The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Part 14

"Tom sent down to raise The price of prologues and of plays."[40]

It may seem surprising that Dryden should be left to make an object of such petty gains, when, labouring for the service of government, he had in little more than twelve months produced both Parts of "Absalom and Achitophel," "The Medal," "Mac-Flecknoe," "_Religio Laici_" and "The Duke of Guise." But this was not the worst; for, although his pension as poet-laureate was apparently all the encouragement which he received from the crown, so ill-regulated were the finances of Charles, so expensive his pleasures, and so greedy his favourites, that our author, shortly after finishing these immortal poems, was compelled to sue for more regular payment of that very pension, and for a more permanent provision, in the following affecting Memorial, addressed to Hyde, Earl of Rochester:--"I would plead," says he, "a little merit, and some hazards of my life from the common enemies; my refusing advantages offered by them, and neglecting my beneficial studies, for the king's service; but I only think I merit not to starve. I never applied myself to any interest contrary to your lordship's; and, on some occasions, perhaps not known to you, have not been unserviceable to the memory and reputation of my lord, your father.[41] After this, my lord, my conscience a.s.sures me, I may write boldly, though I cannot speak to you.

I have three sons, growing to man's estate. I breed them all up to learning, beyond my fortune; but they are too hopeful to be neglected, though I want. Be pleased to look on me with an eye of compa.s.sion: some small employment would render my condition easy. The king is not unsatisfied of me; the duke has often promised me his a.s.sistance; and your lordship is the conduit through which their favours pa.s.s. Either in the customs, or the appeals of the excise, or some other way, means cannot be wanting, if you please to have the will. _'Tis enough for one age to have neglected Mr. Cowley, and starved Mr. Butler_; but neither of them had the happiness to live till your lordship's ministry. In the meantime, be pleased to give me a gracious and a speedy answer to my present request of half a year's pension for my necessities. I am going to write somewhat by his Majesty's command,[42] and cannot stir into the country for my health and studies till I secure my family from want."

We know that this affecting remonstrance was in part successful; for long afterwards, he says, in allusion to this period, "Even from a bare treasury, my success has been contrary to that of Mr. Cowley; and Gideon's fleece has there been moistened, when all the ground was dry."

But in the admission of this claim to the more regular payment of his pension, was comprehended all Rochester's t.i.tle to Dryden's grat.i.tude.

The poet could not obtain the small employment which he so earnestly solicited; and such was the recompense of the merry monarch and his counsellors, to one whose productions had strengthened the pillars of his throne, as well as renovated the literary taste of the nation.[43]

FOOTNOTES: [1] Mulgrave was created lieutenant of Yorkshire and governor of Hull, when Monmouth was deprived of these and other honours.

[2] See vol. x.

[3] This is objected to Dryden by one of his antagonists: "Nor could ever Shimei be thought to have cursed David more bitterly, than he permits his friend to blaspheme the Roman priesthood in his epilogue to the 'Spanish Friar.' In which play he has himself acted his own part like a true younger son of Noah, as may be easily seen in the first edition of that comedy, which would not pa.s.s muster a second time without emendations and corrections."--_The Revolter_, 1687, p. 29.

[4] See vol. ix.

[5] See vol. ix. This piece, ent.i.tled "Absalom's Conspiracy or the Tragedy of Treason," is printed in the same volume.

[6] See vol. ix.

[7] Lord Grey says in his narrative, "After the dissolution of the Oxford parliament, we were all very peaceably inclined, and nothing pa.s.sed amongst us that summer of importance, which I can call to mind: I think my Lord Shaftesbury was sent to the Tower just before the long vacation; and the Duke of Monmouth, Mr. Montague, Sir Thomas Armstrong, and myself, went to Tunbridge immediately after his lordship's imprisonment, where we laid aside the thoughts of disturbing the peace of the government for those of diverting ourselves."

[8] He usually distinguishes Dryden by his "Rehearsal" t.i.tle of Bayes; and, among many other oblique expressions of malevolence, he has this note:--

"To see the incorrigibleness of our poets in their pedantic manner, their vanity, defiance of criticism, their rhodomontade, and poetical bravado, we need only turn to our famous poet-laureat (the very Mr.

Bayes himself), in one of his latest and most valued pieces, writ many years after the ingenious author of the 'Rehearsal' had drawn his picture. 'I have been listening (says our poet, in his Preface to 'Don Sebastian'), what objections had been made against the conduct of the play, but found them all so trivial, that if I should name them, a true critic would imagine that I played booty. Some are pleased to say the writing is dull; but _aedatum habet de se loquatur._ Others, that the double poison is unnatural; let the common received opinion, and Ausonius's famous epigram, answer that. Lastly, a more ignorant sort of creatures than either of the former maintain, that the character of Dorax is not only unnatural, but inconsistent with itself; let them read the play, and think again. A longer reply is what those cavillers deserve not. But I will give them and their fellows to understand, that the Earl of ---- was pleased to read the tragedy twice over before it was acted and did me the favour to send me word, that I had written beyond any of my former plays, and that he was displeased anything should be cut away. If I have not reason to prefer his single judgment to a whole faction, let the world be judge; for the opposition is the same with that of Lucan's hero against an army, _concurrere bellum atque virum_. I think I may modestly conclude,' etc.

"Thus he goes on, to the very end, in the self-same strain. Who, after this, can ever say of the 'Rehearsal' author, that his picture of our poet was overcharged, or the national humour wrong described?"

[9] See vol. ix.

[10] See some extracts from this piece, vol. ix.

[11]

"How well this Hebrew name with sense doth sound, _A fool's my brother_,[11a] though in wit profound!

Most wicked wits are the devil's chiefest tools, Which, ever in the issue, G.o.d befools.

Can they compare, vile varlet, once hold true, Of the loyal lord, and this disloyal Jew?

Was e'er our English earl under disgrace, And, unconscionable; put out of place?

Hath he laid lurking in his country-house To plot rebellions, as one factious?

Thy bog-trot bloodhounds hunted have this stag, Yet cannot fasten their foul fangs,--they flag.

Why didst not _thou_ bring in thy evidence With them, to rectify the brave jury's sense, And so prevent the _ignoramus_?--nay, Thou wast c.o.c.k-sure he wou'd he d.a.m.ned for aye, Without thy presence;--thou wast then employed To brand him 'gainst he came to be destroyed: Forehand preparing for the hangman's axe, Had not the witnesses been found so lax."

[11a] _Achi_, my brother, and _tophel_, a fool.--_Orig. Note_.

[12] Vol. ix.

[13] He was the son of Dr. John Pordage, minister of Bradfield expelled his charge for insufficiency in the year 1646. Among other charges against him were the following, which, extraordinary as they are, he does not seem to have denied:

"That he hath very frequent and familiar converse with angels.

"That a great dragon came into his chamber with a tail of eight yards long, four great teeth, and did spit fire at him; and that he contended with the dragon.

"That his own angel came and stood by him while he was expostulating with the dragon; and the angel came in his own shape and fashion, the same clothes, bands, and cuffs, the same bandstrings; and that his angel stood by him and upheld him.

"That Mrs. Pordage and Mrs. Flavel had their angels standing by them also, Mrs. Pordage singing sweetly, and keeping time upon her breast; and that his children saw the spirits coming into the house, and said, Look there, father; and that the spirits did after come into the chamber, and drew the curtains when they were in bed.

"That the said Mr. Pordage confessed, that a strong enchantment was upon him, and that the devil did appear to him in the shape of Everard, and in the shape of a fiery dragon; and the whole roof of the house was full of spirits."--_State Trials_.

[14] How little Dryden valued these nicknames appears from a pa.s.sage in the "Vindication of the Duke of Guise:"--"Much less am I concerned at the n.o.ble name of Bayes; that is a brat so like his own father, that he cannot be mistaken for anybody else. They might as reasonably have called Tom Sternhold Virgil, and the resemblance would have held as well." Vol. vii.

[15]

"As when a swarm of gnats at eventide Out of the fennes of Allan doe arise, Their murmuring small trompetts sownden wide, Whiles in the aire their cl.u.s.tring army flies, That as a cloud doth seeme to dim the skies; No man nor beast may rest or take repast For their sharp wounds and noyous injuries, Till the fierce northern wind with bl.u.s.tring blast Doth blow them quite away, and in the ocean cast."

[16]

"How finely would the sparks be caught to-day, Should a Whig poet write a Tory play, And you, possessed with rage before, should send Your random shot abroad and maul a friend?

For you, we find, too often hiss and clap, Just as you live, speak, think, and fight--by hap.

And poets, we all know, can change, like you, And are alone to their own interest true; Can write against all sense, nay even their own: The vehicle called _pension_ makes it down.

_No fear of cudgels_, where there's hope of bread; A well-filled paunch forgets a _broken head_."

[17] I quote the pa.s.sage at length, as evincing the difference between Dryden's taste in comedy and that of Shadwell:--

"I have endeavoured to represent variety of humours (most of the persons of the play differing in their characters from one another), which was the practice of Ben Jonson, whom I think all drammatick poets ought to imitate, though none are like to come near; he being the onely person that appears to me to have made perfect representation of human life: most other authors that I ever read, either have wilde romantick tales, wherein they strein love and honour to that ridiculous height, that it becomes burlesque; or in their lower comedies content themselves with one or two humours at most, and those not near so perfect characters as the admirable Jonson; always made, who never wrote comedy without seven or eight considerable humours. I never saw one, except that of Falstaffe, that was, in my judgment, comparable to any of Jonson's considerable humours. You will pardon this digression when I tell you, he is the man, of all the world, I most pa.s.sionately admire for his excellency in drammatick poetry.

"Though I have known _some of late so insolent to say_, that Ben Jonson wrote his best playes without wit, imagining, that all the wit playes consisted in bringing two persons upon the stage to break jest, and to bob one another, which they call repartie, not considering, that there is more wit and invention required in the finding out good humour and matter proper for it, then in all their smart reparties; for, in the writing of a humour, a man is confined not to swerve from the character, and obliged to say nothing but what is proper to it; but in the playes which have been wrote of late, there is no such thing as perfect character, but the two chief persons are most commonly a swearing, drinking, whoring ruffian for a lover, and impudent, ill-bred tomrig for a mistress, and these are the fine people of the play; and there is that lat.i.tude in this, that almost anything is proper for them to say; but their chief subject is bawdy, and profaneness, which they call brisk writing, when the most dissolute of men, that relish those things well enough in private, are choked at 'em in publick: and, methinks, if there were nothing but the ill manners of it, it should make poets avoid that indecent way of writing."--_Preface to the Sullen Lovers_.

Lest this provocation should be insufficient, the Prologue of the same piece has a fling at heroic plays. The poet says he has

"No kind romantic lover in his play To sigh and whine out pa.s.sion, such as may Charm waiting-women with heroic chime, And still resolve to live and die in rhyme; Such as your ears with love and honour feast, And play at crambo for three hours at least, That fight and wooe in verse in the same breath, And make similitude and love in death."

Whatever symptoms of reconciliation afterwards took place between the poets, I greatly doubt if this first offence was ever cordially forgiven.

[18] Vol. vii.

[19] See these offensive pa.s.sages, vol. x.

[20] Vol. x.

[21]

"The laurel makes a wit, a brave, the sword; And all are wise men at the Council board: Settle's a coward, 'cause fool Otway fought him, And Mulgrave is a wit, because I taught him."

_The Tory Poets_, 4to, 1682.

[22] Jonson is described as wearing a loose coachman's coat, frequenting the Mermaid tavern, where he drunk seas of Canary, then reeling home to bed, and, after a profuse perspiration, arising to his dramatic studies.

Shadwell appears, from the slight traits which remain concerning him, to have followed, as closely as possible, the same course of pleasure and of study. He was brutal in his conversation, and much addicted to the use of opium, to which indeed he is said finally to have fallen a victim.

[23] [I have inserted the word "first" because Scott's language is ambiguous. In the list of the bookseller's collection in _3_ vols. 4to, advertised in _Amphitryon_ (1690), "Mac-Flecknoe" and the Cromwell poem do not appear. The later plays, however, soon gave material for another volume, and in this 4-vol. edition, advertised in _Love Triumphant_, 1694, both poems figure.--ED.]

[24] Vol. x.