Lives of the Poets Part 36

We know that Dryden's several productions were so many successive expedients for his support; his plays were, therefore, often borrowed; and his poems were almost all occasional.

In an occasional performance no height of excellence can be expected from any mind, however fertile in itself, and however stored with acquisitions. He whose work is general and arbitrary has the choice of his matter, and takes that which his inclination and his studies have best qualified him to display and decorate. He is at liberty to delay his publication till he has satisfied his friends and himself, till he has reformed his first thoughts by subsequent examination, and polished away those faults which the precipitance of ardent composition is likely to leave behind it. Virgil is related to have poured out a great number of lines in the morning, and to have pa.s.sed the day in reducing them to fewer.

The occasional poet is circ.u.mscribed by the narrowness of his subject.

Whatever can happen to man has happened so often, that little remains for fancy or invention. We have been all born; we have most of us been married; and so many have died before us, that our deaths can supply but few materials for a poet. In the fate of princes the publick has an interest; and what happens to them of good or evil, the poets have always considered as business for the muse. But after so many inauguratory gratulations, nuptial hymns, and funeral dirges, he must be highly favoured by nature, or by fortune, who says any thing not said before.

Even war and conquest, however splendid, suggest no new images; the triumphal chariot of a victorious monarch can be decked only with those ornaments that have graced his predecessors.

Not only matter but time is wanting. The poem must not be delayed till the occasion is forgotten. The lucky moments of animated imagination cannot be attended; elegancies and ill.u.s.trations cannot be multiplied by gradual acc.u.mulation; the composition must be despatched, while conversation is yet busy, and admiration fresh; and haste is to be made, lest some other event should lay hold upon mankind. Occasional compositions may, however, secure to a writer the praise both of learning and facility; for they cannot be the effect of long study, and must be furnished immediately from the treasures of the mind.

The death of Cromwell was the first publick event which called forth Dryden's poetical powers. His heroick stanzas have beauties and defects; the thoughts are vigorous, and, though not always proper, show a mind replete with ideas; the numbers are smooth; and the diction, if not altogether correct, is elegant and easy.

Davenant was, perhaps, at this time, his favourite author, though Gondibert never appears to have been popular; and from Davenant he learned to please his ear with the stanza of four lines alternately rhymed.

Dryden very early formed his versification; there are in this early production no traces of Donne's or Jonson's ruggedness; but he did not so soon free his mind from the ambition of forced conceits. In his verses on the restoration, he says of the king's exile:

He, toss'd by fate, Could taste no sweets of youth's desir'd age, But found his life too true a pilgrimage.

And afterwards, to show how virtue and wisdom are increased by adversity, he makes this remark:

Well might the ancient poets then confer On night the honour'd name of counsellor: Since, struck with rays of prosperous fortune blind, We light alone in dark afflictions find.

His praise of Monk's dexterity comprises such a cl.u.s.ter of thoughts unallied to one another, as will not elsewhere be easily found:

'Twas Monk, whom providence design'd to loose Those real bonds false freedom did impose.

The blessed saints that watch'd this turning scene Did from their stars with joyful wonder lean, To see small clues draw vastest weights along, Not in their bulk, but in their order strong.

Thus pencils can by one slight touch restore Smiles to that changed face that wept before.

With ease such fond chimeras we pursue.

As fancy frames for fancy to subdue; But, when ourselves to action we betake, It shuns the mint like gold that chymists make: How hard was then his task, at once to be What in the body natural we see!

Man's architect distinctly did ordain The charge of muscles, nerves, and of the brain, Through viewless conduits spirits to dispense The springs of motion from the seat of sense: 'Twas not the hasty product of a day, But the well-ripen'd fruit of wise delay.

He, like a patient angler, ere he strook, Would let them play awhile upon the hook.

Our healthful food the stomach labours thus, At first embracing what it straight doth crush.

Wise leeches will not vain receipts obtrude, While growing pains p.r.o.nounce the humours crude; Deaf to complaints, they wait upon the ill, Till some safe crisis authorize their skill.

He had not yet learned, indeed he never learned well, to forbear the improper use of mythology. After having rewarded the heathen deities for their care,

With Alga who the sacred altar strows?

To all the seaG.o.ds Charles an offering owes; A bull to thee, Portunus, shall be slain; A ram to you, ye tempests of the main.

He tells us, in the language of religion,

Pray'r storm'd the skies, and ravish'd Charles from thence, As heav'n itself is took by violence.

And afterwards mentions one of the most awful pa.s.sages of sacred history.

Other conceits there are, too curious to be quite omitted; as,

For by example most we sinn'd before, And, gla.s.s-like, clearness mix'd with frailty bore.

How far he was yet from thinking it necessary to found his sentiments on nature, appears from the extravagance of his fictions and hyperboles:

The winds, that never moderation knew, Afraid to blow too much, too faintly blew; Or, out of breath with joy, could not enlarge Their straiten'd lungs.

It is no longer motion cheats your view; As you meet it, the land approacheth you; The land returns, and in the white it wears The marks of penitence and sorrow bears.

I know not whether this fancy, however little be its value, was not borrowed. A French poet read to Malherbe some verses, in which he represents France as moving out of its place to receive the king: "Though this," said Malherbe, "was in my time, I do not remember it."

His poem on the Coronation has a more even tenour of thought. Some lines deserve to be quoted:

You have already quench'd sedition's brand; And zeal, that burnt it, only warms the land; The jealous sects that durst not trust their cause So far from their own will as to the laws, Him for their umpire and their synod take, And their appeal alone to Caesar make.

Here may be found one particle of that old versification, of which, I believe, in all his works, there is not another:

Nor is it duty, or our hope alone, Creates that joy, but full _fruition_.

In the verses to the lord chancellor Clarendon, two years afterwards, is a conceit so hopeless at the first view, that few would have attempted it; and so successfully laboured, that though, at last, it gives the reader more perplexity than pleasure, and seems hardly worth the study that it costs, yet it must be valued as a proof of a mind at once subtile and comprehensive:

In open prospect nothing bounds our eye, Until the earth seems join'd unto the sky; So in this hemisphere our utmost view Is only bounded by our king and you: Our sight is limited where you are join'd, And beyond that no farther heaven can find.

So well your virtues do with his agree, That, though your orbs of different greatness be, Yet both are for each other's use dispos'd, His to enclose, and yours to be enclos'd.

Nor could another in your room have been, Except an emptiness had come between.

The comparison of the chancellor to the Indies leaves all resemblance too far behind it:

And as the Indies were not found before Those rich perfumes which from the happy sh.o.r.e The winds upon their balmy wings convey'd, Whose guilty sweetness first their world betray'd; So by your counsels we are brought to view A new and undiscover'd world in you.

There is another comparison, for there is little else in the poem, of which, though, perhaps, it cannot be explained into plain prosaick meaning, the mind perceives enough to be delighted, and readily forgives its obscurity, for its magnificence:

How strangely active are the arts of peace, Whose restless motions less than wars do cease: Peace is not freed from labour, but from noise; And war more force, but not more pains employs.

Such is the mighty swiftness of your mind, That, like the earth's, it leaves our sense behind, While you so smoothly turn and roll our sphere, That rapid motion does but rest appear.

For as in nature's swiftness, with the throng Of flying orbs while ours is borne along, All seems at rest to the deluded eye, Mov'd by the soul of the same harmony: So, carry'd on by your unwearied care, We rest in peace, and yet in motion share.

To this succeed four lines, which, perhaps, afford Dryden's first attempt at those penetrating remarks on human nature, for which he seems to have been peculiarly formed:

Let envy then those crimes within you see, From which the happy never must be free; Envy that does with misery reside, The joy and the revenge of ruin'd pride.

Into this poem he seems to have collected all his powers; and after this he did not often bring upon his anvil such stubborn and unmalleable thoughts; but, as a specimen of his abilities to unite the most unsociable matter, he has concluded with lines, of which I think not myself obliged to tell the meaning:

Yet unimpair'd with labours, or with time, Your age but seems to a new youth to climb.

Thus heav'nly bodies do our time beget, And measure change, but share no part of it: And still it shall without a weight increase, Like this new year, whose motions never cease.

For since the glorious course you have begun Is led by Charles, as that is by the sun, It must both weightless and immortal prove, Because the centre of it is above.

In the Annus Mirabilis he returned to the quatrain, which from that time he totally quitted, perhaps from experience of its inconvenience, for he complains of its difficulty. This is one of his greatest attempts. He had subjects equal to his abilities, a great naval war, and the fire of London. Battles have always been described in heroick poetry; but a seafight and artillery had yet something of novelty. New arts are long in the world before poets describe them; for they borrow every thing from their predecessors, and commonly derive very little from nature, or from life. Boileau was the first French writer that had ever hazarded in verse the mention of modern war, or the effects of gunpowder. We, who are less afraid of novelty, had already possession of those dreadful images: Waller had described a seafight. Milton had not yet transferred the invention of firearms to the rebellious angels.

This poem is written with great diligence, yet does not fully answer the expectation raised by such subjects and such a writer. With the stanza of Davenant, he has sometimes his vein of parenthesis, and incidental disquisition, and stops his narrative for a wise remark.

The general fault is, that he affords more sentiment than description, and does not so much impress scenes upon the fancy, as deduce consequences and make comparisons.

The initial stanzas have rather too much resemblance to the first lines of Waller's poem on the War with Spain; perhaps such a beginning is natural, and could not be avoided without affectation. Both Waller and Dryden might take their hint from the poem on the civil war of Rome: "Orbem jam totum," &c.

Of the king collecting his navy, he says,