rather his first play that was exhibited, was the 'Wild Gallant.' It was probably produced on the stage the 5th February,* 1662-3. The want of success was, perhaps, compensated by the favourable influence of the celebrated Countess of Castlemaine, afterwards the Dutchess of Cleveland. More than once, Charles commanded it to be performed before him; it was more distinguished for the smartness of its repartee than for the skilfulness of the plot, and its 'prize fights of wit' have been ridiculed in the Rehearsal. There is in the Wild Gallant a strange improbability of incident, and a bustling intrigue taken from the Spanish drama. The character of Isabella is immodest and loose. The absurdity of the gross deceit attempted to be passed on Lord Nonsuch probably turned the fate of the play. Seven years afterwards, when it was corrected and revised, that this part was not omitted nor remodelled is surprising. Constance's marriage, under the character of Fortune, has been properly reprehended as unnatural and grotesque. The second prologue is very indecent, and the loose ness of the dialogue offensive; but this is a fault pervading most of Dryden's plays. It has been vainly attempted to turn the blame from the poet to the audience, though it has been urged by his critics and by himself that those who live to please, must please to live.' I wish that so heavy a charge had met with a better exculpation.

Having failed in his first attempts at comedy, which he discovered' was the most difficult part of dramatic poetry,' Dryden's next performance was a tragi-comedy, called the Rival Ladies,§ which was publicly exhibited in the

On the 19th November, 1662, Dryden was elected a fellow of the Royal Society, which is supposed to show his early reputation for knowledge. Cowley and Denham were also admitted into it. See Birch's Hist. of the R. Society, i. 125, 127.

* Dryden addressed some sprightly and gallant verses to her on her encouraging this play, Scott's ed. vol. xi. p. 18. He compares her influence to the virtue of Cato, But you have done what Cato could not do,' which is very true; for she slept with Charles II. the very first night he arrived in London, nathless, our poet says,

Your power you never use, but for defence
To guard your own, or others innocence.

In the scene betwixt Prince Prettyman and Tom Thimble Bibber, being the original of the latter personage. Some part of the character of Trice,' 18 imitated from that of Carlo, in Jonson's' Every Man out of his Humour.'

This play was with propriety dedicated to the Earl of Orrery, himself the first writer of rhyming plays after the Restoration. The flatness and insipidity of his language is ridiculed in Timon, a Satyr. Buckingham's Works, i. p. 163.

Half wit cries up my Lord of Orrery.
Ah! how well Mustapha and Zanger die;

winter of 1663. The tragic scenes of the play are written in rhyme,*while the lighter are formed into blank verse. Dryden has earnestly defended his practice with arguments, rather ingenious than convincing; for, if admitted, they would censure or condemn not only some of the finest passages in our 'old Cothurnal scenes,' but the system on which their poetry was founded, and the end which it aspired to attain; but truth, our heroic verse in rhyme is most adverse to the exhibition of dramatic passion, or powerful and changing emotion. It leads the poet into long unbroken declamation, and totally precludes the abrupt transitions and bold rapid movements, by which true and strong feeling is declared. Nothing is left for the genius of the actor, in look, in gesture, in the eloquence of silence to supply; or for the imagination of the audience to assist; nothing to strike on the chords of association in our mind; nothing imperfect and halfdrawn that calls upon the fancy to fill up the unfinished picture, and gives it a share in the creations of the poet. Here surely lies much of the fascination of poetry. At the first breath heard from the enchanted horn, when touched by the lips of genius, all becomes inspiration and illusion; the scenes and shadows of ordinary life disappear; a light not borrowed of the earth glitters over

His sense so little fired, that by one line
You may the other easily divine;

And which is worse, if any worse can be,
He never said one word of it to me.'-
There's luscious poetry, you'd swear 't was prose,
So little on the sense the rhymes impose.
In Mustapha, p. 105, Solyman says,

(Sol.) Forgive her, Heaven !-here-take my handkercher, Dispatch !-why do you pause?(Roz)-Forgive her, Sir.

The play of the Black Prince was spoken by the genius of England, holding a trident in one hand, and a sword in the other. Lines similar to the following often occur:

You know, when to the wars of France I went, I made a friendship with the Duke of Kent. Herod says to Solemus,

This storm which thou hast rais'd, dost thou not dread?

Look on me-look-have I not stared thee dead? Tamar. Permit me first, Madam, to dress your wound.

Queen. It is a scratch, and is already bound.

In this moving manner the noble author goes through a folio volume, and receives the highest commendations from Mr. N. Tate. In his Comedy of Mr. Anthony, there was a duel between Mr. Nokes and Mr. Angel; one came armed with a blunderbuss, and the other with a bow and arrows.

The dedication to Lord Orrery is composed in a strain of laboured and ingenious flattery; there are two mistakes in it, one relating to Gorboduc, the other, that Shakspeare invented blank verse. He praises Waller, Denham, and Davenant, and defends rhyming verse.

the new creation; every power of nature starts <from its repose, and the feelings of the mind waken from their slumber, to hasten into the magic circle in which they are invoked. The key that opens the paradise of poetic creation is placed in our hands: language itself changes its ordinary form, and kindles into impassioned eloquence, and then showered from the urn of phantasy appear

The thoughts that breathe, and words that burn. In these plays rhyme was not simply an additional ornament, that, like fringe upon a garment, might be removed without injury; it did not constitute merely a casual part of the vehicle in which the sentiments were conveyed, but it was intimately connected with the structure of the drama, for it removed the dramatic imitation farther from nature, and thus rendered the extravagant_sentiments and improbable incidents less offensive; like a harmonious glazing to a picture, it served to keep all the poetic colours in tone. With the disuse of rhyme, an alteration took place in the other constituents of the drama, in the sentiments, the figures, the language, the incidents, and the general principle. I am not aware that Dry den, and the other poets of the heroic school, availed themselves of the power which they possessed of breaking up their verse into irregular pauses, thus giving a greater variety to its intonation, and a bolder and less monotonous character. This has been adopted with success by the actors on the French stage, where the verse with difficulty admits it, and when such an alteration in the manner of delivery was not anticipated or provided for by the author.*

In this play is to be found the bustle, the intrigue, and the disguise of the Spanish plot. The scene between Hippolyto and Amelia (act iv. sc. 3.) is ludicrous and absurd. Perplexities arise without any reasonable cause; and difficulties are solved without any probability of circumstances. The plot is concluded, not by a skilful combination of events gradually closing and conducting to the development, but by an unnatural transfer of affection in the heroines of the drama, suddenly huddled up in the concluding scene. The jealousies and partialities of love at once subside; which had been sustained under perplexity of adventure, artifice of disguise, and variety of situation. Dryden has taken advantage of every form of ornament and every vehicle of expression which our language

Cibber mentions that Sanford, the actor, used to throw the cadence on different parts of the line, in order to avoid surfeiting the audience by a continual recurrence of rhyme. Scott's Life. p. 96.

ma.

After the Restoration, the theatres were limited to two in number. One was placed under the direction of Sir W. Davenant, and called the Duke's theatre. Betterton and other actors of much merit belonged to it: at the head of the other was placed Killigrew; his performers constituted the king's company, and with this lat ter theatre Dryden was particularly connected. Sir R. Howard's play suggested to our Poet the subject of his next, The Indian Emperor,'t which, though not printed till October, 1667, had probably been acted early in the winter of

1664. There was not much connexion between the plot of this play, and that of his predecessor. All, it is said, that Dryden borrowed were three ghosts, the sole sad survivors, if such they can be called, of the personæ dramatis of the Indian Queen, with the exception of Montezuma. This play was dedicated to his earliest patroness, Anne, Dutchess of Monmouth: its own merits, assisted by her influence, ensured its success, and placed Dryden with

out a rival on the throne of dramatic fame.

Dryden has prefixed some lines to a volume of Sir R. Howard's Poetry; they have but little reference to the subject to which they are addressed, and a person would in vain search the poems of the author to discover sufficient materials for so splendid a eulogy. The observations which Dryden makes on the Achilleis of Statius, and of the additional beauties conferred by the translator, show either that he was ignorant of the poem (one of the most beautiful and elegant fragments of antiquity, with golden lights from Virgil's brighter day still hanging on it,) or that in his anxiety to praise, he was careless of the truth. Few poems are more spirited and interesting than the original: none more utterly

worthless than the translation.

To the second edition of the Indian Emperor, in 1668, was prefixed Dryden's Defence of an Essay on Dramatic Poetry. It was directed against the remarks which Sir R. Howard prefixed to his Duke of Lerna. Scott says it is worthy of preservation. as it would be difficult to point out deeper contempt and irony couched under language so temperate, cold, and outwardly respectful.

Sir W. Scott has remarked the charm of the poetry and the ingenuity of the dialogue;' but the praise cannot be extended to any skilfulness of design, or variety of character. The Indians and Spaniards are all indiscriminately cast in the same heroic model.* A succession of scenes carries on the plot without unfolding it, and the voluntary death of many of the characters terminates without interest, what the ingenuity of the poet should have conducted to a more skilful issue. Love misplaced, and affections entangled in an unfortunate choice, provide an intricacy of situation that gives room for the invention of the poet; but no attempt is made to move our affections, which the subect would so easily admit, nor is advantage taken of the striking contrast which the different characters and countries would so easily have afforded. The metaphysical reasoning between the priest and Montezuma, while the latter was on the rack, shows how on Dryden's system, ingenuity of thought and well expressed argument was to compensate for the violation of all probability, and to excuse an infringement ever. on the laws of nature.†

*Sir W. Scott justly says, that he has little doubt but that the heroic tragedies were the legitimate offspring of the French romances of Scuderi and Calprenede. The absolute dominion of Louis XIV. extended over the field of poetry and literature, as well as that of arms; nothing of passion, of emotion, of nature was allowed to be exhibited, lest it should break through the feelings of the audience, and impair the dignity of the monarch, whose system it was that he was the sole and single object of attraction. Every thing was to be formed on an ideal and gigantic scale, every sentiment was to be lofty and striking; the valour of the hero resistless, and the beauty of the heroine unrivalled. Thus Louis lived, and ruled a world of his own creation. This our stage adopted, and Charles approved. See some sensible observations on this subiect by a clever entertaining writer, Mons. De Mayer, in the Preface to his Geneviève de Cornouailles, 1764, p. xvii. xxi. Si leurs personnages étoient des giants, c'est que Louis XIV. avoit imprimé un grand caractère à son siècle. Louis XIV. que Fredéric a nommé le grand magicien, parceque il a pétri les têtes de ses sujets, n'aimoit que ce qui portoit l'emprunte de la grandeur, &c. -Les héros Grecs et Romains avoient les deux Oron

queues, l'écharpe et les grands canons.
date et Palamède naissoient, mouroient à Ver-
sailles, et se promenoient sur leurs destriers de
St. Germains à Marly. Ce ridicule disparut sur
la fin du règne de Louis XIV. &c. In Charles
the Second's reign the Maid's Tragedy' was
prohibited, because it turns on the seduction of
Evadne by a licentious king. See Cibber's Apo-
logy, p. 199. Waller wrote a fifth act, with a
different and less displeasing termination.

Some passages are extravagantly absurd, as
'As if our old world modestly withdrew,
And here in private had brought forth a new.'
And.

In Shakspeare and in the tragedies of the elder dramatists, the difficulties arise from the progress of unrestrained passions, and the indulgence of criminal desires, involving the possessors in the fatal consequences of guilt. and burying them under the ruins of the unhallowed structure which they reared. Thus Othello perishes through jealousy, Macbeth by ambi-tion, Richard by perfidy and cruelty, and Anthony the indolent, the voluptuous, and the brave, was dishonoured and dethroned by her, whose smile could melt the sternest bosoms into love, and at whose feet of beauty the rival sceptres of the earth were laid.

In Dryden, such is the difference in the structure of his dramas, the characters are, from the outset, surrounded with elaborate contrivances of perplexity. Affections are dissembled, perverted, or misplaced; the calls of duty and the feelings of desire are placed in opposition to each other; the difficulties do not grow out of the progress of the plot, or arise from the natural development of individual character and the conflict or combinations of the varied passions and affections, but are gratuitously formed; and, at length, when ingenuity has been exhausted, and the arts of evasion baffled by the stubbornness of the materials, a conclusion is obtained by an unnatural and rapid removal of part of the characters, or by an unexpected and unaccountable alteration of their sentiments.

year,

In consequence of the plague, which broke out with such alarming violence this and the terrific conflagration on the following, which laid the most populous and wealthy part of London in ashes, no plays were allowed to be exhibited. The prohibition extended from May 1665 to Christmas 1666. During this intervai Dryden is supposed, with circumstances, says Johnson, according to the satire imputed to Lord Somers, not honourable to either party, to have married the Lady Elizabeth Howard,* 'I kill'd a double man; the one half lay Upon the ground, the other ran away.' The former couplet is quoted in Timon, a Satire, in the Duke of Buckingham's Works, p. 164.

who but he durst presume To make th' old world a new withdrawing room, When of another world she's brought to bed, What a brave midwife is a laureat's head.'

She is called the Lady Elzabeth. See Wilson's Life of Congreve passim, and Malone's Life of Dryden, p. 395. I am not at all anxious to promote quarrels between man and wife; or to disturb the virtuous repose of the Lady Elzabeth; but I must say, that I have stumbled on a very awkward letter from her, unnoticed by her biographers, and which, considering the noted gallantry of the person to whom it was addressed, wants, my dear Lady Elzy, some little explanation on your part.