The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Part 21

And for thy rival, tempts the raging sea, The forms of horrid war, and heaven's inclemency.

"Lycoris, doubtless, was a jilting baggage, but why should Mr. D. belie her? Virgil talks nothing of her going to sea, and perhaps she had a mind to be only a camp laundress, which office she might be advanced to without going to sea: 'the forms of horrid war,' for _horrida castra_, is incomparable."

his brows, a country crown Of fennel, and of nodding lilies drown,

"is a very odd figure: Sylva.n.u.s had swinging brows to drown such a crown as that, _i.e._ to make it invisible, to swallow it up; if it be a country crown, drown his brows, it is false English."

The meads are sooner drunk with morning dews.

"_Rivi_ signifies no such thing; but then, that bees should be drunk with flowery shrubs, or goats be drunk with brouze, for drunk's the verb, is a very quaint thought."

After much more to the same purpose, Milbourne thus introduces his own version of the first Eclogue, with a confidence worthy of a better cause:--"That Mr. Dryden might be satisfied that I'd offer no foul play, nor find faults in him, without giving him an opportunity of retaliation, I have subjoined another metaphrase or translation of the first and fourth pastoral, which I desire may be read with his by the original.

t.i.tYRUS.

ECLOGUE I.

_Mel._ Beneath a spreading beech you, t.i.tyrus, lie, And country songs to humble reeds apply; We our sweet fields, our native country fly, We leave our country; you in shades may lie, And Amaryllis fair and blythe proclaim, And make the woods repeat her buxom name.

_t.i.t._ O Melibaeus! 'twas a bounteous G.o.d, These peaceful play-days on our muse bestowed; At least, he'st alway be a G.o.d to me; My lambs shall oft his grateful offerings be.

Thou seest, he lets my herds securely stray, And me at pleasure on my pipe to play.

_Mel._ Your peace I don't with looks of envy view, But I admire your happy state, and you.

In all our farms severe distraction reigns, No ancient owner there in peace remains.

Sick, I, with much ado, my goats can drive, This t.i.tyrus, I scarce can lead alive; On the bare stones, among yon hazels past, Just now, alas! her hopeful twins she cast.

Yet had not all on's dull and senseless been, We'd long agon this coming stroke foreseen.

Oft did the blasted oaks our fate unfold, And boding choughs from hollow trees foretold.

But say, good t.i.tyrus! tell me who's the G.o.d, Who peace, so lost to us, on you bestow'd?"

Some critics there were, though but few, who joined Milbourne in his abortive attempt to degrade our poet's translation. Oldmixon, celebrated for his share in the games of the Dunciad,[20] and Samuel Parker,[21] a yet more obscure name, have informed us of this, by volunteering in Dryden's defence. But Dryden needed not their a.s.sistance. The real excellencies of his version were before the public, and it was rather to clear himself from the malignant charges against his moral principles, which Melbourne had mingled with his criticism, than for any other purpose, that the poet deemed his antagonist worthy of the following animadversion:--"Milbourne, who is in orders, pretends amongst the rest this quarrel to me, that I have fallen foul on priesthood: if I have, I am only to ask pardon of good priests, and am afraid his part of the reparation will come to little. Let him be satisfied, that he shall not he able to force himself upon me for an adversary. I contemn him too much to enter into compet.i.tion with him. His own translations of Virgil have answered his criticisms on mine. If (as they say he has declared in print) he prefers the version of Ogilby to mine, the world has made him the same compliment; for it is agreed on all hands, that he writes even below Ogilby. That, you will say, is not easily to be done; but what cannot Milbourne bring about? I am satisfied, however, that while he and I live together, I shall not be thought the worst poet of the age. It looks as if I had desired him underhand to write so ill against me; but upon my honest word, I have not bribed him to do me this service, and am wholly guiltless of his pamphlet. It is true, I should be glad if I could persuade him to continue his good offices, and write such another critique on anything of mine; for I find, by experience, he has a great stroke with the reader, when he condemns any of my poems, to make the world have a better opinion of them. He has taken some pains with my poetry; but n.o.body will be persuaded to take the same with his. If I had taken to the Church (as he affirms, but which was never in my thoughts), I should have had more sense, if not more grace, than to have turned myself out of my benefice by writing libels on my parishioners. But his account of my manners, and my principles, are of a piece with his cavils and his poetry; and so I have done with him for ever."[22]

While Dryden was engaged with his great translation, he found two months' leisure to execute a prose version of Fresnoy's "Art of Painting," to which he added an ingenious Preface, the work of twelve mornings, containing a parallel between that art and poetry; of which Mason has said, that though too superficial to stand the test of strict criticism, yet it will always give pleasure to readers of taste, even when it fails to convince their judgment. This version appeared in 1695.

Mr. Malone conjectures that our author was engaged in this task by his friends Closterman, and Sir G.o.dfrey Kneller, artists, who had been active in procuring subscriptions for his Virgil. He also wrote a "Life of Lucian," for a translation of his works, by Mr. Walter Moyle, Sir Henry Shere, and other gentlemen of pretension to learning. This version, although it did not appear till after his death, and although he executed no part of the translation, still retains the t.i.tle of "Dryden's Lucian."

There was one event of political importance which occurred in December 1695, and which the public seem to have expected should have employed the pen of Dryden;--this was the death of Mary, wife of William the Third. It is difficult to conceive in what manner the poet laureate of the unfortunate James could have treated the memory of his daughter.

Satire was dangerous, and had indeed been renounced by the poet; and panegyric was contrary to the principles for which he was suffering.

Yet, among the swarm of rhymers who thrust themselves upon the nation on that mournful occasion, there are few who do not call, with friendly or unfriendly voice, upon our poet to break silence.[23] But the voice of praise and censure was heard in vain, and Dryden's only interference was, in character of the first judge of his time, to award the prize to the Duke of Devonshire, as author of the best poem composed on occasion of the Queen's death.[24]

Virgil was hardly finished, when our author distinguished himself by the immortal Ode to Saint Cecilia, commonly called "Alexander's Feast."

There is some difference of evidence concerning the time occupied in this splendid task. He had been solicited to undertake it by the stewards of the Musical Meeting, which had for several years met to celebrate the feast of St. Cecilia, their patroness, and whom he had formerly gratified by a similar performance. In September 1697, Dryden writes to his son:--"In the meantime, I am writing a song for St.

Cecilia's feast; who, you know, is the patroness of music. This is troublesome, and no way beneficial; but I could not deny the stewards, who came in a body to my house to desire that kindness, one of them being Mr. Bridgeman, whose parents are your mother's friends." This account seems to imply, that the Ode was a work of some time; which is countenanced by Dr. Birch's expression, that Dryden himself "observes, in an original letter of his, that he was employed for almost a fortnight in composing and correcting it."[25] On the other hand, the following anecdote is told upon very respectable authority. "Mr. St.

John, afterwards Lord Bolingbroke, happening to pay a morning visit to Dryden, whom he always respected, found him in an unusual agitation of spirits, even to a trembling. On inquiring the cause, 'I have been up all night,' replied the old bard: 'my musical friends made me promise to write them an Ode for their feast of St. Cecilia: I have been so struck with the subject which occurred to me, that I could not leave it till I had _completed_ it; here it is, _finished_ at one sitting.' And immediately he showed him _this_ Ode, which places the British lyric poetry above that of any other nation."[26] These accounts are not, however, so contradictory as they may at first sight appear. It is possible that Dryden may have completed, at one sitting, the whole Ode, and yet have employed a fortnight, or much more, in correction. There is strong internal evidence to show that the poem was, speaking with reference to its general structure, wrought off at once. A halt or pause, even of a day, would perhaps have injured that continuous flow of poetical language and description which argues the whole scene to have arisen at once upon the author's imagination. It seems possible, more especially in lyrical poetry, to discover where the author has paused for any length of time; for the union of the parts is rarely so perfect as not to show a different strain of thought and feeling. There may be something fanciful, however, in this reasoning, which I therefore abandon to the reader's mercy; only begging him to observe, that we have no mode of estimating the exertions of a quality so capricious as a poetic imagination; so that it is very possible, that the Ode to St.

Cecilia may have been the work of twenty-four hours, whilst correction and emendations, perhaps of no very great consequence, occupied the author as many days. Derrick, in his "Life of Dryden," tells us, upon the authority of Walter Moyle, that the society paid Dryden 40 for this sublime Ode, which, from the pa.s.sage in his letter above quoted, seems to have been more than the bard expected at commencing his labour. The music for this celebrated poem was originally composed by Jeremiah Clarke,[27] one of the stewards of the festival, whose productions where more remarkable for deep pathos and delicacy than for fire and energy.

It is probable that, with such a turn of mind and taste, he may have failed in setting the sublime, lofty, and daring flights of the Ode to St. Cecilia. Indeed his composition was not judged worthy of publication. The Ode, after some impertinent alterations, made by Hughes, at the request of Sir Richard Steele, was set to music by Clayton, who, with Steele, managed a public concert in 1711; but neither was this a successful essay to connect the poem with the art it celebrated. At length, in 1736, "Alexander's Feast" was set by Handel, and performed in the Theatre-Royal, Covent Garden, with the full success which the combined talents of the poet and the musician seemed to insure.[28] Indeed, although the music was at first less successful, the poetry received, even in the author's time, all the applause which its unrivalled excellence demanded. "I am glad to hear from all hands," says Dryden, in a letter to Tonson, "that my Ode is esteemed the best of all my poetry, by all the town. I thought so myself when I writ it; but, being old, I mistrusted my own judgment." Mr. Malone has preserved a tradition, that the father of Lord Chief-Justice Marlay, then a Templar, and frequenter of Will's coffeehouse, took an opportunity to pay his court to Dryden, on the publication of "Alexander's Feast;" and, happening to sit next him, congratulated him on having produced the finest and n.o.blest Ode that had ever been written in any language. "You are right, young gentleman (replied Dryden), a n.o.bler Ode never _was_ produced, nor ever _will_." This singularly strong expression cannot be placed to the score of vanity. It was an inward consciousness of merit, which burst forth, probably almost involuntarily, and I fear must be admitted as prophetic.

The preparation of a new edition of the Virgil, which appeared in 1698, occupied nine days only, after which Dryden began seriously to consider to what he should next address his pen. The state of his circ.u.mstances rendered constant literary labour indispensable to the support of his family, although the exertion, and particularly the confinement, occasioned by his studies, considerably impaired his health. His son Charles had met with an accident at Rome, which was attended with a train of consequences perilous to his health; and Dryden, anxious to recall him to Britain, was obliged to make extraordinary exertions to provide against this additional expense. "If it please G.o.d," he writes to Tonson, "that I must die of over-study, I cannot spend my life better than in preserving his." It is affecting to read such a pa.s.sage in the life of such a man; yet the necessities of the poet, like the afflictions of the virtuous, smooth the road to immortality. While Milton and Dryden were favoured by the rulers of the day, they were involved in the religious and political controversies which raged around them; it is to hours of seclusion, neglect, and even penury, that we owe the Paradise Lost, the Virgil, and the Fables.

Among other projects, Dryden seems to have had thoughts of altering and revising a tragedy called the "Conquest of China by the Tartars,"

written by his ancient friend and brother-in-law, Sir Robert Howard. The unkindness which had arisen between them upon the subject of blank verse and rhyme, seems to have long since pa.s.sed away; and we observe, with pleasure, that Dryden, in the course of the pecuniary transactions about Virgil, reckons upon the a.s.sistance of Sir Robert Howard, and consults his taste also in the revisal of the version.[29] But Dryden never altered the "Conquest of China," being first interrupted by the necessity of revising Virgil, and afterwards, perhaps, by a sort of quarrel which took place between him and the players, of whom he speaks most resentfully in his "Epistle to Granville," upon his tragedy of "Heroic Love," acted in the beginning of 1698.[30]

The success of Virgil encouraged Dryden about this time to turn his eyes upon Homer; and the general voice of the literary world called upon him to do the venerable Grecian the same service which the Roman had received from him. It was even believed that he had fixed upon the mode of translation, and that he was, as he elsewhere expresses it, to "fight unarmed, without his rhyme."[31] A dubious anecdote bears, that he even regretted he had not rendered Virgil into blank verse, and shows at the same time, if genuine, how far he must now have disapproved of his own attempt to turn into rhyme the Paradise Lost. The story is told by the elder Richardson, in his remarks on the tardy progress of Milton's great work in the public opinion.[32] When Dryden did translate the First Book of Homer, which he published with the Fables, he rendered it into rhyme; nor have we sufficient ground to believe that he ever seriously intended, in so large a work, to renounce the advantages which he possessed, by his unequalled command of versification. That in other respects the task was consonant to his temper, as well as talents, he has himself informed us. "My thoughts," he says, in a letter to Halifax, in 1699, "are at present fixed on Homer; and by my translation of the first Iliad, I find him a poet more according to my genius than Virgil, and consequently hope I may do him more justice, in his fiery way of writing; which, as it is liable to more faults, so it is capable of more beauties than the exactness and sobriety of Virgil. Since it is for my country's honour, as well as for my own, that I am willing to undertake this task, I despair not of being encouraged in it by your favour." But this task Dryden was not destined to accomplish, although he had it so much at heart as to speak of resuming it only three months before his death.[33]

In the meanwhile, our author had engaged himself in making those imitations of Boccacio and Chaucer, which have been since called the "Fables;" and in spring 1699, he was in such forwardness, as to put into Tonson's hands "seven thousand five hundred verses, more or less," as the contract bears, being a partial delivery to account of ten thousand verses, which by that deed he agreed to furnish, for the sum of two hundred and fifty guineas, to be made up three hundred pounds upon publication of the second edition. This second payment Dryden lived not to receive. With the contents of this miscellaneous volume we are to suppose him engaged, from the revisal of the Virgil, in 1697, to the publication of the Fables, in March 1699-1700. This was the last period of his labours, and of his life; and, like all the others, it did not pa.s.s undisturbed by acrimonious criticism, and controversy. The dispute with Milbourne we noticed, before dismissing the subject of Virgil; but there were two other persons who, in their zeal for morality and religion, chose to disturb the last years of the life of Dryden.

The indelicacy of the stage, being, in its earliest period, merely the coa.r.s.e gross raillery of a barbarous age, was probably of no greater injury to the morals of the audience, than it is to those of the lower ranks of society, with whom similar language is everywhere admitted as wit and humour. During the reigns of James I. and Charles I. this licence was gradually disappearing. In the domination of the fanatics, which succeeded, matters were so much changed, that, far from permitting the use of indelicate or profane allusions, they wrapped up not only their most common temporal affairs, but even their very crimes and vices, in the language of their spiritual concerns. Luxury was _using the creature_; avarice was _seeking experiences_; insurrection was _putting the hand to the plough_; actual rebellion, _fighting the good fight_; and regicide, _doing the great work of the Lord._ This vocabulary became grievously unfashionable at the Reformation, and was at once swept away by the torrent of irreligion, blasphemy, and indecency, which were at that period deemed necessary to secure conversation against the imputation of disloyalty and fanaticism. The court of Cromwell, if lampoons can be believed, was not much less vicious than that of Charles II., but it was less scandalous; and, as Dryden himself expresses it,

"The sin was of our native growth, 'tis true; The scandal of the sin was wholly new.

Misses there were, but modestly concealed, Whitehall the naked G.o.ddess first revealed; Who standing, as at Cyprus, in her shrine, The strumpet was adored with rites divine."

This torrent of licentiousness had begun in some degree to abate, even upon the accession of James II., whose manners did not encourage the same general licence as those of Charles. But after the Revolution, when an affectation of profligacy was no longer deemed a necessary attribute of loyalty, and when it began to be thought possible that a man might have some respect for religion without being a republican, or even a fanatic, the licence of the stage was generally esteemed a nuisance. It then happened, as is not uncommon, that those, most bustling and active to correct public abuses, were men whose intentions may, without doing them injury, be estimated more highly than their talents. Thus, Sir Richard Blackmore, a grave physician, residing and practising on the sober side of Temple-Bar, was the first who professed to reform the spreading pest of poetical licentiousness, and to correct such men as Dryden, Congreve, and Wycherly. This worthy person, compa.s.sionating the state to which poetry was reduced by his contemporaries, who used their wit "in opposition to religion, and to the destruction of virtue and good manners in the world," resolved to rescue the Muses from this unworthy thraldom, "to restore them to their sweet and chaste mansions, and to engage them in an employment suited to their dignity." With this laudable view he wrote "Prince Arthur, an Epic Poem," published in 1695.

The preface contained a furious, though just, diatribe, against the licence of modern comedy, with some personal reflections aimed at Dry den directly.[34] This the poet felt more unkindly, as Sir Richard had, without acknowledgment, availed himself of the hints he had thrown out in the "Essay upon Satire," for the management of an epic poem on the subject of King Arthur. He bore, however, the attack, without resenting it, until he was again a.s.sailed by Sir Richard in his "Satire upon Wit," written expressly to correct the dissolute and immoral performances of the writers of his time. With a ponderous attempt at humour, the good knight proposes, that a _bank for wit_ should be established, and that all which had hitherto pa.s.sed as current, should be called in, purified in the mint, re-coined, and issued forth anew, freed from alloy.

This satire was published in 1700, as the t.i.tle-page bears; but Mr.

Luttrell marks his copy 23rd November 1699.[35] It contains more than one attack upon our author. Thus, we are told (wit being previously described as a malady),

"Vanine, that looked on all the danger past, Because he 'scaped so long, is seized at last; By p----, by hunger, and by Dryden bit, He grins and snarls, and, in his dogged fit, Froths at the mouth, a certain sign of wit."

Elsewhere the poet complains, that the universities,

"debauched by Dryden and his crew, Turn bawds to vice, and wicked aims pursue."

Again, p. 14--

"Dryden condemn, who taught men how to make, Of dunces wits, an angel of a rake."

But the main offence lies in the following pa.s.sage:--

"Set forth your edict; let it be enjoined, That all defective species be recoined; St. E--m--t and R--r both are fit To oversee the coining of our wit.

Let these be made the masters of essay, They'll every piece of metal touch and weigh, And tell which is too light, which has too much allay.

'Tis true, that when the coa.r.s.e and worthless dross Is purged away, there will be mighty loss.

E'en Congreve, Southerne, manly Wycherly, When thus refined, 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 purged away?

When once his boasted heaps are melted down, A chest-full scarce will yield one sterling crown.

Those who will D--n--s melt, and think to find A goodly ma.s.s of bullion left behind, Do, as the Hibernian wit, who, as 'tis told, Burnt his gilt feather, to collect the gold.

But what remains will be so pure, 'twill bear The examination of the most severe; 'Twill S--r's scales, and Talbot's test abide, And with their mark please all the world beside."

These repeated attacks at length called down the vengeance of Dryden.

who thus retorted upon him in the preface to the Fables:--

"As for the City Bard, or Knight Physician, I hear his quarrel to me is, that I was the author of 'Absalom and Achitophel,' which he thinks, is a little hard on his fanatic patrons in London.

"But I will deal the more civilly with his two poems, because nothing ill is to be spoken of the dead; and, therefore, peace be to the manes of his 'Arthurs.' I will only say, that it was not for this n.o.ble knight that I drew the plan of an epic poem on King Arthur, in my preface to the translation of Juvenal. The guardian angels of kingdoms were machines too ponderous for him to manage; and therefore he rejected them, as Dares did the whirl bats of Eryx, when they were thrown before him by Entellus: yet from that preface, he plainly took his hint; for he began immediately upon the story, though he had the baseness not to acknowledge his benefactor, but, instead of it, to traduce me in a libel."

Blackmore, who had perhaps thought the praise contained in his two last couplets ought to have allayed Dryden's resentment, finding that they failed in producing this effect, very unhandsomely omitted them in his next edition, and received, as will presently be noticed, another flagellation, in the last verses Dryden ever wrote.

But a more formidable champion than Blackmore had arisen, to scourge the profligacy of the theatre. This was no other than the celebrated Jeremy Collier, a nonjuring clergyman, who published, in 1698, "A Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the Stage." His qualities as a reformer are described by Dr. Johnson in language never to be amended.