  Preliminary Remarks on the Poetry of England before the Civil Wars— The Life of Dryden from his Birth till the Restoration—His early Poems, including the "Annus Mirabilis." The Life of Dryden may be said to comprehend a history of the Literature of England, and its changes, during nearly half a century. While his great contemporary Milton was in silence and secrecy laying the foundation of that immortal fame, which no poet has so highly deserved Dryden's labours were ever in the eye of the public; and he maintained, from the time of the Restoration till his death, in 1700, a decided and acknowledged superiority over all the poets of his age. As he wrote from necessity, he was obliged to pay a certain deference to the public opinion; for he, whose bread depends upon the success of his volume, is compelled to study popularity; but, on the other hand, his better judgment was often directed to improve that of his readers; so that he alternately influenced and stooped to the national taste of the day. If, therefore, we would know the gradual changes which took place in our poetry during the above period, we have only to consult the writings of an author, who produced yearly some new performance allowed to be most excellent in the particular style which was fashionable for the time. It is the object of this memoir to connect, with the account of Dryden's life and publications such a general view of the literature of the time, as may enable the reader to estimate how far the age was indebted to the poet, and how far the poet was influenced by the taste and manners of the age. A few preliminary remarks on the literature of the earlier part of the seventeenth century will form a necessary introduction to this biographical memoir. [1]When James I. ascended the throne of England he came to rule a court and people, as much distinguished for literature as for commerce and arms. Shakespeare was in the zenith of his reputation, and England possessed other poets inferior to Shakespeare alone; or, indeed, the higher order of whose plays may claim to be ranked above the inferior dramas ascribed to him. Among these we may reckon Massinger, who approached to Shakespeare in dignity; Beaumont and Fletcher, who surpassed him in drawing female characters, and those of polite and courtly life; and Jonson, who attempted to supply, by depth of learning, and laboured accuracy of character, the want of that flow of imagination, which nature had denied to him. Others, who flourished in the reign of James and his son, though little known to the general readers of the present age even by name, had a just claim to be distinguished from the common herd of authors. Ford, Webster, Marston, Brome, Shirley, even Chapman and Decker, added lustre to the stage for which they wrote. The drama, it is true, was the branch of poetry most successfully cultivated; for it afforded the most ready appeal to the public taste. The number of theatres then open in all parts of the city, secured to the adventurous poet the means of having his performance represented upon one stage or other; and he was neither tired nor disgusted by the difficulties, and disagreeable observances, which must now be necessarily undergone by every candidate for dramatic laurels.[2] But, although during the reigns of Queen Elizabeth and James I, the stage seems to have afforded the principal employment of the poets, there wanted not many, who cultivated, with success, the other departments of Parnassus. It is only necessary to name Spenser, whose magic tale continues to interest us, in despite of the languor of a continued allegory; Drayton, who, though less known, possesses perhaps equal powers of poetry; Beaumont the elder, whose poem on Bosworth Field carries us back to the days of the Plantagenets; Fairfax, the translator of Tasso, the melody of whose numbers became the model of Waller; besides many others, who ornamented this era of British literature. Notwithstanding the splendour of these great names, it must be confessed, that one common fault, in a greater or less degree, pervaded the most admired poetry of Queen Elizabeth's age. This was the fatal propensity to false wit; to substitute, namely, strange and unexpected connections of sound, or of idea, for real humour, and even for the effusions of the stronger passions It seems likely that this fashion arose at court, a sphere in which its denizens never think they move with due lustre, until they have adopted a form of expression, as well as a system of manners, different from that which is proper to mankind at large. In Elizabeth's reign, the court language was formed on the plan of one Lillie, a pedantic courtier, who wrote a book, entitled "Euphues and his England, or the Anatomy of Wit;"[3] which quality he makes to consist in the indulgence of every monstrous and overstrained conceit, that can be engendered by a strong memory and a heated brain, applied to the absurd purpose of hatching unnatural conceits.[4] It appears, that this fantastical person had a considerable share in determining the false taste of his age, which soon became so general, that the tares which sprung from it are to be found even among the choicest of the wheat. Shakespeare himself affords us too many instances of this fashionable heresy in wit; and he, who could create new worlds out of his own imagination descended to low, and often ill-timed puns and quibbles. This was not an evil to be cured by the accession of our Scottish James, whose qualifications as a punster were at least equal to his boasted king-craft.[5] The false taste, which had been gaining ground even in the reign of Elizabeth, now overflowed the whole kingdom with the impetuosity of a land-flood. These outrages upon language were committed without regard to time and place. They were held good arguments at the bar, though Bacon sat on the woolsack; and eloquence irresistible by the most hardened sinner, when King or Corbet were in the pulpit.[6] Where grave and learned professions set the example, the poets, it will readily be believed, ran headlong into an error, for which they could plead such respectable example. The affectation "of the word" and "of the letter," for alliteration was almost as fashionable as punning, seemed, in some degree, to bring back English composition to the barbarous rules of the ancient Anglo-Saxons, the merit of whose poems consisted, not in the ideas, but in the quaint arrangement of the words, and the regular recurrence of some favourite sound or letter. This peculiar taste for twisting and playing upon words, instead of applying them to their natural and proper use, was combined with the similar extravagance of those whom Dr. Johnson has entitled Metaphysical Poets. This class of authors used the same violence towards images and ideas which had formerly been applied to words; in truth, the two styles were often combined and, even when separate, had a kindred alliance with each other. It is the business of the punster to discover and yoke together two words, which, while they have some resemblance in sound, the more exact the better, convey a totally different signification. The metaphysical poet, on the other hand, piqued himself in discovering hidden resemblances between ideas apparently the most dissimilar, and in combining by some violent and compelled association, illustrations and allusions utterly foreign from each other. Thus did the metaphysical poet resemble the quibbler exercising precisely the same tyranny over ideas, which the latter practised upon sounds only. Jonson gave an early example of metaphysical poetry; indeed, it was the natural resource of a mind amply stored with learning, gifted with a tenacious memory and the power of constant labour, but to which was denied that vivid perception of what is naturally beautiful, and that happiness of expression, which at once conveys to the reader the idea of the poet These latter qualities unite in many passages of Shakespeare, of which the reader at once acknowledges the beauty, the justice, and the simplicity. But such Jonson was unequal to produce; and he substituted the strange, forced, and most unnatural though ingenious analogies, which were afterwards copied by Donne and Cowley.[7] In reading Shakespeare, we often meet passages so congenial to our nature and feelings, that, beautiful as they are, we can hardly help wondering they did not occur to ourselves; in studying Jonson, we have often to marvel how his conceptions could have occurred to any human being. The one is like an ancient statue, the beauty of which, springing from the exactness of proportion does not always strike at first sight, but rises upon us as we bestow time in considering it; the other is the representation of a monster, which is at first only surprising, and ludicrous or disgusting ever after. When the taste for simplicity however, is once destroyed, it is long ere a nation recovers it; and the metaphysical poets seem to have retained possession of the public favour from the reign of James I. till the beginning of the Civil Wars silenced the muses. The universities were perhaps to blame during this period of usurpation; for which it may be admitted in excuse, that the metaphysical poetry could only be practised by men whose minds were deeply stored with learning, and who could boldly draw upon a large fund of acquired knowledge for supplying the expenditure of far-fetched and extravagant images, which their compositions required. The book of Nature is before all men; but when her limits are to be overstepped, the acquirement of adventitious knowledge becomes of paramount necessity; and it was but natural that Cambridge and Oxford should prize a style of poetry, to which depth of learning was absolutely indispensable. I have stated, that the metaphysical poetry was fashionable during the early part of Charles the First's reign. It is true, that Milton descended to upbraid that unfortunate prince, that the chosen companion of his private hours was one William Shakespeare, a player; but Charles admitted less sacred poets to share his partiality. Ben Jonson supplied his court with masques, and his pageants with verses; and, notwithstanding an ill-natured story, shared no inconsiderable portion of his bounty.[8] Donne, a leader among the metaphysical poets, with whom King James had punned and quibbled in person.[9] shared, in a remarkable degree, the good graces of Charles I., who may therefore be supposed no enemy to his vein of poetry, although neither his sincere piety nor his sacred office restrained him from fantastic indulgence in extravagant conceit, even upon the most solemn themes which can be selected for poetry.[10] Cowley, who with the learning and acuteness of Donne, possessed the more poetical qualities of a fertile imagination, and frequent happiness of expression, and who claims the highest place of all who ever plied the unprofitable trade of combining dissimilar and repugnant ideas, was not indeed known to the king during his prosperity; but his talents recommended him at the military court of Oxford, and the [Transcriber's note: word missing here in the original] ingenious poet of the metaphysical class enjoyed the applause of Charles before he shared the exile of his consort Henrietta. Cleveland also was honoured with the early notice of Charles;[11] one of the most distinguished metaphysical bards, who afterwards exerted his talents of wit and satire upon the royal side, and strained his imagination for extravagant invective against the Scottish army, who sold their king, and the parliament leaders, who bought him. All these, and others unnecessary to mention, were read and respected at court; being esteemed by their contemporaries, and doubtless believing themselves the wonder of their own, and the pattern of succeeding ages; and however much they [Transcriber's note: fragment of word only in original, presume "might"] differ from each other in parts and genius, they sought the same road to poetical fame, by starting the most unnatural images which their imaginations could conceive, or by hunting more common allusions through the most minute and circumstantial particulars and ramifications. Yet, though during the age of Charles I. the metaphysical poets enjoyed the larger proportion of public applause, authors were not wanting who sought other modes of distinguishing themselves. Milton, who must not be named in the same paragraph with others, although he had not yet meditated the sublime work which was to carry his name to immortality, disdained, even in his lesser compositions, the preposterous conceits and learned absurdities, by which his contemporaries acquired distinction. Some of his slighter academic prolusions are, indeed, tinged with the prevailing taste of his age, or, perhaps, were written in ridicule of it; but no circumstance in his life is more remarkable, than that "Comus," the "Monody on Lycidas," the "Allegro and Penseroso," and the "Hymn on the Nativity," are unpolluted by the metaphysical jargon and affected language which the age esteemed indispensable to poetry. This refusal to bend to an evil so prevailing, and which held out so many temptations to a youth of learning and genius, can only be ascribed to the natural chastity of Milton's taste, improved by an earnest and eager study of the purest models of antiquity. But besides Milton, who stood aloof and alone, there was a race of lesser poets, who endeavoured to glean the refuse of the applause reaped by Donne, Cowley, and their followers, by adopting ornaments which the latter had neglected, perhaps because they could be attained without much labour or abstruse learning. The metaphysical poets, in their slip-shod pindarics, had totally despised, not only smoothness and elegance but the common rhythm of versification. Many and long passages may be read without perceiving the least difference between them and barbarous jingling, ill-regulated prose; and in appearance, though the lines be divided into unequal lengths, the eye and ear acknowledge little difference between them and the inscription on a tomb-stone. In a word, not only harmony of numbers, but numbers themselves, were altogether neglected; or if an author so far respected ancient practice as to make lines which could be scanned like verse, he had done his part, and was perfectly indifferent, although they sounded like prose.[12] But as melody will be always acceptable to the ear, some poets chose this neglected road to fame, and gained a portion of public favour, by attending to the laws of harmony, which their rivals had discarded. Waller and Denham were the first who thus distinguished themselves; but, as Johnson happily remarks, what was acquired by Denham, was inherited by Waller. Something there was in the situation of both these authors, which led them to depart from what was then the beaten path of composition. They were men of rank, wealth, and fashion, and had experienced all the interruptions to deep study, with which such elevated station is naturally attended. It was in vain for Waller, a wit, a courtier, and a politician; or for Denham, who was only distinguished at the university as a dreaming, dissipated gambler, to attempt to rival the metaphysical subtleties of Donne and Cowley, who had spent serious and sequestered lives in acquiring the knowledge and learning which they squandered in their poetry. Necessity, therefore and perhaps a dawning of more simple taste, impelled these courtly poets to seek another and more natural mode of pleasing. The melody of verse was a province unoccupied, and Waller, forming his rhythm upon the modulation of Fairfax, and other poets of the maiden reign, exhibited in his very first poem[13] striking marks of attention to the suavity of numbers. Denham, in his dedication to Charles II., informs us, that the indulgence of his poetical vein had drawn the notice, although accompanied with the gentle censure, of Charles I., when, in 1647, he obtained access to his person by the intercession of Hugh Peters. Suckling, whom Dryden has termed "a sprightly wit, and a courtly writer," may be added to the list of smooth and easy poets of the period, and had the same motives as Denham and Waller for attaching himself to that style of composition. He was allowed to have the peculiar art of making whatever he did become him; and it cannot be doubted, that his light and airy style of ballads and sonnets had many admirers. Upon the whole, this class of poets, although they hardly divided the popular favour with the others, were also noticed and applauded. Thus the poets of the earlier part of the seventeenth century may be divided into one class, who sacrificed both sense and sound to the exercise of extravagant, though ingenious, associations of imagery; and a second, who, aiming to distinguish themselves by melody of versification, were satisfied with light and trivial subjects, and too often contented with attaining smoothness of measure, neglected the more essential qualities of poetry. The intervention of the civil wars greatly interrupted the study of poetry. The national attention was called to other objects, and those who, in the former peaceful reigns, would have perhaps distinguished themselves as poets and dramatists, were now struggling for fame in the field, or declaiming for power in the senate. The manners of the prevailing party, their fanatical detestation of everything like elegant or literary amusement, their affected horror at stage representations, which at once silenced the theatres, and their contempt for profane learning, which degraded the universities, all operated, during the civil wars and succeeding usurpation, to check the pursuits of the poet, by withdrawing that public approbation, which is the best, and often the sole, reward of his labour. There was, at this time, a sort of interregnum in the public taste, as well as in its government. The same poets were no doubt alive who had distinguished themselves at the court of Charles: but Cowley and Denham were exiled with their sovereign; Waller was awed into silence, by the rigour of the puritanic spirit; and even the muse of Milton was scared from him by the clamour of religious and political controversy, and only returned, like a sincere friend, to cheer the adversity of one who had neglected her during his career of worldly importance.[14] During this period, the most unfavourable to literature which had occurred for at least two centuries, Dryden, the subject of this memoir, was gradually and silently imbibing those stores of learning, and cultivating that fancy which was to do so much to further the reformation of taste and poetry. It is now time to state his descent and parentage. The name of Dryden is local, and probably originated in the north of England, where, as well as in the neighbouring counties of Scotland, it frequently occurs, though it is not now borne by any person of distinction. David Driden, or Dryden, married the daughter of William Nicholson of Staff-hill, in the county of Cumberland and was the great-great-grandfather of our poet. John Dryden, eldest son of David, settled in Northamptonshire, where he acquired the estate of Canons-Ashby, by marriage with Elizabeth, daughter and heiress of Sir John Cope of that county. Wood says, that John Dryden was by profession a schoolmaster, and honoured with the friendship of the great Erasmus, who stood godfather to one of his sons.[15] He appears, from some passages in his will, to have entertained the puritanical principles, which, we shall presently find, descended to his family.[16] Erasmus Driden, his eldest son, succeeded to the estate of Canons-Ashby, was high-sheriff of Northamptonshire in the fortieth year of Queen Elizabeth, and was created a knight baronet in the seventeenth of King James I. Sir Erasmus married Frances, second daughter and co-heiress of William Wilkes of Hodnell, in Warwickshire by whom he had three sons, first, Sir John Driden, his successor in the title and estate of Canons-Ashby; second, William Driden of Farndon, in Northamptonshire; third, Erasmus Driden of Tichmarsh, in the same county. The last of these was the father of the poet. Erasmus Driden married Mary, the daughter of the reverend Henry Pickering, younger son of Sir Gilbert Pickering, a person who, though in considerable favour with James I., was a zealous puritan, and so noted for opposition to the Catholics that the conspirators in the Gunpowder Treason, his own brother-in-law being one of the number,[17] had resolved upon his individual murder, as an episode to the main plot; determined so to conduct it, as to throw the suspicion of the destruction of the Parliament upon the puritans.[18] These principles, we shall soon see, became hereditary in the family of Pickering. Mr. Malone's industry has collected little concerning our author's maternal grandfather, excepting, that he was born in 1584; named minister of Oldwinkle All-Saints in 1647; and died in 1657. From the time when he attained this preferment, it is highly probable, that he had been recommended to it by the puritanical tenets which he doubtless held in common with the rest of his family. Of the poet's father, Erasmus, we know even less than of his other relations. He acted as a justice of peace during the usurpation, and was the father of no less than fourteen children; four sons and ten daughters. The sons were John, Erasmus, Henry, and James; the daughters, Agnes, Rose, Lucy, Mary, Martha, Elizabeth, Hester, Hannah, Abigail, Frances. Such anecdotes concerning them as my predecessors have recovered, may be found in the note.[19] JOHN DRYDEN, the subject of this memoir, was born at the parsonage house of Oldwinkle All-Saints, on or about the 9th day of August 1631.[20] The village then belonged to the family of Exeter, as we are informed by the poet himself in the postscript to his Virgil. That his family were Puritans may readily be admitted; but that they were Anabaptists, although confidently asserted by some of our author's political or poetical antagonists, appears altogether improbable. Notwithstanding, therefore, the sarcasm of the Duke of Buckingham, the register of Oldwinkle All-Saints parish, had it been in existence, would probably have contained the record of our poet's baptism.[21] Dryden seems to have received the rudiments of his education at Tichmarsh,[22] and was admitted a king's scholar at Westminster,[23] under the tuition of the celebrated Dr. Bushby,[24] for whom he ever afterwards entertained the most sincere veneration. One of his letters to his old master is addressed, "Honoured Sir," and couched in terms of respect, and even humility, fully sufficient for the occasion. Another written by Dryden, when his feelings were considerably irritated by a supposed injustice done to his son, is nevertheless qualified by great personal deference to his old preceptor. It may be readily supposed, that such a scholar, under so able a teacher, must have made rapid progress in classical learning. The bent of the juvenile poet, even at this early period, distinguished itself. He translated the third satire of Persius, as a Thursday night's task, and executed many other exercises of the same nature, in English verse, none of which are now in existence.[25] During the last year of his residence at Westminster, the death of Henry Lord Hastings, a young nobleman of great learning, and much beloved, called forth no less than ninety-eight elegies, one of which was written by our poet, then about eighteen years old. They were published in 1650, under the title of "Lachrymae Musarum." Dryden, having obtained a Westminster scholarship was admitted to Trinity College, Cambridge on the 11th May 1650, his tutor being the reverend John Templer, M.A., a man of some learning, who wrote a Latin Treatise in confutation of Hobbes, and a few theological tracts and single sermons. While at college, our author's conduct seems not to have been uniformly regular. He was subjected to slight punishment for contumacy to the vice-master,[26] and seems, according to the statement of an obscure libeller, to have been engaged in some public and notorious dispute with a nobleman's son, probably on account of the indulgence of his turn for satire.[27] He took, however, the degree of Bachelor, in January 1653-4, but neither became Master of Arts,[28] nor a fellow of the university and certainly never retained for it much of that veneration usually paid by an English scholar to his Alma Mater. He often celebrates Oxford, but only mentions Cambridge as the contrast of the sister university in point of taste and learning: "Oxford to him a dearer name shall be A preference so uncommon, in one who had studied at Cambridge, probably originated in some cause of disgust, which we may now search for in vain. In June 1654, the death of his father, Erasmus Dryden, proved a temporary interruption to our author's studies. He left the university, on this occasion, to take possession of his inheritance, consisting of two-thirds of a small estate near Blakesley, in Northamptonshire, worth, in all, about sixty pounds a year. The other third part of this small property was bequeathed to his mother during her life, and the property reverted to the poet after her death in 1676. With this little patrimony our author returned to Cambridge, where he continued until the middle of the year 1657. Although Dryden's residence at the university was prolonged to the unusual space of nearly seven years, we do not find that he distinguished himself during that time by any poetical prolusions excepting a few lines prefixed to a work, entitled, "Sion and Parnassus; or Epigrams on several Texts of the Old and New Testament," published in 1650, by John Hoddesdon.[30] Mr. Malone conjectures that our poet would have contributed to the academic collection of verses, entitled, "Oliva Pacis," and published in 1654, on the peace between England and Holland, had not his father's death interfered at that period. It is probable, we lose but little by the disappearance of any occasional verses which may have been produced by Dryden at this time. The elegy on Lord Hastings, the lines prefixed to "Sion and Parnassus," and some complimentary stanzas which occur in a letter to his cousin Honor Driden,[31] would have been enough to assure us, even without his own testimony, that Cowley was the darling of his youth; and that he imitated his points of wit, and quirks of epigram, with a similar contempt for the propriety of their application. From these poems, we learn enough to be grateful, that Dryden was born at a later period in his century; for had not the road to fame been altered in consequence of the Restoration, his extensive information and acute ingenuity would probably have betrayed the author of the "Ode to St. Cecilia," and the father of English poetical harmony, into rivalling the metaphysical pindarics of Donne and Cowley. The verses, to which we allude, display their sublety [Transcriber's note: sic] of thought, their puerile extravagance of conceit, and that structure of verse, which, as the poet himself says of Holyday's translations, has nothing of verse in it except the worst part of it— the rhyme, and that far from being unexceptionable The following lines, in which the poet describes the death of Lord Hastings by the small-pox, will be probably admitted as a justification of this censure: "Was there no milder way but the small-pox; This is exactly in the tone of Bishop Corbet's invective against the same disease: "Oh thou deformed unwoman-like disease, After leaving the university, our author entered the world, supported by friends, from whose character, principles, and situation, it might have been prophesied, with probability, that his success in life, and his literary reputation, would have been exactly the reverse of what they actually proved. Sir Gilbert Pickering was cousin-german to the poet, and also to his mother; thus standing related to Dryden in a double connection.[33] This gentleman was a staunch puritan, and having set out as a reformer, ended by being a regicide, and an abettor of the tyranny of Cromwell. He was one of the judges of the unfortunate Charles; and though he did not sit in that bloody court upon the last and fatal day, yet he seems to have concurred in the most violent measures of the unconscientious men who did so. He had been one of the parliamentary counsellors of state, and hesitated not to be numbered among the godly and discreet persons who assisted Cromwell as a privy council. Moreover he was lord chamberlain of the Protector's court, and received the honour of his mock peerage. The patronage of such a person was more likely to have elevated Dryden to the temporal greatness and wealth acquired by the sequestrators and committee-men of that oppressive time, than to have aided him in attaining the summits of Parnassus. For, according to the slight records which Mr. Malone has recovered concerning Sir Gilbert Pickering's character, it would seem, that, to the hard, precise, fanatical contempt of every illumination, save the inward light, which he derived from his sect, he added the properties of a fiery temper, and a rude and savage address.[34] In what capacity Dryden lived with his kinsman, or to what line of life circumstances seemed to destine the future poet, we are left at liberty to conjecture. Shadwell, the virulent antagonist of our author, has called him Sir Gilbert Pickering's clerk; and it is indeed highly probable that he was employed as his amanuensis, or secretary. The next step of advancement you began The Medal of John Bayes. But I cannot, with Mr. Malone, interpret the same passage, by supposing the third line of the triplet to apply to Dryden. Had he been actually a member of a committee of sequestration, that circumstance would never have remained in the dubious obscurity of Shadwell's poetry; it would have been as often echoed and re-echoed as every other incident of the poet's life which was capable of bearing an unfavourable interpretation. I incline therefore to believe, that the terms sequestrator and committee-man apply not to the poet, but to his patron Sir Gilbert, to whom their propriety cannot be doubted. Sir Gilbert Pickering was not our author's only relation at the court of Cromwell. The chief of his family, Sir John Driden, elder brother of the poet's father, was also a flaming and bigoted puritan,[35] through whose gifts and merits his nephew might reasonably hope to attain preferment In a youth entering life under the protection of such relations, who could have anticipated the future dramatist and poet laureate, much less the advocate and martyr of prerogative and of the Stuart family, the convert and confessor of the Roman Catholic faith? In his after career, his early connections with the puritans, and the principles of his kinsmen during the civil wars and usurpation, were often made subjects of reproach, to which he never seems to have deigned an answer.[36] The death of Cromwell was the first theme of our poet's muse. Averse as the puritans were to any poetry, save that of Hopkins, of Withers, or of Wisdom, they may be reasonably supposed to have had some sympathy with Dryden's sorrow upon the death of Oliver, even although it vented itself in the profane and unprofitable shape of an elegy. But we have no means of estimating its reception with the public, if, in truth, the public long interested themselves about the memory of Cromwell, while his relations and dependants presented to them the more animated and interesting spectacle of a struggle for his usurped power. Richard perhaps, and the immediate friends of the deceased Protector, with such of Dryden's relations as were attached to his memory, may have thought, like the tinker at the Taming of the Shrew, that this same elegy was "marvellous good matter." It did not probably attract much general attention. The first edition, in 1659, is extremely rare: it was reprinted, however, along with those of Sprat and Waller, in the course of the same year. After the Restoration this piece fell into a slate of oblivion, from which it may be believed that the author, who had seen a new light in politics, was by no means solicitous to recall it. His political antagonist did not, however, fail to awaken its memory, when Dryden became a decided advocate for the royal prerogative, and the hereditary right of the Stuarts. During the controversies of Charles the Second's reign, in which Dryden took so decided a share, his eulogy on Cromwell was often objected to him, as a proof of inconsistence and apostasy. One passage, which plainly applies to the civil wars in general, was wrested to signify an explicit approbation of the murder of Charles the First; and the whole piece was reprinted by an incensed antagonist, under the title of "An Elegy on the Usurper O.C., by the author of Absalom and Achitophel, published (it is ironically added) to show the loyalty and integrity of the poet,"—an odd piece of vengeance, which has perhaps never been paralleled, except in the single case of "Love in a Hollow Tree."[37] The motives of the Duchess of Marlborough, in reprinting Lord Grimestone's memorable dramatic essay, did not here apply. The elegy on Cromwell, although doubtless sufficiently faulty, contained symptoms of a regenerating taste; and, politically considered, although a panegyric on an usurper, the topics of praise are selected with attention to truth, and are, generally speaking, such as Cromwell's worst enemies could not have denied to him. Neither had Dryden made the errors, or misfortunes, of the royal family, and their followers, the subject of censure or of contrast. With respect to them, it was hardly possible that a eulogy on such a theme could have less offence in it. This was perhaps a fortunate circumstance for Dryden at the Restoration; and it must be noticed to his honour, that as he spared the exiled monarch in his panegyric on the usurper, so, after the Restoration, in his numerous writings on the side of royalty, there is no instance of his recalling his former praise of Cromwell. After the frequent and rapid changes which the government of England underwent from the death of Cromwell, in the spring of 1660, Charles II. was restored to the throne of his ancestors. It may be easily imagined, that this event, a subject in itself highly fit for poetry, and which promised the revival of poetical pursuits, was hailed with universal acclamation by all whose turn for verse had been suppressed and stifled during the long reign of fanaticism. The Restoration led the way to the revival of letters, as well as that of legal government. With diaries, as Dryden has expressed it, The officious muses came along, It was not, however, to be expected, that an alteration of the taste which had prevailed in the days of Charles I., was to be the immediate consequence of the new order of things. The muse awoke, like the sleeping beauty of the fairy tale, in the same antiquated and absurd vestments in which she had fallen asleep twenty years before; or, if the reader will pardon another simile, the poets were like those who, after long mourning, resume for a time their ordinary dresses, of which the fashion has in the meantime passed away. Other causes contributed to a temporary revival of the metaphysical poetry. Almost all its professors, attached to the house of Stuart, had been martyrs, or confessors at least, in its cause. Cowley, their leader, was yet alive, and returned to claim the late reward of his loyalty and his sufferings. Cleveland had died a victim to the contempt, rather than the persecution, of the republicans;[38] but this most ardent of cavalier poets was succeeded by Wild, whose "Iter Boreale" a poem on Monk's march from Scotland formed upon Cleveland's model, obtained extensive popularity among the citizens of London.[39] Dryden's good sense and natural taste perceived the obvious defects of these, the very coarsest of metaphysical poets; insomuch, that, in his "Essay on Dramatic Poetry," he calls wresting and torturing one word into another, a catachresis, or Clevelandism, and charges Wild with being in poetry what the French call un mauvais buffon. Sprat, and an host of inferior imitators, marched for a time in the footsteps of Cowley; delighted, probably, to discover in Pindaric writing, as it was called, a species of poetry which required neither sound nor sense, provided only there was a sufficient stock of florid and extravagant thoughts, expressed in harsh and bombastic language. But this style of poetry, although it was for a time revived, and indeed continued to be occasionally employed even to the end of the eighteenth century, had too slight foundation in truth and nature to maintain the exclusive pre-eminence, which it had been exalted to during the reigns of the two first monarchs of the Stuart race. As Rochester profanely expressed it, Cowley's poetry was not of God, and therefore could not stand. An approaching change of public taste was hastened by the manners of the restored monarch and his courtiers. That pedantry which had dictated the excessive admiration of metaphysical conceits, was not the characteristic of the court of Charles II., as it had been of those of his grandfather and father. Lively and witty by nature, with all the acquired habits of an adventurer, whose wanderings, military and political, left him time neither for profound reflection nor for deep study, the restored monarch's literary taste, which was by no means contemptible, was directed towards a lighter and more pleasing style of poetry than the harsh and scholastic productions of Donne and Cowley. The admirers, therefore, of this old school were confined to the ancient cavaliers, and the old courtiers of Charles I.; men unlikely to lead the fashion in the court of a gay monarch, filled with such men as Buckingham, Rochester, Etherege, Sedley, and Mulgrave, whose time and habits confined their own essays to occasional verses, and satirical effusions, in which they often ridiculed the heights of poetry they were incapable of attaining. With such men the class of poets, which before the civil war held but a secondary rank, began to rise in estimation. Waller, Suckling, and Denham, began to assert a pre-eminence over Cowley and Donne; the ladies, whose influence in the court of James and Charles I. was hardly felt, and who were then obliged to be contented with such pedantic worship as is contained in the "Mistress" of Cowley, and the "Epithalamion" of Donne, began now, when their voices were listened to, and their taste consulted, to determine that their poetical lovers should address them in strains more musical, if not more intelligible. What is most acceptable to the fair sex will always sway the mode of a gay court; and the character of a smooth and easy sonneteer was soon considered as an indispensable requisite to a man of wit and fashion, terms which were then usually synonymous. To those who still retained a partiality for that exercise of the fancy and memory, afforded by the metaphysical poetry, the style of satire then prevalent afforded opportunities of applying it. The same depth of learning, the same extravagant ingenuity in combining the most remote images, and in driving casual associations to the verge of absurdity, almost all the remarkable features which characterised the poetry of Cowley, may be successfully traced in the satire of Hudibras. The sublime itself borders closely on the ludicrous; but the bombast and extravagant cannot be divided from it. The turn of thought, and the peculiar kind of mental exertion, corresponds in both styles of writing; and although Butler pursued the ludicrous, and Cowley aimed at the surprising, the leading features of their poetry only differ like those of the same face convulsed with laughter, or arrested in astonishment The district of metaphysical poetry was thus invaded by the satirists, who sought weapons there to avenge the misfortunes and oppression which they had so lately sustained from the puritans; and as it is difficult in a laughing age to render serious what has been once applied to ludicrous purposes, Butler and his imitators retained quiet possession of the style which they had usurped from the grave bards of the earlier age. A single poet, Sir William Davenant,[40] made a meritorious, though a misguided and unsuccessful effort, to rescue poetry from becoming the mere handmaid of pleasure, or the partisan of political or personal disputes, and to restore her to her natural rank in society, as an auxiliary of religion, policy, law, and virtue. His heroic poem of "Gondibert" has, no doubt, great imperfections; but it intimates everywhere a mind above those laborious triflers, who called that poetry which was only verse; and very often exhibits a majestic, dignified, and manly simplicity, equally superior to the metaphysical school, by the doctrines of which Davenant was occasionally misled. Yet, if that author too frequently imitated their quaint affectation of uncommon sentiment and associations, he had at least the merit of couching them in stately and harmonious verse; a quality of poetry totally neglected by the followers of Cowley. I mention Davenant here, and separate from the other poets, who were distinguished about the time of the Restoration, because I think that Dryden, to whom we are about to return, was, at that period, an admirer and imitator of "Gondibert," as we are certain that he was a personal and intimate friend of the author. With the return of the king, the fall of Dryden's political patrons was necessarily involved. Sir Gilbert Pickering, having been one of Charles's judges, was too happy to escape into obscurity, under an absolute disqualification for holding any office, political, civil, or ecclesiastical. The influence of Sir John Driden was ended at the same time; and thus both those relations, under whose protection Dryden entered life, and by whose influence he was probably to have been aided in some path to wealth or eminence, became at once incapable of assisting him; and even connection with them was rendered, by the change of times, disgraceful, if not dangerous. Yet it may be doubted whether Dryden felt this evil in its full extent. Sterne has said of a character, that a blessing which closed his mouth, or a misfortune which opened it with a good grace, were nearly equal to him; nay, that sometimes the misfortune was the more acceptable of the two. It is possible, by a parity of reasoning, that Dryden may have felt himself rather relieved from, than deprived of, his fanatical patrons, under whose guidance he could never hope to have indulged in that career of literary pursuit, which the new order of things presented to the ambition of the youthful poet; at least, he lost no time in useless lamentation, but, now in his thirtieth year, proceeded to exert that poetical talent, which had heretofore been repressed by his own situation, and that of the country. Dryden, left to his own exertions, hastened to testify his joyful acquiescence in the restoration of monarchy, by publishing "Astroea Redux," a poem which was probably distinguished among the innumerable congratulations poured forth upon the occasion; and he added to those which hailed the coronation, in 1661, the verses entitled, "A Panegyric to his Sacred Majesty." These pieces testify, that the author had already made some progress in harmonising his versification. But they also contain many of those points of wit, and turns of epigram, which he condemned in his more advanced judgment. The same description applies, in a yet stronger degree, to the verses addressed to Lord Chancellor Hyde (Lord Clarendon) on the new-year's-day of 1662, in which Dryden has more closely imitated the metaphysical poetry than in any poem, except the juvenile elegy on Lord Hastings. I cannot but think, that the poet consulted the taste of his patron, rather than his own, in adopting this peculiar style. Clarendon was educated in the court of Charles I., and Dryden may have thought it necessary, in addressing him, to imitate the "strong verses," which were then admired. According to the fashion of the times, such copies of occasional verses were rewarded by a gratuity from the person to whom they were addressed; and poets had not yet learned to think this mode of receiving assistance incompatible with the feelings of dignity or delicacy. Indeed, in the common transactions of that age, one sees something resembling the eastern custom of accompanying with a present, and not always a splendid one, the usual forms of intercourse and civility. Thus we find the wealthy corporation of Hull, backing a polite address to the Duke of Monmouth, their governor, with a present of six broad pieces; and his grace deemed it a point of civility to press the acceptance of the same gratuity upon the member of parliament for the city, by whom it was delivered to him.[41] We may therefore believe, that Dryden received some compliment from the king and chancellor; and I am afraid the same premises authorise us to conclude that it was but trifling. Meantime, our author having no settled means of support, except his small landed property, and having now no assistance to expect from his more wealthy kinsmen, to whom, probably, neither his literary pursuits, nor his commencing them by a panegyric on the restoration, were very agreeable, and whom he had also offended by a slight change in spelling his name,[42] seems to have been reduced to narrow and uncomfortable circumstances. Without believing, in its full extent, the exaggerated account given by Brown and Shadwell,[43] we may discover from their reproaches, that, at the commencement of his literary career, Dryden was connected, and probably lodged, with Herringman the bookseller, in the New Exchange, for whom he wrote prefaces, and other occasional pieces. But having, as Mr. Malone has observed, a patrimony, though a small one, of his own, it seems impossible that our author was ever in that state of mean and abject dependence, which the malice of his enemies afterwards pretended. The same malice misrepresented, or greatly exaggerated, the nature of Dryden's obligations to Sir Robert Howard, with whom he became acquainted probably about the time of the Restoration, whose influence was exerted in his favour, and whose good offices the poet returned by literary assistance. Sir Robert Howard was a younger son of Thomas Earl of Berkshire,[44] and, like all his family, had distinguished himself as a royalist, particularly at the battle of Cropredy[45] Bridge. He had recently suffered a long imprisonment in Windsor Castle during the usurpation. His rank and merits made him, after the Restoration, a patron of some consequence; and upon his publishing a collection of verses very soon after that period, Dryden prefixed an address "to his honoured friend" on "his excellent poems." Sir Robert Howard understood the value of Dryden's attachment, introduced him into his family, and probably aided in procuring his productions that degree of attention from the higher world, for want of which the most valuable efforts of genius have often sunk into unmerited obscurity. Such, in short, were his exertions in favour of Dryden, that, though we cannot believe he was indebted to Howard, for those necessaries of life which he had the means to procure for himself, the poet found ground to acknowledge, that his patron had not only been "carefull of his fortune, which was the effect of his nobleness, but solicitous of his reputation, which was that of his kindness." Thus patronised, our author seems to have advanced in reputation, as he became more generally known to the learned and ingenious of his time. Yet we have but few traces of the labour, by which he doubtless attained, and secured, his place in society. A short satire on the Dutch, written to animate the people of England against them, appeared in 1662.[46] It is somewhat in the hard style of invective, which Cleveland applied to the Scottish nation; yet Dryden thought it worth while to weave the same verses into the prologue and epilogue of the tragedy of "Amboyna," a piece written in 1673, with the same kind intentions towards the states-general. Science, as well as poetry, began to revive after the iron dominion of military fanaticism was ended; and Dryden, who through life was attached to experimental philosophy, speedily associated himself with those who took interest in its progress. He was chosen a member of the newly instituted Royal Society, 26th November 1662; an honour which cemented his connection with the most learned men of the time, and is an evidence of the respect in which he was already held. Most of these, and the discoveries by which they had distinguished themselves, Dryden took occasion to celebrate in his "Epistle to Dr. Walter Charleton," a learned physician, upon his treatise of Stonehenge. Gilbert, Boyle, Harvey, and Ent, are mentioned with enthusiastic applause as treading in the path pointed out by Bacon, who first broke the fetters of Aristotle, and taught the world to derive knowledge from experiment. In these elegant verses, the author divests himself of all the flippant extravagance of point and quibble, in which, complying with his age, he had hitherto indulged, though of late in a limited degree. While thus united in friendly communion with men of kindred and congenial spirits, Dryden seems to have been sensible of the necessity of applying his literary talents to some line, in which he might derive a steadier and more certain recompence, than by writing occasional verses to the great, or doing literary drudgery for the bookseller. His own genius would probably have directed him to the ambitious labours of an epic poem; but for this the age afforded little encouragement. "Gondibert," the style of which, Dryden certainly both admired and copied, became a martyr to the raillery of the critics; and to fill up the measure of shame, the "Paradise Lost" fell still-born from the press. This last instance of bad taste had not, it is true, yet taken place; but the men who were guilty of it, were then living under Dryden's observation and their manners and habits could not fail to teach him, to anticipate the little encouragement they were likely to afford to the loftier labours of poetry. One only line remained, in which poetical talents might exert themselves, with some chance of procuring their possessor's reward, or at least maintenance, and this was dramatic composition. To this Dryden sedulously applied himself, with various success, for many years. But before proceeding to trace the history of his dramatic career, I proceed to notice such pieces of his poetry, as exhibit marks of his earlier style of composition. The victory gained by the Duke of York over the Dutch fleet on the 3d of June 1665, and his Duchess's subsequent journey into the north, furnished Dryden with the subject of a few occasional verses; in which the style of Waller (who came forth with a poem on the same subject) is successfully imitated. In addressing her grace, the poet suppresses all the horrors of the battle, and turns her eyes upon the splendour of a victory, for which the kingdom was indebted to her husband's valour, and her "chaste vows." In these verses, not the least vestige of metaphysical wit can be traced; and they were accordingly censured, as wanting height of fancy, and dignity of words. This criticism Dryden refuted, by alleging, that he had succeeded in what he did attempt, in the softness of expression and smoothness of the measure (the appropriate ornaments of an address to a lady), and that he was accused of that only thing which he could well defend. It seems, however, very possible, that these remarks impelled him to undertake a task, in which vigour of fancy and expression might, with propriety, be exercised. Accordingly, his next poem was of greater length and importance. This is a historical account of the events of the year 1666, under the title of "Annus Mirabilis" to which distinction the incidents which had occurred in that space gave it some title. The poem being in the elegiac stanza, Dryden relapsed into an imitation of "Gondibert," from which he had departed ever since the "Elegy on Cromwell." From this it appears, that the author's admiration of Davenant had not decreased. Indeed, he, long afterwards, bore testimony to that author's quick and piercing imagination; which at once produced thoughts remote, new, and surprising, such as could not easily enter into any other fancy. Dryden at least equalled Davenant in this quality; and certainly excelled him in the powers of composition, which are to embody the conceptions of the imagination; and in the extent of acquired knowledge, by which they were to be enforced and illustrated. In his preface, he has vindicated the choice of his stanza, by a reference to the opinion of Davenant,[47] which he sanctions by affirming, that he had always himself thought quatrains, or stanzas of verse in alternate rhyme, more noble, and of greater dignity, both for sound and number, than any other verse in use among us. By this attention to sound and rhythm, he improved upon the school of metaphysical poets, which disclaimed attention to either; but in the thought and expression itself, the style of Davenant more nearly resembled Cowley's, than that of Denham and Waller. The same ardour for what Dryden calls "wit-writing," the same unceasing exercise of the memory, in search of wonderful thoughts and allusions, and the same contempt for the subject, except as the medium of displaying the author's learning and ingenuity, marks the style of Davenant, though in a less degree than that of the metaphysical poets, and though chequered with many examples of a simpler and chaster character. Some part of this deviation was, perhaps, owing to the nature of the stanza; for the structure of the quatrain prohibited the bard, who used it, from rambling into those digressive similes, which, in the pindaric strophe, might be pursued through endless ramifications. If the former started an extravagant thought, or a quaint image, he was compelled to bring it to a point within his four-lined stanza. The snake was thus scotched, though not killed; and conciseness being rendered indispensable, a great step was gained towards concentration of thought, which is necessary to the simple and to the sublime The manner of Davenant, therefore, though short-lived, and ungraced by public applause, was an advance towards true taste, from the unnatural and frantic indulgence of unrestrained fancy; and, did it claim no other merit, it possesses that of having been twice sanctioned by the practice of Dryden, upon occasions of uncommon solemnity. |
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