time, but a single night. The first that had two nights was
Southern; and the first that had three was Howe. There were, however, in
those days, arts of improving a poet's profit, which Dryden forbore to
practise; and a play, therefore, seldom produced him more than a hundred
pounds, by the accumulated gain of the third night, the dedication, and
the copy.
Almost every piece had a dedication, written with such elegance and
luxuriance of praise, as neither haughtiness nor avarice could be
imagined able to resist. But he seems to have made flattery too cheap.
That praise is worth nothing of which the price is known.
To increase the value of his copies, he often accompanied his work with a
preface of criticism; a kind of learning then almost new in the English
language, and which he, who had considered, with great accuracy, the
principles of writing, was able to distribute copiously as occasions
arose. By these dissertations the publick judgment must have been much
improved; and Swift, who conversed with Dryden, relates that he regretted
the success of his own instructions, and found his readers made suddenly
too skilful to be easily satisfied.
His prologues had such reputation, that for some time a play was
considered as less likely to be well received, if some of his verses did
not introduce it. The price of a prologue was two guineas, till, being
asked to write one for Mr. Southern, he demanded three: "Not," said he,
"young man, out of disrespect to you; but the players have had my goods
too cheap[105]. "
Though he declares, that in his own opinion, his genius was not
dramatick, he had great confidence in his own fertility; for he is said
to have engaged, by contract, to furnish four plays a year.
It is certain, that in one year, 1678[106], he published All for Love,
Assignation, two parts of the Conquest of Granada, sir Martin Mar-all,
and the State of Innocence, six complete plays; with a celerity of
performance, which, though all Langbaine's charges of plagiarism should
be allowed, shows such facility of composition, such readiness of
language, and such copiousness of sentiment, as, since the time of Lopez
de Vega, perhaps no other author has possessed.
He did not enjoy his reputation, however great, nor his profits, however
small, without molestation. He had criticks to endure, and rivals to
oppose. The two most distinguished wits of the nobility, the duke of
Buckingham and earl of Rochester, declared themselves his enemies.
Buckingham characterized him, in 1671, by the name of Bayes, in the
Rehearsal; a farce which he is said to have written with the assistance
of Butler, the author of Hudibras; Martin Clifford, of the Charter-house;
and Dr. Sprat, the friend of Cowley, then his chaplain. Dryden and his
friends laughed at the length of time, and the number of hands, employed
upon this performance; in which, though by some artifice of action it yet
keeps possession of the stage, it is not possible now to find any thing
that might not have been written without so long delay, or a confederacy
so numerous.
To adjust the minute events of literary history, is tedious and
troublesome; it requires, indeed, no great force of understanding, but
often depends upon inquiries which there is no opportunity of making, or
is to be fetched from books and pamphlets not always at hand.
The Rehearsal was played in 1671[107], and yet is represented as
ridiculing passages in the Conquest of Granada and Assignation, which
were not published till 1678; in Marriage a-la-mode, published in 1673;
and in Tyrannick Love, in 1677. These contradictions show how rashly
satire is applied[108].
It is said that this farce was originally intended against Davenant, who,
in the first draught, was characterized by the name of Bilboa. Davenant
had been a soldier and an adventurer.
There is one passage in the Rehearsal still remaining, which seems to
have related originally to Davenant. Bayes hurts his nose, and comes in
with brown paper applied to the bruise; how this affected Dryden, does
not appear. Davenant's nose had suffered such diminution by mishaps among
the women, that a patch upon that part evidently denoted him.
It is said, likewise, that sir Robert Howard was once meant. The design
was, probably, to ridicule the reigning poet, whoever he might be.
Much of the personal satire, to which it might owe its first reception,
is now lost or obscured. Bayes, probably, imitated the dress, and
mimicked the manner, of Dryden: the cant words which are so often in
his mouth may be supposed to have been Dryden's habitual phrases, or
customary exclamations. Bayes, when he is to write, is blooded and
purged: this, as Lamotte relates himself to have heard, was the real
practice of the poet.
There were other strokes in the Rehearsal by which malice was gratified:
the debate between love and honour, which keeps prince Volscius in a
single boot, is said to have alluded to the misconduct of the duke
of Ormond, who lost Dublin to the rebels, while he was toying with a
mistress.
The earl of Rochester, to suppress the reputation of Dryden, took Settle
into his protection, and endeavoured to persuade the publick that its
approbation had been to that time misplaced. Settle was awhile in high
reputation: his Empress of Morocco, having first delighted the town, was
carried in triumph to Whitehall, and played by the ladies of the court.
Now was the poetical meteor at the highest; the next moment began its
fall. Rochester withdrew his patronage; seeming resolved, says one of his
biographers, "to have a judgment contrary to that of the town;" perhaps
being unable to endure any reputation beyond a certain height, even when
he had himself contributed to raise it.
Neither criticks nor rivals did Dryden much mischief, unless they gained
from his own temper the power of vexing him, which his frequent bursts of
resentment give reason to suspect. He is always angry at some past, or
afraid of some future censure; but he lessens the smart of his wounds by
the balm of his own approbation, and endeavours to repel the shafts of
criticism by opposing a shield of adamantine confidence.
The perpetual accusation produced against him, was that of plagiarism,
against which he never attempted any vigorous defence; for, though he
was, perhaps, sometimes injuriously censured, he would, by denying part
of the charge, have confessed the rest; and, as his adversaries had the
proof in their own hands, he, who knew that wit had little power against
facts, wisely left in that perplexity which generality produces a
question which it was his interest to suppress, and which, unless
provoked by vindication, few were likely to examine.
Though the life of a writer, from about thirty-five to sixty-three,
may be supposed to have been sufficiently busied by the composition of
eight-and-twenty pieces for the stage, Dryden found room in the same
space for many other undertakings. But, how much soever he wrote, he was
at least once suspected of writing more; for, in 1679, a paper of verses,
called an Essay on Satire, was shown about in manuscript; by which the
earl of Rochester, the dutchess of Portsmouth, and others, were so much
provoked, that, as was supposed, (for the actors were never discovered,)
they procured Dryden, whom they suspected as the author, to be
way-laid and beaten. This incident is mentioned by the duke of
Buckinghamshire[109], the true writer, in his Art of Poetry; where he
says of Dryden:
Though prais'd and beaten for another's rhymes,
His own deserve as great applause sometimes.
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.
