The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Part 26

The more costly, though equally unsubstantial, honour of a monument, was projected by Montague; and loud were the acclamations of the poets on his generous forgiveness of past discords with Dryden, and the munificence of this universal patron. But Montague never accomplished his purpose, if he seriously entertained it. Pelham, Duke of Newcastle, announced the same intention; received the panegyric of Congreve for having done so; and having thus pocketed the applause, proceeded no further than Montague had done. At length Pope, in some lines which were rather an epitaph on Dryden, who lay in the vicinity, than on Rowe, over whose tomb they were to be placed,[5] roused Dryden's original patron, Sheffield, formerly Earl of Mulgrave, and now Duke of Buckingham, to erect over the grave of his friend the present simple monument which distinguishes it. The inscription was comprised in the following words:--_J. Dryden. Natus 1632. Mortuus I Maii 1700. Joannes Sheffield, Duxx Buckinghamiensis posuit, 1720_.[6]

In the school of reformed English poetry, of which Dryden must be acknowledged as the founder, there soon arose disciples not unwilling to be considered as the rivals of their muster. Addison had his partisans, who were desirous to hold him up in this point of view; and he himself is said to have taken pleasure, with the a.s.sistance of Steele, to depreciate Dryden, whose fame was defended by Pope and Congreve. No serious invasion of Dryden's pre-eminence can be said, however, to have taken place, till Pope himself, refining upon that structure of versification which our author had first introduced, and attending with sedulous diligence to improve every pa.s.sage to the highest pitch of point and harmony, exhibited a new style of composition, and claimed at least to share with Dryden the sovereignty of Parna.s.sus. I will not attempt to concentrate what Johnson has said upon this interesting comparison:--

"In acquired knowledge, the superiority must be allowed to Dryden, whose education was more scholastic, and who, before he became an author, had been allowed more time for study, with better means of information. His mind has a larger range, and he collects his images and ill.u.s.trations from a more extensive circ.u.mference of science. Dryden knew more of man in his general nature, and Pope in his local manners. The notions of Dryden were formed by comprehensive speculation, and those of Pope by minute attention. There is more dignity in the knowledge of Dryden, and more certainty in that of Pope.

"Poetry was not the sole praise of either; for both excelled likewise in prose; but Pope did not borrow his prose from his predecessor. The style of Dryden is capricious and varied, that of Pope is cautious and uniform. Dryden obeys the motions of his own mind, Pope constrains his mind to his own rules of composition. Dryden is sometimes vehement and rapid; Pope is always smooth, uniform, and gentle. Dryden's page is a natural field, rising into inequalities, and diversified by the varied exuberance of abundant vegetation; Pope's is a velvet lawn, shaven by the scythe, and levelled by the roller.

"Of genius, that power which const.i.tutes a poet; that quality, without which judgment is cold, and knowledge is inert; that energy, which collects, combines, amplifies, and animates; the superiority must, with some hesitation, be allowed to Dryden. It is not to be inferred, that of this poetical vigour Pope had only a little, because Dryden had more; for every other writer, since Milton, must give place to Pope: and even of Dryden it must be said, that if he has brighter paragraphs, he has not better poems. Dryden's performances were always hasty, either excited by some external occasion, or extorted by domestic necessity; he composed without consideration, and published without correction. What his mind could supply at call, or gather in one excursion, was all that he sought, and all that he gave. The dilatory caution of Pope enabled him to condense his sentiments, to multiply his images, and to acc.u.mulate all that study might produce, or chance might supply. If the flights of Dryden, therefore, are higher, Pope continues longer on the wing. If of Dryden's fire the blaze is brighter, of Pope the heat is more regular and constant. Dryden often surpa.s.ses expectation, and Pope never falls below it. Dryden is read with frequent astonishment, and Pope with perpetual delight."[7]

As the eighteenth century advanced, the difference between the styles of these celebrated authors became yet more manifest. It was then obvious, that though Pope's felicity of expression, his beautiful polish of sentiment, and the occasional brilliancy of his wit, were not easily imitated, yet many authors, by dint of a good ear, and a fluent expression, learned to command the unaltered sweetness of his melody, which, like a favourite tune, when descended to hawkers and ballad-singers, became disgusting as it became common. The admirers of poetry then reverted to the brave negligence of Dryden's versification, as, to use Johnson's simile, the eye, fatigued with the uniformity of a lawn, seeks variety in the uncultivated glade or swelling mountain. The preference for which Dennis, a.s.serting the cause of Dryden, had raved and thundered in vain, began, by degrees, to be a.s.signed to the elder bard; and many a poet sheltered his harsh verses and inequalities under an a.s.sertion that he belonged to the school of Dryden. Churchill--

"Who, born for the universe, narrowed his mind, And to party gave up what was meant for mankind,"--

Churchill was one of the first to seek in the "Mac-Flecknoe," the "Absalom," and "The Hind and Panther," authority for bitter and personal sarcasm, couched in masculine, though irregular versification, dashed from the pen without revision, and admitting occasional rude and flat pa.s.sages, to afford the author a spring to comparative elevation. But imitation always approaches to caricature; and the powers of Churchill have been unable to protect him from the oblivion into which his poems are daily sinking, owing to the ephemeral interest of political subjects, and his indolent negligence of severe study and regularity. To imitate Dryden, it were well to study his merits, without venturing to adopt the negligences and harshness, which the hurry of his composition, and the comparative rudeness of his age, rendered in him excusable. At least, those who venture to sink as low, should be confident of the power of soaring as high; for surely it is a rash attempt to dive, unless in one conscious of ability to swim. While the beauties of Dryden may be fairly pointed out as an object of emulation, it is the less pleasing, but not less necessary, duty of his biographer and editor, to notice those deficiencies, which his high and venerable name may excuse, but cannot render proper objects of applause or imitation.

So much occasional criticism has been scattered in various places through these volumes, that, while attempting the consideration of one or two of his distinguis.h.i.+ng and pre-eminent compositions, which have been intentionally reserved to ill.u.s.trate a few pages of general criticism, I feel myself free from the difficult, and almost contradictory task, of drawing my maxims and examples from the extended course of his literary career.

My present task is limited to deducing his poetic character from those works which he formed on his last and most approved model. The general tone of his genius, however, influenced the whole course of his publications; and upon that, however his taste, a few preliminary notices may not be misplaced.

The distinguis.h.i.+ng characteristic of Dryden's genius seems to have been the power of reasoning, and of expressing the result in appropriate language.[8] This may seem slender praise; yet these were the talents that led Bacon into the recesses of philosophy, and conducted Newton to the cabinet of nature. The prose works of Dryden bear repeated evidence to his philosophical powers. His philosophy was not indeed of a formed and systematic character; for he is often contented to leave the path of argument which must have conducted him to the fountain of truth, and to resort with indolence or indifference to the leaky cisterns which had been hewn out by former critics. But where his pride or his taste are interested, he shows evidently, that it was not want of the power of systematising, but of the time and patience necessary to form a system, which occasions the discrepancy that we often notice in his critical and philological disquisitions. This power of ratiocination, of investigating, discovering, and appreciating that which is really excellent, if accompanied with the necessary command of fanciful ill.u.s.tration, and elegant expression, is the most interesting quality which can be possessed by a poet. It must indeed have a share in the composition of everything that is truly estimable in the fine arts, as well as in philosophy. Nothing is so easily attained as the power of presenting the extrinsic qualities of fine painting, fine music, or fine poetry; the beauty of colour and outline, the combination of notes, the melody of versification, may be imitated by artists of mediocrity; and many will view, hear, or peruse their performances, without being able positively to discover why they should not, since composed according to all the rules, afford pleasure equal to those of Raphael, Handel, or Dryden. The deficiency lies in the vivifying spirit, which, like _alcohol_, may be reduced to the same principle in all, though it a.s.sumes such varied qualities from the mode in which it is exerted or combined. Of this power of intellect, Dryden seems to have possessed almost an exuberant share, combined, as usual, with the faculty of correcting his own conceptions, by observing human nature, the practical and experimental philosophy as well of poetry as of ethics or physics.

The early habits of Dryden's education and poetical studies gave his researches somewhat too much of a metaphysical character; and it was a consequence of his mental acuteness, that his dramatic personages often philosophised or reasoned, when they ought only to have felt. The more lofty, the fiercer, the more ambitious feelings, seem also to have been his favourite studies. Perhaps the a.n.a.lytical mode in which he exercised his studies of human life tended to confine his observation to the more energetic feelings of pride, anger, ambition, and other high-toned pa.s.sions. He that mixes in public life must see enough of these stormy convulsions; but the finer and more imperceptible operations of love, in its sentimental modifications, if the heart of the author does not supply an example from its own feelings, cannot easily be studied at the expense of others. Dryden's bosom, it must be owned, seems to have afforded him no such means of information; the licence of his age, and perhaps the advanced period at which he commenced his literary career, had probably armed him against this more exalted strain of pa.s.sion. The love of the senses he has in many places expressed, in as forcible and dignified colouring as the subject could admit; but of a mere moral and sentimental pa.s.sion he seems to have had little idea, since he frequently subst.i.tutes in its place the absurd, unnatural, and fict.i.tious refinements of romance. In short, his love is always in indecorous nakedness, or sheathed in the stiff panoply of chivalry. But if Dryden fails in expressing the milder and more tender pa.s.sions, not only did the stronger feelings of the heart, in all its dark or violent workings, but the face of natural objects, and their operation upon the human mind, pa.s.s promptly in review at his command. External pictures, and their corresponding influence on the spectator, are equally ready at his summons; and though his poetry, from the nature of his subjects, is in general rather ethic and didactic, than narrative of composition, than his figures and his landscapes are presented to the mind with the same vivacity as the flow of his reasoning, or the acute metaphysical discrimination of his characters.

But the powers of observation and of deduction are not the only qualities essential to the poetical character. The philosopher may indeed prosecute his experimental researches into the _arcana_ of nature, and announce them to the public through the medium of a friendly _redacteur_, as the legislator of Israel obtained permission to speak to the people by the voice of Aaron; but the poet has no such privilege; nay, his doom is so far capricious, that, though he may be possessed of the primary quality of poetical conception to the highest possible extent, it is but like a lute without its strings, unless he has the subordinate, though equally essential, power of expressing what he feels and conceives, in appropriate and harmonious language. With this power Dryden's poetry was gifted in a degree, surpa.s.sing in modulated harmony that of all who had preceded him, and inferior to none that has since written English verse. He first showed that the English language was capable of uniting smoothness and strength. The hobbling verses of his predecessors were abandoned even by the lowest versifiers; and by the force of his precept and example, the meanest lampooners of the year seventeen hundred wrote smoother lines than Donne and Cowley, the chief poets of the earlier half of the seventeenth century. What was said of Rome adorned by Augustus, has been, by Johnson, applied to English poetry improved by Dryden; that he found it of brick, and left it of marble. This reformation was not merely the effect of an excellent ear, and a superlative command of gratifying it by sounding language; it was, we have seen, the effect of close, accurate, and continued study of the power of the English tongue. Upon what principles he adopted and continued his system of versification, he long meditated to communicate in his projected prosody of English poetry. The work, however, might have been more curious than useful, as there would have been some danger of its diverting the attention, and misguiding the efforts of poetical adventurers; for as it is more easy to be masons than architects, we may deprecate an art which might teach the world to value those who can build rhymes, without attending to the more essential qualities of poetry. Strict attention might no doubt discover the principle of Dryden's versification; but it seems no more essential to the a.n.a.lysing his poetry, than the principles of mathematics to understanding music, although the art necessarily depends on them. The extent in which Dryden reformed our poetry, is most readily proved by an appeal to the ear; and Dr. Johnson has forcibly stated, that "he knew how to choose the flowing and the sonorous words; to vary the pauses and adjust the accents; to diversify the cadence, and yet preserve the smoothness of the metre." To vary the English hexameter, he established the use of the triplet and Alexandrine. Though ridiculed by Swift, who vainly thought he had exploded them for ever, their force is still acknowledged in cla.s.sical poetry.

Of the various kinds of poetry which Dryden occasionally practised, the drama was that which, until the last six years of his life, he chiefly relied on for support. His style of tragedy, we have seen, varied with his improved taste, perhaps with the change of manners. Although the heroic drama, as we have described it at length in the preceding pages, presented the strongest temptation to the exercise of argumentative poetry in sounding rhyme, Dryden was at length contented to abandon it for the more pure and chaste style of tragedy, which professes rather the representation of human beings, than the creation of ideal perfection, or fantastic and anomalous characters. The best of Dryden's performances in this latter style, are unquestionably "Don Sebastian,"

and "All for Love." Of these, the former is in the poet's very best manner; exhibiting dramatic persons, consisting of such bold and impetuous characters as he delighted to draw, well contrasted, forcibly marked, and engaged in an interesting succession of events. To many tempers, the scene between Sebastian and Dorax must appear one of the most moving that ever adorned the British stage. Of "All for Love," we may say, that it is successful in a softer style of painting; and that so far as sweet and beautiful versification, elegant language, and occasional tenderness, can make amends for Dryden's deficiencies in describing the delicacies of sentimental pa.s.sion, they are to be found in abundance in that piece. But on these, and on the poet's other tragedies, we have enlarged in our preliminary notices prefixed to each piece.

Dryden's comedies, besides being stained with the licence of the age (a licence which he seems to use as much from necessity as choice), have, generally speaking, a certain heaviness of character. There are many flashes of wit; but the author has beaten his flint hard ere he struck them out. It is almost essential to the success of a jest, that it should at least seem to be extemporaneous. If we espy the joke at a distance, nay, if without seeing it we have the least reason to suspect we are travelling towards one, it is astonis.h.i.+ng how the perverse obstinacy of our nature delights to refuse it currency. When, therefore, as is often the case in Dryden's comedies, two persons remain on the stage for no obvious purpose but to say good things, it is no wonder they receive but little thanks from an ungrateful audience. The incidents, therefore, and the characters, ought to be comic; but actual jests, or _bon mots_, should be rarely introduced, and then naturally, easily, without an appearance of premeditation, and bearing a strict conformity to the character of the person who utters them. Comic situation Dryden did not greatly study; indeed I hardly recollect any, unless in the closing scene of "The Spanish Friar," which indicates any peculiar felicity of invention. For comic character, he is usually contented to paint a generic representative of a certain cla.s.s of men or women; a Father Dominic, for example, or a Melantha, with all the attributes of their calling and manners, strongly and divertingly portrayed, but without any individuality of character. It is probable that, with these deficiencies, he felt the truth of his own acknowledgment, and that he was forced upon composing comedies to gratify the taste of the age, while the bent of his genius was otherwise directed.

In lyrical poetry, Dryden must be allowed to have no equal. "Alexander's Feast" is sufficient to show his supremacy in that brilliant department.

In this exquisite production, he flung from him all the trappings with which his contemporaries had embarra.s.sed the ode. The language, lofty and striking as the ideas are, is equally simple and harmonious; without far-fetched allusions, or epithets, or metaphors, the story is told as intelligibly as if it had been in the most humble prose. The change of tone in the harp of Timotheus, regulates the measure and the melody, and the language of every stanza. The hearer, while he is led on by the successive changes, experiences almost the feelings of the Macedonian and his peers; nor is the splendid poem disgraced by one word or line unworthy of it, unless we join in the severe criticism of Dr. Johnson, on the concluding stanzas. It is true, that the praise of St. Cecilia is rather abruptly introduced as a conclusion to the account of the Feast of Alexander; and it is also true, that the comparison,

"He raised a mortal to the sky, She drew an angel down,"

is inaccurate, since the feat of Timotheus was metaphorical, and that of Cecilia literal. But, while we stoop to such criticism, we seek for blots in the sun.

Of Dryden's other pindarics, some, as the celebrated "Ode to the Memory of Mrs. Killigrew," are mixed with the leaven of Cowley; others, like the "_Threnodia Augustalis_," are occasionally flat and heavy. All contain pa.s.sages of brilliancy, and all are thrown into a versification, melodious amidst its irregularity. We listen for the completion of Dryden's stanza, as for the explication of a difficult pa.s.sage in music; and wild and lost as the sound appears, the ear is proportionally gratified by the unexpected ease with which harmony is extracted from discord and confusion.

The satirical powers of Dryden were of the highest order. He draws his arrow to the head, and dismisses it straight upon his object of aim. In this walk he wrought almost as great a reformation as upon versification in general; as will plainly appear, if we consider, that the satire, before Dryden's time, bore the same reference to "Absalom and Achitophel," which an ode of Cowley bears to "Alexander's Feast." Butler and his imitators had adopted a metaphysical satire, as the poets in the earlier part of the century had created a metaphysical vein of serious poetry.[9] Both required store of learning to supply the perpetual expenditure of extraordinary and far-fetched ill.u.s.tration; the object of both was to combine and hunt down the strangest and most fanciful a.n.a.logies; and both held the attention of the reader perpetually on the stretch, to keep up with the meaning of the author. There can be no doubt, that this metaphysical vein was much better fitted for the burlesque than the sublime. Yet the perpetual scintillation of Butler's wit is too dazzling to be delightful; and we can seldom read far in "Hudibras" without feeling more fatigue than pleasure. His fancy is employed with the profusion of a spendthrift, by whose eternal round of banqueting his guests are at length rather wearied out than regaled.

Dryden was destined to correct this, among other errors of his age; to show the difference between burlesque and satire; and to teach his successors in that species of a.s.sault, rather to thrust than to flourish with their weapon. For this purpose he avoided the unvaried and unrelieved style of grotesque description and combination, which had been fas.h.i.+onable since the satires of Cleveland and Butler. To render the objects of his satire hateful and contemptible, he thought it necessary to preserve the lighter shades of character, if not for the purpose of softening the portrait, at least for that of preserving the likeness. While Dryden seized, and dwelt upon, and aggravated, all the evil features of his subject, he carefully retained just as much of its laudable traits as preserved him from the charge of want of candour, and fixed down the resemblance upon the party. And thus, instead of unmeaning caricatures, he presents portraits which cannot be mistaken, however unfavourable ideas they may convey of the originals. The character of Shaftesbury, both as Achitophel, and as drawn in "The Medal," bears peculiar witness to this a.s.sertion. While other court poets endeavoured to turn the obnoxious statesman into ridicule on account of his personal infirmities and extravagances, Dryden boldly confers upon him all the praise for talent and for genius that his friends could have claimed, and trusts to the force of his satirical expression for working up even these admirable attributes with such a mixture of evil propensities and dangerous qualities, that the whole character shall appear dreadful, and even hateful, but not contemptible.

But where a character of less note, a Shadwell or a Settle, crossed his path, the satirist did not lay himself under these restraints, but wrote in the language of bitter irony and immeasurable contempt: even then, however, we are less called on to admire the wit of the author, than the force and energy of his poetical philippic. These are the verses which are made by indignation, and, no more than theatrical scenes of real pa.s.sion, admit of refined and protracted turns of wit, or even the lighter sallies of humour. These last ornaments are proper in that Horatian satire, which rather ridicules the follies of the age, than stigmatises the vices of individuals; but in this style Dryden has made few essays. He entered the field as champion of a political party, or as defender of his own reputation; discriminated his antagonists, and applied the scourge with all the vehemence of Juvenal. As he has himself said of that satirist, "his provocations were great, and he has revenged them tragically." This is the more worthy of notice, as, in the Essay on Satire, Dryden gives a decided preference to those nicer and more delicate touches of satire, which consist in fine raillery. But whatever was the opinion of his cooler moments, the poet's practice was dictated by the furious party-spirit of the times, and the no less keen stimulative of personal resentment. It is perhaps to be regretted, that so much energy of thought, and so much force of expression, should have been wasted in anatomising such criminals as Shadwell and Settle; yet we cannot account the amber less precious, because they are grubs and flies that are enclosed within it.

The "Fables" of Dryden are the best examples of his talents as a narrative poet; those powers of composition, description, and narration, which must have been called into exercise by the Epic Muse, had his fate allowed him to enlist among her votaries. The "Knight's Tale," the longest and most laboured of Chaucer's stories, possesses a degree of regularity which might satisfy the most severe critic. It is true, that the honour arising from thence must be a.s.signed to the more ancient bard, who had himself drawn his subject from an Italian model; but the high and decided preference which Dryden has given to this story, although somewhat censured by Trapp, enables us to judge how much the poet held an accurate combination of parts, and coherence of narrative, essentials of epic poetry.[10] That a cla.s.sic scholar like Trapp should think the plan of the "Knight's Tale" equal to that of the Iliad, is a degree of candour not to be hoped for; but surely to an unprejudiced reader, a story which exhausts in its conclusion all the interest which it has excited in its progress, which, when terminated, leaves no question to be asked, no personage undisposed of, and no curiosity unsatisfied, is, abstractedly considered, more gratifying than the history of a few weeks of a ten years' war, commencing long after the siege had begun, and ending long before the city was taken. Of the other tales, it can hardly be said that their texture is more ingenious or closely woven than that of ordinary novels or fables: but in each of them Dryden has displayed the superiority of his genius, in selecting for amplification and ornament those pa.s.sages most susceptible of poetical description. The account of the procession of the Fairy Chivalry in the "Flower and the Leaf;" the splendid description of the champions who came to a.s.sist at the tournament in the "Knight's Tale;"

the account of the battle itself, its alternations and issue,--if they cannot be called improvements on Chaucer, are nevertheless so spirited a transfusion of his ideas into modern verse, as almost to claim the merit of originality. Many pa.s.sages might be shown in which this praise may be carried still higher, and the merit of invention added to that of imitation. Such is the description of the commencement of the tourney, which is almost entirely original, and most of the ornaments in the translations from Boccacio, whose prose fictions demanded more additions from the poet than the exuberant imagery of Chaucer. To select instances would be endless; but every reader of poetry has by heart the description of Iphigenia asleep, nor are the lines in "Theodore and Honoria,"[11] which describe the approach of the apparition, and its effects upon animated and inanimated nature even before it becomes visible, less eminent for beauties of the terrific order:

"While listening to the murmuring leaves he stood, More than a mile immersed within the wood, At once the wind was laid; the whispering sound Was dumb; a rising earthquake rocked the ground; With deeper brown the grove was overspread, A sudden horror seized his giddy head, And his ears tingled, and his colour fled, Nature was in alarm; some danger nigh Seemed threatened, though unseen to mortal eye."

It may be doubted, however, whether the simplicity of Boccacio's narrative has not sometimes suffered by the additional decorations of Dryden. The retort of Guiscard to Tancred's charge of ingrat.i.tude is more sublime in the Italian original,[12] than as diluted by the English poet into five hexameters. A worse fault occurs in the whole colouring of Sigismonda's pa.s.sion, to which Dryden has given a coa.r.s.e and indelicate character, which he did not derive from Boccacio. In like manner, the plea used by Palamon in his prayer to Venus, is more nakedly expressed by Dryden than by Chaucer. The former, indeed, would probably have sheltered himself under the mantle of Lucretius; but he should have recollected, that Palamon speaks the language of chivalry, and ought not, to use an expression of Lord Herbert, to have spoken like a _paillard_, but a _cavalier_. Indeed, we have before noticed it as the most obvious and most degrading imperfection of Dryden's poetical imagination, that he could not refine that pa.s.sion, which, of all others, is susceptible either of the purest refinement, or of admitting the basest alloy. With Chaucer, Dryden's task was more easy than with Boccacio. Barrenness was not the fault of the Father of English poetry; and amid the profusion of images which he presented, his imitator had only the task of rejecting or selecting. In the sublime description of the temple of Mars, painted around with all the misfortunes ascribed to the influence of his planet, it would be difficult to point out a single idea, which is not found in the older poem. But Dryden has judiciously omitted or softened some degrading and some disgusting circ.u.mstances; as the "cook scalded in spite of his long ladle," the "swine devouring the cradled infant," the "pickpurse," and other circ.u.mstances too grotesque or ludicrous to harmonise with the dreadful group around them. Some points, also, of sublimity, have escaped the modern poet. Such is the appropriate and picturesque accompaniment of the statue of Mars:--

"A wolf stood before him at his feet, With eyen red, and of a man he eat."[13]

In the dialogue, or argumentative parts of the poem, Dryden has frequently improved on his original, while he falls something short of him in simple description, or in pathetic effect. Thus, the quarrel between Arcite and Palamon is wrought up with greater energy by Dryden than Chaucer, particularly by the addition of the following lines, describing the enmity of the captives against each other:--

"Now friends no more, nor walking hand in hand, But when they met, they made a surly stand, And glared like angry lions as they pa.s.sed, And wished that every look might be their last."

But the modern must yield the palm, despite the beauty of his versification, to the description of Emily by Chaucer; and may be justly accused of loading the dying speech of Arcite with conceits for which his original gave no authority.[14]

When the story is of a light and ludicrous kind, as the Fable of the c.o.c.k and Fox, and the Wife of Bath's Tale, Dryden displays all the humorous expression of his satirical poetry, without its personality.

There is indeed a quaint Cervantic gravity in his mode of expressing himself, that often glances forth, and enlivens what otherwise would be mere dry narrative. Thus, he details certain things which pa.s.sed,

"While Cynion was _endeavouring_ to be wise;"

the force of which single word contains both a ludicrous and appropriate picture of the revolution which the force of love was gradually creating in the mind of the poor clown. This tone of expression he perhaps borrowed from Ariosto, and other poets of Italian chivalry, who are wont, ever and anon, to raise the mask, and smile even at the romantic tale they are themselves telling.

Leaving these desultory reflections on Dryden's powers of narrative, I cannot but notice, that, from haste or negligence, he has sometimes mistaken the sense of his author. Into the hands of the champions in "The Flower and the Leaf," he has placed _bows_ instead of _boughs_, because the word is in the original spelled _bowes_; and, having made the error, he immediately devises an explanation of the device which he had mistaken:--

"For bows the strength of brawny arms imply, Emblems of valour, and of victory."

He has, in like manner, accused Chaucer of introducing Gallicisms into the English language; not aware that French was the language of the court of England not long before Chaucer's time, and, that, far from introducing French phrases into the English tongue, the ancient bard was successfully active in introducing the English as a fas.h.i.+onable dialect, instead of the French, which had, before his time, been the only language of polite literature in England. Other instances might be given of similar oversights, which, in the situation of Dryden, are sufficiently pardonable.

Upon the whole, in introducing these romances of Boccacio and Chaucer to modern readers, Dryden has necessarily deprived them of some of the charms which they possess for those who have perused them in their original state. With a tale or poem, by which we have been sincerely interested, we connect many feelings independent of those arising from actual poetical merit. The delight, arising from the whole, sanctions, nay, sanctifies, the faulty pa.s.sages; and even actual improvements, like supplements to a mutilated statue of antiquity, injure our preconceived a.s.sociations, and hurt, by their incongruity with our feelings, more than they give pleasure by their own excellence. But to antiquaries Dryden has sufficiently justified himself, by declaring his version made for the sake of modern readers, who understand sense and poetry as well as the old Saxon admirers of Chaucer, when that poetry and sense are put into words which they can understand. Let us also grant him, that, for the beauties which are lost, he has subst.i.tuted many which the original did not afford; that, in pa.s.sages of gorgeous description, he has added even to the chivalrous splendour of Chaucer, and has graced with poetical ornament the simplicity of Boccacio; that, if he has failed in tenderness, he is never deficient in majesty; and that if the heart be sometimes untouched, the understanding and fancy are always exercised and delighted.

The philosophy of Dryden, we have already said, was that of original and penetrating genius; imperfect only, when, from want of time and of industry, he adopted the ideas of others, when he should have communed at leisure with his own mind. The proofs of his philosophical powers are not to be sought for in any particular poem or disquisition. Even the "Religio Laici," written expressly as a philosophical poem, only shows how easily the most powerful mind may entangle itself in sophistical toils of its own weaving; for the train of argument there pursued was completed by Dryden's conversion to the Roman Catholic faith.[15] It is therefore in the discussion of incidental subjects, in his mode of treating points of controversy, in the new lights which he seldom fails to throw upon a controversial subject, in his talent of argumentive discussion, that we are to look for the character of Dryden's moral powers. His opinions, doubtless, are often inconsistent, and sometimes absolutely contradictory; for, pressed by the necessity of discussing the object before him, he seldom looked back to what he said formerly, or forward to what he might be obliged to say in future. His sole subject of consideration was to maintain his present point; and that by authority, by declamation, by argument, by every means. But his philosophical powers are not the less to be estimated, because thus irregularly and unphilosophically employed. His arguments, even in the worst cause, bear witness to the energy of his mental conceptions; and the skill with which they are stated, elucidated, enforced, and exemplified, ever commands our admiration, though, in the result, our reason may reject their influence. It must be remembered also, to Dryden's honour, that he was the first to hail the dawn of experimental philosophy in physics; to gratulate his country on possessing Bacon, Harvey, and Boyle; and to exult over the downfall of the Aristotelian tyranny.[16] Had he lived to see a similar revolution commenced in ethics, there can be little doubt he would have welcomed it with the same delight; or had his leisure and situation permitted him to dedicate his time to investigating moral problems, he might himself have led the way to deliverance from error and uncertainty. But the dawn of reformation must ever be gradual, and the acquisitions even of those calculated to advance it must therefore frequently appear desultory and imperfect. The author of the _Novum Organum_ believed in charms and occult sympathy; and Dryden in the chimeras of judicial astrology, and probably in the jargon of alchemy. When these subjects occur in his poetry, he dwells on them with a pleasure which shows the command they maintained over his mind. Much of the astrological knowledge displayed in the Knight's Tale is introduced, or at least amplified, by Dryden; and while, in the fable of the c.o.c.k and the Fox, he ridicules the doctrine of prediction from dreams, the inherent qualities of the four complexions,[17] and other abstruse doctrines of Paracelsus and his followers, we have good reason to suspect that, like many other scoffers, he believed in the efficacy and truth of the subject of his ridicule. However this shade of credulity may injure Dryden's character as a philosopher, we cannot regret its influence on his poetry. Collins has thus celebrated Fairfax:--

"Prevailing poet, whose undoubting mind, Believed the magic wonders which he sung."

Nor can there be a doubt that, as every work of imagination is tinged with the author's pa.s.sions and prejudices, it must be deep and energetic in proportion to the character of these impressions. Those superst.i.tious sciences and pursuits, which would, by mystic rites, doctrines, and inferences, connect us with the invisible world of spirits, or guide our daring researches to a knowledge of future events, are indeed usually found to cow, crush, and utterly stupefy, understandings of a lower rank; but if the mind of a man of acute powers, and of warm fancy, becomes slightly imbued with the visionary feelings excited by such studies, their obscure and undefined influence is ever found to aid the sublimity of his ideas, and to give that sombre and serious effect, which he can never produce, who does not himself feel the awe which it is his object to excite. The influence of such a mystic creed is often felt where the cause is concealed; for the habits thus acquired are not confined to their own sphere of belief, but gradually extend themselves over every adjacent province: and perhaps we may not go too far in believing, that he who has felt their impression, though only in one branch of faith, becomes fitted to describe, with an air of reality and interest, not only kindred subjects, but superst.i.tions altogether opposite to his own. The religion, which Dryden finally adopted, lent its occasional aid to the solemn colouring of some of his later productions, Tipon which subject we have elsewhere enlarged at some length.[18]

The occasional poetry of Dryden is marked strongly by masculine character. The Epistles vary with the subject; and are light, humorous, and satirical, or grave, argumentative, and philosophical, as the case required. In his Elegies, although they contain touches of true feeling, especially where the stronger pa.s.sions are to be ill.u.s.trated, the poet is often content to subst.i.tute reasoning for pa.s.sion, and rather to show us cause why we ought to grieve, than to set us the example by grieving himself. The inherent defect in Dryden's composition becomes here peculiarly conspicuous; yet we should consider, that, in composing elegies for the Countess of Abingdon, whom he never saw, and for Charles II., by whom he had been cruelly neglected, and doubtless on many similar occasions, Dryden could not even pretend to be interested in the mournful subject of his verse; but attended, with his poem, as much in the way of trade, as the undertaker, on the same occasion, came with his sables and his scutcheon. The poet may interest himself and his reader, even to tears, in the fate of a being altogether the creation of his own fancy, but hardly by a hired panegyric on a real subject, in whom his heart acknowledges no other interest than a fee can give him. Few of Dryden's elegiac effusions, therefore, seem prompted by sincere sorrow.

That to Oldham may be an exception; but, even there, he rather strives to do honour to the talents of his departed friend, than to pour out lamentations for his loss. Of the Prologues and Epilogues we have spoken fully elsewhere.[19] Some of them are coa.r.s.ely satirical, and others grossly indelicate. Those spoken at Oxford are the most valuable, and contain much good criticism and beautiful poetry. But the worst of them was probably well worth the petty recompence which the poet received.[20] The songs and smaller pieces of Dryden have smoothness, wit, and when addressed to ladies, gallantry in profusion, but are deficient in tenderness. They seem to have been composed with great ease; thrown together hastily and occasionally; nor can we doubt that many of them are now irrecoverably lost. Mr. Malone gives us an instance of Dryden's fluency in extempore composition, which was communicated to him by Mr. Walcott. "Conversation, one day after dinner, at Mrs.

Creed's, running upon the origin of names, Mr. Dryden bowed to the good old lady, and spoke extempore the following verses:--

"So much religion in _your_ name doth dwell, Your soul must needs with piety excel.

Thus names, like [well-wrought] pictures drawn of old, Their owners' nature and their story told.-- Your name but half expresses; for in you Belief and practice do together go.

My prayers shall be, while this short life endures, These may go hand in hand, with you and yours; Till faith hereafter is in vision drowned, And practice is with endless glory crowned."

The Translations of Dryden form a distinguished part of his poetical labours. No author, excepting Pope, has done so much to endenizen the eminent poets of antiquity. In this sphere, also, it was the fate of Dryden to become a leading example to future poets, and to abrogate laws which had been generally received although they imposed such trammels on translation as to render it hardly intelligible. Before his distinguished success showed that the object of the translator should be to transfuse the spirit, not to copy servilely the very words of his original, it had been required, that line should be rendered for line, and, almost, word for word. It may easily be imagined, that, by the constraint and inversion which this cramping statute required, a poem was barely rendered _not Latin_, instead of being made English, and that, to the mere native reader, as the connoisseur complains in "The Critic", the interpreter was sometimes "the harder to be understood of the two." Those who seek examples, may find them in the jaw-breaking translations of Ben Jonson and Holyday. Cowley and Denham had indeed rebelled against this mode of translation, which conveys pretty much the same idea of an original, as an imitator would do of the gait of another, by studiously stepping after him into every trace which his feet had left upon the sand. But they a.s.sumed a licence equally faulty, and claimed the privilege of writing what might be more properly termed imitations, than versions of the cla.s.sics. It was reserved to Dryden manfully to claim and vindicate the freedom of a just translation; more limited than paraphrase, but free from the metaphrastic severity exacted from his predecessors.

With these free yet unlicentious principles, Dryden brought to the task of translation a competent knowledge of the language of the originals, with an unbounded command of his own. The latter is, however, by far the most marked characteristic of his Translations. Dryden was not indeed deficient in Greek and Roman learning; but he paused not to weigh and sift those difficult and obscure pa.s.sages, at which the most learned will doubt and hesitate for the correct meaning. The same rapidity, which marked his own poetry, seems to have attended his study of the cla.s.sics. He seldom waited to a.n.a.lyse the sentence he was about to render, far less scrupulously to weigh the precise purport and value of every word it contained. If he caught the general spirit and meaning of the author, and could express it with equal force in English verse, he cared not if minute elegancies were lost, or the beauties of accurate proportion destroyed, or a dubious interpretation hastily adopted on the credit of a _scholium_. He used abundantly the licence he has claimed for a translator, to be deficient rather in the language out of which he renders, than of that into which he translates. If such be but master of the sense of his author, Dryden argues, he may express that sense with eloquence in his own tongue, though he understand not the nice turns of the original. "But without the latter quality he can never arrive at the useful and the delightful, without which reading is a penance and fatigue."[21] With the same spirit of haste, Dryden if often contented to present to the English reader some modern image, which he may at once fully comprehend, instead of rendering precisely a cla.s.sic expression, which might require explanation or paraphrase. Thus the _pulchra Sicyonia_, or buskins of Sicyon, are rendered,

"Diamond-buckles sparkling in their shoes."

By a yet more unfortunate adaptation of modern technical phraseology, the simple direction of Helenus,

"_Laeva tibi tellus, et longo laeva pelantur aequora circuitu: dextrum f.a.ge lillus et undas_,"

is translated,