medies; Wildblood and Jacinth are far more plea sant than their prototypes, Celadon and Florimel, and the Spanish bustle of the plot is well calculated to fix the attention. The catastrophe, however, is too forcibly induced, and the improbabilities in the last scene are such as to require all the indulgence and good humour of the audiTo this play a very interesting preface1 on the merits of the older dramatists is attached : and the remarks on their respective excellencies are made with knowledge and judgment. ence. The next play which the readiness and vigour of his genius threw out, was Tyrannic Love, or the Royal Martyr, it was written in seven weeks, and the entry was made in the stationers' books, July 1669.2 This has been with justice considered as one of Dryden's characteristic plays, exhibiting the chief features of the heroic system. The personages of the drama are placed in trying perplexities of situation, and amid extraordinary combinations of events; while the movement of the passions, and the progressive action of the story are superseded by declamation, or entangled in 1 In this preface Dryden has defended himself against the charge of plagiarism brought against him. On this point he quotes the words of Charles II., who had only desired, that they, who accused Dryden of theft, would steal him such plays as Dryden's. Langbaine, it is well known, is very severe on this head, against our poet, but his bitterest accusations only come to this, that like all his predecessors he took his plots from Novels, Romances, Chronicles, Histories, as he could best find them, and that he was occasionally indebted to the foreign stage. 2 Malone has fixed the first acting of this play to the end of 1668, or beginning of 1669. It was printed in 1670, and a revised edition came forth in 1672. argument. Sentiments are expressed in language bombastic and extravagant ;1 Projicit ampullas et sesquipedalia verba. yet the versification is melodious, the language poetical, the thoughts ingenious, and flashes of purer and nobler feeling occasionally appear; the tender description, it has been remarked, given by Felicia of her attachment to her children in infancy, is exquisitely beautiful. In the autumn of 1669, and the spring of the next, Dryden produced the two parts of the Conquest of Granada, though they were not published till 1672. The play was received with unbounded applause, and raised the poet it is said to a higher point in public esteem, than he reached thirty years after by his translation of Virgil and his fables; in fact the system itself was a favourite with the public, and he was acknowledged as its chief. With regard to the structure of this play, 1 Maximin, in his dying moments says, Bring me Porphyrius and my Empress dead, Look to it, Gods! for you the aggressors are, For as old Selim was not moved by thee, the Duke of Buckingham presents the following lines, Poems, ii. p. 220: A py, a pudding, a pudding, a py, I shall observe, that the changes of fortune are too rapid and indecisive to be of interest. That the character and matchless prowess of Almanzor,1 is so soon ascertained, that we feel assured that victory will pass from side to side with a constancy, which could only be commanded by an imaginary and invincible hero. The character of Boabdelin is contemptible, that of Lyndaraxa odious. The vacillations of Almanzor, between his ambition and his love, are almost ludicrous; while his extravagance of sentiment, and his prodigious egotism place him at the head of all the heroes of romance. In this heroic kind of drama, the characters pass before us like moving pictures; we no more sympathize with them, than with the allegorical figures of Rubens. Their misfortunes draw no pity, their virtues claim no admiration, their feelings are often scarcely intel 2 The character of Almanzor is the original of Drawcansir in the Rehearsal, into whose mouth parodies of Dryden's most extravagant flights have been put. Shaftesbury attempts to trace the applause bestowed on this play to what he calls the correspondence and relation between our royal theatre and popular circus, or bear garden. Misc. Reflections, M. 3. 2 As act iii. sc. 1. Alm. Thou shalt not wish her thine. Thou shalt not dare To be so impudent as to despair. Hamet. Your slighting Zulena, this very hour, Will take ten thousand subjects from your power. Alm. What are ten thousand subjects such as they ; If I am scorn'd-I'll take myself away. In act v. sc. 2. Alm. Thou darest not marry her whilst I'm in sight, Which all thy hopes and wishes should content, ligible to us; they move, and think, and act in a world of their own. Love, with them, is exalted to adoration; argument is sharpened into logic; passion becomes insanity; and valour is placed above the caprice of fortune, or the possibility of defeat. Macbeth, and Othello, and Lear, meet us with passions that we recognise in the mirror of life, with reflections of the forms of history, and the creations of nature; their tears are drawn from the same fountain as our own, their smiles come from feelings familiar to us, the wildness of their passion, and the majesty of their sorrow is all ours; but the character of Almanzor1 is altogether an artificial creation; he is a pasteboard hero of the opera stage; a being exorbitating or flying out from the common sphere of humanity, soaring in a region of his own, and never seen beyond the circle of romance. When such a character as this is introduced on the stage, one cannot help reflecting how small a scope is given to fiction in dramatic poetry; because the characters are measured to us, and defined by visible representation; not shaped from ideal models in our own mind, nor elevated by our imaginations in proportion to the magnitude of their actions. In such characters, as Achilles and Alexander, no power of the poet or the actor could keep pace with the demands of the spectator's 1 Sir Walter Scott's observations on this play may be read with advantage, his critical opinions, and his acute and excellent observations are accompanied in his review of the different works of Dryden, with the utmost fairness and generosity, nor does he ever lose an opportunity to praise, where praise can be bestowed with propriety, vol. iv. p. 6, &c. In his multifarious criticisms, and acute observations in his edition of Dryden, he has been but once, and to one writer, unjust, Why was that one, Samuel Johnson? imagination, or hope to ascend to the level of our habitual associations. A learned and ingenious writer has expressed the impression which the sight of Achilles on the French stage made on him; a more farcical or ludicrous figure could scarcely present itself to the mind, than a pert, smart, dapper Frenchman, well rouged, curled, and powdered, with the gait of a dancing master, and the accent of a milliner, attempting to personate that tremendous warrior, the nodding of whose crest dismayed armies, and the sound of whose voice made even the war-horse tremble.1 Dryden's great success and growing reputation now called out the latent jealousy of his rivals into an open attack upon his fame; but Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, certainly took a higher ground, when he brought out his celebrated farce of the Rehearsal, in order to correct the public taste by holding up the rhyming tragedies to ridicule. This, however, was a task to which Buckingham's unassisted talents3 were not equal; he therefore called in Butler, a keen and willing ad 1 See P. Knight on Taste, p. 306. 2 Scott numbers at this time among Dryden's friends, independently of Charles, the Duke of Ormond, Thomas Lord Clifford, Duke of Newcastle, Lord Buckhurst, Sir C. Sedley, Earl of Rochester, in short all the great and gay who wished to maintain some character for literary taste; he enjoyed the affection and esteem of Cowley, Waller, Denham, Davenant (as subtle as Cowley, and more harmonious than Denham, who with a happier model would probably have excelled both), of all the men of genius at this period, whose immortality our age has admitted, Butler alone seems to have been the adversary of our author's reputation. Life, p. 113. 115. Of this want of talent, says Scott, the reader may find sufficient proof in the extracts from his Grace's reflections upon Absalom and Achitophel, vol. ix. p. 273. |