Where Heaven, as if it left itself behind, Is stretched out far, nor its own bounds confined; Glimmers upon the pure and native day; No pale-faced moon does in stolen beams appear, There thou thyself dost in full presence show, Not absent from these meaner worlds below: No; if thou wert, the Elements' league would cease, JOHN DRYDEN. THE taste and tendencies of the age of Charles II. gave a new tone to English literature; and the writer in whom this feature was embodied, both in its good and evil attributes, was John Dryden. This great poet was born at Aldwinkle in Northamptonshire. He was descended of a knightly family originally from Cumberland, but settled in the counties of Northampton and Huntingdon. Having passed with distinction through the curriculum of Westminster School, under the celebrated Busby, he was admitted to Trinity College, Cambridge, at the age of nineteen. He had already by publication manifested his poetical tendencies. His father's death, in 1655, procured to him two-thirds of a small estate of some sixty pounds a year. On quitting the university, he enjoyed the protection of his relation Sir Gilbert Pickering, a distinguished Parliamentarian, and high in favour in the court of Cromwell. Educated among puritan relatives, Dryden's career begins in a sphere very different from that in which it terminated. One of the first trophies of his muse was "Heroic Stanzas on the late Lord Protector." On the 1 Cowley intends this irregular line as an example of an echo to the sense. 2 This expression has often been plundered from Cowley. 3 Used as a past tense; retained in the vulgar dialect. 4 The poet used imperfect lines; on the supposition that Virgil's imperfect lines were intended to remain so. Restoration, the poet appears with his "Astraea Redux," to hail the return of right and royalty. Dryden's veerings in religion, politics, criticism, and taste, over his whole life, exhibit a mind owning, with true poetical fidelity, the dominion of impulse. His scholarship was various and undigested; his opinions the product of circumstances or passion; his taste too often the reflection of his interest or his prejudices; and his religion, in his youth, that of a mind borne about by every wind of doctrine. On this last subject, he himself thus speaks in the "Hind and Panther" My thoughtless youth was winged with vain desires, My manhood, long misled by wandering fires, Follow'd false lights; and, when their glimpse was gone, With all this there is in Dryden's writings so much hearty earnestness in whatever he asserts, such an English manliness in the expression of apology or gratitude, that we cannot believe him to have been one who coolly calculated how much inconsistency or adulation was worth. For the latter he is not more to blame than many of that age, whose honesty has been much less a subject of question. From the period of "Astraea Redux," Dryden is a court poet. Like Milton, he had early conceived the idea of a great Epic, of which the subject was to have been the British Arthur: but necessity, and the taste of the court and the public, hurried him into the drama, the popular revival of which, but on an unhappy French model, was one of the conspicuous results of the Restoration. It was the great misfortune of Dryden's genius that circumstances compelled it from the course of its own native action. Even his long poems may all be termed occasional; and he himself has confessed that "All for Love" is the only drama he wrote for himself; the others are sacrifices to the tastes of the times. A ribald king and court Bade him toil on to make them sport, Fit for their souls a looser lay, The world, defrauded of the high design, Profaned the God-given strength, and marr'd the lofty line.1 It seems to have been long before Dryden formed his style. His early poetry exhibits the conceits of Donne and Cowley without their warmth of feeling. The first piece in which his genius exhibited any of its proper characteristics was the "Annus Mirabilis," commemorative of the Dutch war and the fire of London. From this period he held the highest rank in English poetical literature, while Milton in obscurity was lamenting the evil days on which he had fallen. In 1663, he married Lady Elizabeth Howard, a daughter of the Earl of Berkshire. Though his marriage allied him to nobility, it did not materially contribute to the increase of his fortune. Dryden's married life, in addition to the subsequent pinchings of penury, was, from the temper of his lady, not a happy one, though his mind seems to have been warmly susceptible of family affections. In 1668 he succeeded Sir William Davenant as poet laureate. This was the prosperous period of Dryden's life. But, though extravagance was not his fault, economy does not seem to have been among his virtues; the Revolution accordingly threw him subsequently into comparative poverty. Dryden's life, Sir Walter Scott remarks, is the history of the literature of his age. His eminence procured him numberless enemies, some of whom his castigations alone have immortalized, and the weight of his satire perpetuated the hostility of rivals. Among his literary foes were Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, the author or part author of the "Rehearsal," a farce intended to ridicule Dryden's dramatic writings; and the witty Earl of Rochester, from whose bravos the acerbity of Dryden's pen drew down on the poet a midnight cudgelling. Settle, a miserable poetaster, and Shadwell, a successful dramatist. Shadwell (satirized under the name of Mac-Flecknoe), are among the victims of Dryden's vigorous arm. Literary controversy was not the only field on which the poet exercised his satiric muse. The latter portion of the reign of Charles II. was agitated by the struggle, excited by the recent terrors of the Popish plot, and the prospect of a Popish successor to the throne in the person of the Duke of York. The party that espoused the Exclusion Bill, headed by Shaftesbury, naturally rallied itself round the Protestant Duke of Monmouth, and encouraged the idea that he was the legitimate son of the king. Each faction used the press as a powerful engine in the promotion of its objects, and Dryden's nervous pen was invoked to the aid of the court party. Hence sprung the satire "Absalom and Achitophel," which some critics consider the most masterly in any language. It is a portrait gallery of all the characters of the time, and a history of the political movements of those years. Dryden's "Threnodia Augustalis" illuminated the grave of Charles II., and James ascended the throne. The poet now appears as a Roman 1 Scott. Introduction to Marmion, Canto I. Catholic convert. Johnson pauses on the question of the honesty of his conversion. Sir W. Scott is inclined to believe the account Dryden gives of his own state of mind in the "Hind and Panther;" that he had possessed previously no settled religious opinions, and that the calm examination of maturity of age, with the spectacle of the distracted condition of Protestant sects, had urged him for shelter into the bosom of an infallible church. Lord Macaulay takes the unfavourable view, shewing but too clearly that Dryden's change of creed did not take place till it corresponded with his interest. To the Romish church, however, he adhered during the remainder of his life. His conversion reaped for him reward, distinction, and the employment of his pen from a smiling king. "The Hind and the Panther," personifying the Roman and Anglican churches, was written in defence of the unconstitutional powers assumed by James in his dispensation with acts of parliament, and, as Johnson remarks, "to comprize and to decide the controversy between the Romanists and Protestants." A theological argument conducted by beasts forms an unhappy plan of a poem; but the piece is characterized by vigorous elegance of style, and with all its sophistry of reasoning, impresses the reader with a feeling of the writer's sincerity. Montague and Prior's "City Mouse and Country Mouse" was written in ridicule of the "Hind and the Panther." Dryden's freedom of religious opinion or scepticism is seen in the "Religio Laici," published in 1682, before the death of Charles II. He was severely handled for the difference of opinion advocated in the two poems. The "Britannia Rediviva" had hailed as the omen of a golden age the birth of a Prince of Wales; but the revolution of 1688 brought with it Dryden's "evil days." He was no longer the court poet. Necessity called forth his energies, while age did not seem to have diminished their vigour. Between that period and his death, his fertile mind poured forth translations (his celebrated Æneid among others) and fables in thousands of lines without symptom of exhaustion. The "Ode on St. Cecilia's day" is one of the products of this autumn of his genius. He struggled with penury and with the rapacity of his bookseller Jacob Tonson. The chronic diseases with which he had long been afflicted terminated his life on the first of May 1700. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, between the graves of Chaucer and Cowley. Dryden's mind contained many of the features which we associate peculiarly with the English character. But these seem to have been distorted by a vanity that was the result of his literary success. Though licentious in his compliance with the profligate taste of the times, Scott exempts him from the charge of actual impurity of mind, and praises his character in its social and family relations. The delicate machinery of mind which is inferred in the phrase "poetical temperament" Dryden did not possess. He is the poet of books, of learning, and of the world, rather than of nature. The classical school, as it may be termed, of poetry was not new in England, but Dryden was its most distinguished apostle. He and his immediate successors reared that system of phraseology which, in the poetry of the nineteenth century, has united the classical graces of language with the elegant and passionate concep tions of romantic feeling. Johnson alleges, though we conceive with somewhat of exaggeration, that he found the language brick and left it marble. His pieces, struck suddenly from the impetuous coinage of his brain, are seldom perfect, but always vigorous. Of his rhyming plays it may be said they are monstrosities sprinkled with gems. He had the manliness to submit with meekness to Collier's severe criticism of their moral defects. In his satire, in the language of Scott, his arrow is always drawn to the head, and flies directly and mercilessly to its object. Dryden's poetical works consist of twenty-eight dramas, many of them heroic rhyming tragedies, whose interest was bombasted with the auxiliaries of scenery and dress; latterly he abandoned, apparently from the study of Shakespeare, his theory of dramatic composition. Another series of his labours are his Translations from Virgil, Juvenal, etc. His Epistles, miscellaneous pieces, and the Fables, containing adaptations from Chaucer and Bocaccio, constitute a great body of his verse. We have already mentioned some of his larger original poems. He produced an immense series of prologues and epilogues, for no play was reckoned complete without an addition of this kind from his pen. Not only the honour of founder of the modern school of English poetry belongs to Dryden; he may be called also the father of English literary criticism. His prose style is admirable, free, spirited, and picturesque; and compared with his immediate predecessors and even contemporaries, has quite a modern air. FROM THE "ANNUS MIRABILIS." THE RE-EDIFICATION OF LONDON. Methinks already from this chymic flame,1 Already labouring with a mighty fate, She shakes the rubbish from her mounting brow, Now like a maiden queen she will behold, From her high turrets, hourly suitors come; 2 Mexico. |