The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Part 27

"Tack to the larboard, and stand off to sea, Veer starboard sea and land:"

--a counsel which, I shrewdly suspect, would have been unintelligible, not only to Palinurus, but to the best pilot in the British navy.[22] In the same tone, but with more intelligibility, if not felicity, Dryden translates _palatia coeli_ in Ovid, the _Louvre of the sky_; and, in the version of the first book of Homer, talks of the court of Jupiter in the phrases used at that of Whitehall. These expressions, proper to modern manners, often produce an unfortunate confusion between the age in which the scene is laid, and the date of the translation. No judicious poet is willing to break the interest of a tale of ancient times, by allusions peculiar to his own period: but when the translator, instead of identifying himself as closely as possible with the original author, pretends to such liberty, he removes us a third step from the time of action, and so confounds the manners of no less than three distinct eras,--that in which the scene is laid, that in which the poem was written, and that, finally, in which the translation was executed. There are pa.s.sages in Dryden's aeneid, which, in the revolution of a few pages, transport our ideas from the time of Troy's siege to that of the court of Augustus, and thence downward to the reign of William the Third of Britain.

It must be owned, at the same time, that when the translator places before you, not the exact words, but the image of the original, as the cla.s.sic author would probably have himself expressed it in English, the licence, when moderately employed, has an infinite charm for those readers for whose use translations are properly written. Pope's Homer and Dryden's Virgil can never indeed give exquisite satisfaction to scholars, accustomed to study the Greek and Latin originals. The minds of such readers have acquired a cla.s.sic tone; and not merely the ideas and poetical imagery, but the manners and habits of the actors, have become intimately familiar to them. They will not, therefore, be satisfied with any translation in which these are violated, whether for the sake of indolence in the translator, or ease to the unlettered reader; and perhaps they will be more pleased that a favourite bard should move with less ease and spirit in his new habiliments, than that his garments should be cut upon the model of the country to which the stranger is introduced. In the former case, they will readily make allowance for the imperfection of modern language; in the latter, they will hardly pardon the sophistication of ancient manners. But the mere English reader, who finds rigid adherence to antique costume rather embarra.s.sing than pleasing, who is prepared to make no sacrifices in order to preserve the true manners of antiquity, shocking perhaps to his feelings and prejudices, is satisfied that the Iliad and aeneid shall lose their antiquarian merit, provided they retain that vital spirit and energy, which is the soul of poetry in all languages, and countries, and ages whatsoever. He who sits down to Dryden's translation of Virgil, with the original text spread before him, will be at no loss to point out many pa.s.sages that are faulty, many indifferently understood, many imperfectly translated, some in which dignity is lost, others in which bombast is subst.i.tuted in its stead. But the unabated vigour and spirit of the version more than overbalances these and all its other deficiencies. A sedulous scholar might often approach more nearly to the dead letter of Virgil, and give an exact, distinct, sober-minded idea of the meaning and scope of particular pa.s.sages. Trapp, Pitt, and others have done so. But the essential spirit of poetry is so volatile, that it escapes during such an operation, like the life of the poor criminal, whom the ancient anatomist is said to have dissected alive, in order to ascertain the seat of the soul. The carcase indeed is presented to the English reader, but the animating vigour is no more. It is in this art, of communicating the ancient poet's ideas with force and energy equal to his own, that Dryden has so completely exceeded all who have gone before, and all who have succeeded him. The beautiful and unequalled version of the Tale of Myrrha in the "Metamorphoses," the whole of the Sixth aeneid, and many other parts of Dryden's translations, are sufficient, had he never written one line of original poetry, to vindicate the well-known panegyric of Churchill:--

"Here let me bend, great Dryden, at thy shrine, Thou dearest name to all the tuneful Nine!

What if some dull lines in cold order creep, And with his theme the poet seems to sleep?

Still, when his subject rises proud to view, With equal strength the poet rises too: With strong invention, n.o.blest vigour fraught, Thought still springs up, and rises out of thought; Numbers enn.o.bling numbers in their course, In varied sweetness flow, in varied force; The powers of genius and of judgment join, And the whole art of poetry is thine."

We are in this disquisition naturally tempted to inquire, whether Dryden would have succeeded in his proposed design to translate Homer, as happily as in his Virgil? And although he himself more fiery, and therefore better suited to his own than that of the Roman poet, there may be room to question, whether in this case he rightly estimated his own talents, or rather, whether, being fully conscious of their extent, he was aware of labouring under certain deficiencies of taste, which must have been more apparent in a version of the Iliad than of the aeneid. If a translator has any characteristic and peculiar foible, it is surely unfortunate to choose an original, who may give peculiar facilities to exhibit them. Thus, even Dryden's repeated disclamation of puns, points, and quibbles, and all the repentance of his more sober hours, was unable, so soon as he began to translate Ovid, to prevent his sliding back into the practice of that false wit with which his earlier productions are imbued. Hence he has been seduced, by the similarity of style, to add to the offences of his original, and introduce, though it needed not, points of wit and ant.i.thetical prettinesses, for which he cannot plead Ovid's authority. For example, he makes Ajax say of Ulysses, when surrounded by the Trojans,

"No wonder if he roared that all might hear, His elocution was increased by fear."

The Latin only bears, _conclamat socios._ A little lower,

"_Opposui molem clypei, texique jacentem_,"

is amplified by a similar witticism,

"My broad buckler hid him from the foe, Even the shield trembled as he lay below."

If, in translating Ovid, Dryden was tempted by the manner of his original to relapse into a youthful fault, which he had solemnly repented of and abjured, there is surely room to believe, that the simple and almost rude manners described by Homer, might have seduced him into coa.r.s.eness both of ideas and expression, for which the studied, composed, and dignified style of the Aeneid gave neither opening nor apology. That this was a fault which Dryden, with all his taste, never was able to discard, might easily be proved from various pa.s.sages in his translations, where the transgression is on his own part altogether gratuitous. Such is the well-known version of

"_Ut possessor agelli Diceret, hoec mea sunt, veteres migrate coloni, Nune vidi," etc._

"When the grim captain, with a surly tone, Cries out, Pack up, ye rascals, and be gone!

Kicked out, we set the best face on't we could," etc.

In translating the most indelicate pa.s.sage of Lucretius, Dryden has rather enhanced than veiled its indecency. The story of Iphis in the Metamorphoses is much more bluntly told by the English poet than by Ovid. In short, where there was a lat.i.tude given for coa.r.s.eness of description and expression, Dryden has always too readily laid hold of it. The very specimen which he has given us of a version of Homer, contains many pa.s.sages in which the antique Grecian simplicity is vulgarly and inelegantly rendered. The Thunderer terms Juno

"My household curse, my lawful plague, the spy Of Jove's designs, his other squinting eye."

The ambrosial feast of Olympus concludes like a tavern revel:--

"Drunken at last, and drowsy, they depart Each to his house, adored with laboured art Of the lame architect. The thundering G.o.d, Even he, withdrew to rest, and had his load; His swimming head to needful sleep applied, And Juno lay unheeded by his side."

There is reason indeed to think, that, after the Revolution, Dryden's taste was improved in this, as in some other respects. In his translation of Juvenal, for example, the satire against women, coa.r.s.e as it is, is considerably refined and softened from the grossness of the Latin poet; who has, however, been lately favoured by a still more elegant, and (excepting perhaps one or two pa.s.sages) an equally spirited translation, by Mr. Gifford of London. Yet, admitting this apology for Dryden as fully as we dare, from the numerous specimens of indelicacy even in his later translations, we are induced to judge it fortunate that Homer was reserved for a poet who had not known the age of Charles II.; and whose inaccuracies and injudicious decorations may be pardoned, even by the scholar, when he considers the probability, that Dryden might have slipped into the opposite extreme, by converting rude simplicity into indecency or vulgarity. The aeneid, on the other hand, if it restrained Dryden's poetry to a correct, steady, and even flight, if it damped his energy by its regularity, and fettered his excursive imagination by the sobriety of its decorum, had the corresponding advantage of holding forth to the translator no temptation to licence, and no apology for negligence. Where the fervency of genius is required, Dryden has usually equalled his original; where peculiar elegance and exact propriety is demanded, his version may be sometimes found flat and inaccurate, but the mastering spirit of Virgil prevails, and it is never disgusting or indelicate. Of all the cla.s.sical translations we can boast, none is so acceptable to the cla.s.s of readers, to whom the learned languages are a clasped book and a sealed fountain. And surely it is no moderate praise to say, that a work is universally pleasing to those for whose use it is princ.i.p.ally intended, and to whom only it is absolutely indispensable.

The prose of Dryden may rank with the best in the English language. It is no less of his own formation than his versification, is equally spirited, and equally harmonious. Without the lengthened and pedantic sentences of Clarendon, it is dignified where dignity is becoming, and is lively without the acc.u.mulation of strained and absurd allusions and metaphors, which were unfortunately mistaken for wit by many of the author's contemporaries. Dryden has been accused of unnecessarily larding his style with Gallicisms. It must be owned that, to comply probably with the humour of Charles, or from an affectation of the fashionable court dialect, the poet-laureate employed such words as _fougue, fraicheur_, etc., instead of the corresponding expressions in English; an affectation which does not appear in our author's later writings. But even the learned and excellent Sir David Dalrymple was led to carry this idea greatly too far. "Nothing," says that admirable antiquary, "distinguishes the genius of the English language so much as its general naturalisation of foreigners. Dryden in the reign of Charles II., printed the following words as pure French newly imported: _amour, billet-doux, caprice, chagrin, conversation, double-entendre, embarra.s.sed, fatigue, figure, foible, gallant, good graces, grimace, incendiary, levee, maltreated, rallied, repartee, ridicule, tender, tour_; with several others which are now considered as natives.-- 'Marriage a la Mode.'"[23] But of these words many had been long naturalised in England, and, with the adjectives derived from them, are used by Shakespeare and the dramatists of his age.[24] By their being printed in italics in the play of "Marriage a la Mode," Dryden only meant to mark, that Melantha, the affected coquette in whose mouth they are placed, was to use the _French_, not the vernacular p.r.o.nunciation.

It will admit of question, whether any single French word has been naturalised upon the sole authority of Dryden.

Although Dryden's style has nothing obsolete, we can occasionally trace a reluctance to abandon an old word or idiom; the consequence, doubtless of his latter studies in ancient poetry. In other respects, nothing can be more elegant than the diction of the praises heaped upon his patrons, for which he might himself plead the apology he uses for Maimbourg, "who, having enemies, made himself friends by panegyrics." Of these lively critical prefaces, which, when we commence, we can never lay aside till we have finished, Dr. Johnson has said with equal force and beauty,--"They have not the formality of a settled style, in which the first half of the sentence betrays the other. The clauses are never balanced, nor the periods modelled; every word seems to drop by chance, though it falls into its proper place. Nothing is cold or languid; the whole is airy, animated, and vigorous; what is little is gay, what is great is splendid. He may be thought to mention himself too frequently; but while he forces himself upon our esteem, we cannot refuse him to stand high in his own. Everything is excused by the play of images and the sprightliness of expression. Though all is easy, nothing is feeble; though all seems careless, there is nothing harsh; and though, since his earlier works, more than a century has pa.s.sed, they have nothing yet uncouth or obsolete."

"He, who writes much, will not easily escape a manner, such a recurrence of particular modes as may be easily noted. Dryden is always _another and the same._ He does not exhibit a second time the same elegancies in the same form, nor appears to have any art other than that of expressing with clearness what he thinks with vigour. His style could not easily be imitated, either seriously or ludicrously; for, being always equable and always varied, it has no prominent or discriminative characters. The beauty, who is totally free from disproportion of parts and features, cannot be ridiculed by an overcharged resemblance."

The last paragraph is not to be understood too literally; for although Dryden never so far copied himself as to fall into what has been quaintly called _mannerism_; yet accurate observation may trace, in his works, the repet.i.tion of some sentiments and ill.u.s.trations from prose to verse, and back again to prose.[24] In his preface to the _aeneid_, he has enlarged on the difficulty of varying phrases, when the same sense returned on the author; and surely we must allow full praise to his fluency and command of language, when, during so long a literary career, and in the course of such a variety of miscellaneous productions, we can detect in his style so few instances of repet.i.tion, or self-imitation.

The prose of Dryden, excepting his translations, and one or two controversial tracts, is entirely dedicated to criticism, either general and didactic, or defensive and exculpatory. There, as in other branches of polite learning, it was his lot to be a light to his people. About the time of the Restoration, the cultivation of letters was prosecuted in France with some energy. But the genius of that lively nation being more fitted for criticism than poetry; for drawing rules from what others have done, than for writing works which might be themselves standards; they were sooner able to produce an accurate table of laws for those intending to write epic poems and tragedies, according to the best Greek and Roman authorities, than to exhibit distinguished specimens of success in either department; just as they are said to possess the best possible rules for building ships of war, although not equally remarkable for their power of fighting them. When criticism becomes a pursuit separate from poetry, those who follow it are apt to forget, that the legitimate ends of the art for which they lay down rules, are instruction or delight, and that these points being attained, by what road soever, ent.i.tles a poet to claim the prize of successful merit. Neither did the learned authors of these disquisitions sufficiently attend to the general disposition of mankind, which cannot be contented even with the happiest imitations of former excellence, but demands novelty as a necessary ingredient for amus.e.m.e.nt. To insist that every epic poem shall have the plan of the Iliad and aeneid, and every tragedy be fettered by the rules of Aristotle, resembles the principle of an architect, who should build all his houses with the same number of windows, and of stories. It happened too, inevitably, that the critics, in the plenipotential authority which they exercised, often a.s.sumed as indispensable requisites of the drama, or epopeia, circ.u.mstances, which, in the great authorities they quoted, were altogether accidental and indifferent. These they erected into laws, and handed down as essentials to be observed by all succeeding poets; although the forms prescribed have often as little to do with the merit and success of the originals from which they are taken, as the shape of the drinking-gla.s.s with the flavour of the wine which it contains. "To these encroachments," says Fielding, after some observations to the same purpose, "time and ignorance, the two great supporters of imposture, gave authority; and thus many rules for good writing have been established, which have not the least foundation in truth or nature; and which commonly serve for no other purpose than to curb and restrain genius, in the same manner as it would have restrained the dancing-master, had the many excellent treatises on that art laid it down as an essential rule, that every man must dance in chains."[25] It is probable, that the tyranny of the French critics, fashionable as the literature of that country was with Charles and his courtiers, would have extended itself over England at the Restoration, had not a champion so powerful as Dryden placed himself in the gap. We have mentioned in its place his "Essay on Dramatic Poetry," the first systematic piece of criticism which our literature has to exhibit. In this Essay, he was accused of entertaining private views, of defending some of his own pieces, at least of opening the door of the theatre wider, and rendering its access more easy, for his own selfish convenience. Allowing this to be true in whole, as it may be in part, we are as much obliged to Dryden for resisting the domination of Gallic criticism, as we are to the fanatics who repressed the despotism of the crown, although they buckled on their armour against white surplices, and the cross in baptism. The character which Dryden has drawn of our English dramatists in the Essay, and the various prefaces connected with it, have unequalled spirit and precision. The contrast of Ben Jonson with Shakespeare is peculiarly and strikingly felicitous. Of the latter portrait, Dr. Johnson has said, that the editors and admirers of Shakespeare, in all their emulation of reverence, cannot boast of much more than of having diffused and paraphrased this epitome of excellence, of having changed Dryden's gold for baser metal, of lower value, though of greater bulk. While Dryden examined, discussed, admitted, or rejected the rules proposed by others, he forbore, from prudence, indolence, or a regard for the freedom of Parna.s.sus, to erect himself into a legislator. His doctrines, which chiefly respect the intrinsic qualities necessary in poetry, are scattered, without system of pretence to it, over the numerous pages of prefatory and didactic essays, with which he enriched his publications. It is impossible to read far in any of them, without finding some maxim for doing or forbearing, which every student of poetry will do well to engrave upon the tablets of his memory. But the author's mode of instruction is neither harsh nor dictatorial. When his opinion changed, as in the case of rhyming tragedies, he avows the change with candour, and we are enabled the more courageously to follow his guidance, when we perceive the readiness with which he retracts his path, if he strays into error.

The gleams of philosophical spirit which so frequently illumine these pages of criticism; the lively and appropriate grace of ill.u.s.tration; the true and correct expression of the general propositions; the simple and unaffected pa.s.sages, in which, when led to allude to his personal labours and situation, he mingles the feelings of the man with the instructions of the critic,--unite to render Dryden's Essays the most delightful prose in the English language.

The didactic criticism of Dryden is necessarily, at least naturally, mingled with that which he was obliged to pour forth in his own defence; and this may be one main cause of its irregular and miscellaneous form.

What might otherwise have resembled the extended and elevated front of a regular palace, is deformed by barriers, ramparts, and bastions of defence; by cottages, mean additions, and offices necessary for personal accommodation. The poet, always most in earnest about his immediate task, used, without ceremony, those arguments, which suited his present purpose, and thereby sometimes supplied his foes with weapons to a.s.sail another quarter. It also happens frequently, if the same allusion may be continued, that Dryden defends with obstinate despair, against the a.s.saults of his foemen, a post which, in his cooler moments, he has condemned as untenable. However easily he may yield to internal conviction, and to the progress of his own improving taste, even these concessions, he sedulously informs us, are not wrung from him by the a.s.sault of his enemies; and he often goes out of his road to show, that, though conscious he was in the wrong, he did not stand legally convicted by their arguments. To the chequered and inconsistent appearance which these circ.u.mstances have given to the criticism of Dryden, it is an additional objection, that through the same cause his studies were partial, temporary, and irregular. His mind was amply stored with acquired knowledge, much of it perhaps the fruits of early reading and application. But, while engaged in the hurry of composition, or overcome by the la.s.situde of continued literary labour, he seems frequently to have trusted to the tenacity of his memory, and so drawn upon this fund with injudicious liberality, without being sufficiently anxious as to accuracy of quotation, or even of a.s.sertion. If, on the other hand, he felt himself obliged to resort to more profound learning than his own, he was at little pains to arrange or digest it, or even to examine minutely the information he acquired, from hasty perusal of the books he consulted; and thus but too often poured it forth in the crude form in which he had himself received it, from the French critic, or Dutch schoolman. The scholarship, for example, displayed in the Essay on Satire, has this raw and ill-arranged appearance; and stuck, as it awkwardly is, among some of Dryden's own beautiful and original writing, gives, like a borrowed and unbecoming garment, a mean and inconsistent appearance to the whole disquisition. But these occasional imperfections and inaccuracies are marks of the haste with which Dryden was compelled to give his productions to the world, and cannot deprive him of the praise due to the earliest and most entertaining of English critics.

I have thus detailed the life, and offered some remarks on the literary character, of JOHN DRYDEN: who, educated in a pedantic taste, and a fanatical religion, was destined, if not to give laws to the stage of England, at least to defend its liberties; to improve burlesque into satire; to free translation from the fetters of verbal metaphrase, and exclude it from the licence of paraphrase; to teach posterity the powerful and varied poetical harmony of which their language was capable; to give an example of the lyric ode of unapproached excellence; and to leave to English literature a name, second only to those of Milton and of Shakespeare.

FOOTNOTES [1] Life and Works of Arthur Maynwaring, 1715, p. 17.

[2] So says Charles Blount, in the dedication to the _Religio Laici_. He is contradicted by Tom Brown.

[3] In a poem published on Dryden's death, by Brome, written, as Mr.

Malone conjectures, by Captain Gibbon, son of the physician.

[4] In "The Postboy," for Tuesday, May 7, 1700, Playford inserted the following advertis.e.m.e.nt:

"The death of the famous John Dryden, Esq., Poet-Laureate to their two late Majesties, King Charles, and King James the Second, being a subject capable of employing the best pens; and several persons of quality, and others, having put a stop to his interment, which is designed to be in Chaucer's grave, in Westminster Abbey; this is to desire the gentlemen of the two famous Universities, and others, who have a respect for the memory of the deceased, and are inclinable to such performances, to send what copies they please, as Epigrams, etc., to Henry Playford, at his shop at the Temple 'Change, in Fleet Street, and they shall be inserted in a Collection, which is designed after the same nature, and in the same method (in what language they shall please), as is usual in the composures which are printed on solemn occasions, at the two Universities aforesaid."

This advertis.e.m.e.nt (with some alterations) was continued for a month in the same paper.

[5]

"Thy reliques, Rowe, to this fair urn we trust, And sacred place by Dryden's awful dust: Beneath a rude and nameless stone he lies, To which thy tomb shall guide inquiring eyes: Peace to thy gentle shade, and endless rest!

Blest in thy genius, in thy love too, blest!

One greatful woman to thy fame supplies, What a whole thankless land to his denies."

[6] The epitaph at first intended by Pope for this monument was,

"This Sheffield raised; the sacred dust below Was Dryden once:--the rest, who does not know?"

Atterbury had thus written to him on this subject, in 1720: "What I said to you in mine, about the monument, was intended only to quicken, not to alarm you. It is not worth your while to know what I meant by it; but when I see you, you shall. I hope you may be at the Deanery towards the end of October, by which time I think of settling there for the winter.

What do you think of some such short inscription as this in Latin, which may, in a few words, say all that is to be said of Dryden, and yet nothing more than he deserves?

JOHANNI DRYDENO, CUI POESIS ANGICANA VIM SUAM AC VENERES DEBET; ET SI QUA IN POSTERUM AUGEBITUR LAUDE, EST ADHUC DEBITURA.

HONORIS ERGO P. ETC.

"To show you that I am as much in earnest in the affair as you yourself, something I will send you of this kind in English. If your design holds, of fixing Dryden's name only below, and his busto above, may not lines like these be graved just under the name?

This Sheffield raised, to Dryden's ashes just; Here fixed his name, and there his laureled bust: What else the Muse in marble might express, Is known already: praise would make him less.

"Or thus:

More needs not; when acknowledged merits reign, Praise is impertinent, and censure vain."

The thought, as Mr. Malone observes, is nearly the same as in the following lines in "Luctus Britannici," by William Marston, of Trinity College, Cambridge:

"_In_ JOANNEM DRYDEN, _poelarum facile principem._

Si quis in has aedes intret forta.s.se viator, Busta poetarum dum veneranda notet, Cernat et exuvias Drydeni,--plura referre Haud opus: ad laudes _vox ea_ sola satis."

[7] Life of Pope.