SELECTIONS

FROM THE

POETRY OF DRYDEN

INCLUDING

HIS PLAYS AND TRANSLATIONS.

LONDON:

JOHN W. PARKER AND SON, WEST STRAND.

MDCCCLII.

PREFACE.

THE merits of Dryden are not sufficiently acknowledged at present. Our zeal for the poets who preceded the civil wars, like most reactions, is become too exclusive. But we are also too much inclined to confound with the period, which began with Addison and Pope, that intermediate time, from the Restoration to the end of the century, in which, though French taste had a good deal of effect, the former native, or Italian, spirit still operated, and the taste of the French themselves had not yet quite arrived at its most corrected and chastised form.

In the present century, however, we have Sir Walter Scott, speaking of Dryden, in his own person, as the "Great High Priest of all the Nine." And certainly he profited by him not a little, in his versification and

degree in his lan

Mr. Fox, in the

spirited flow of composition; in a less guage, and sometimes in his ideas. House of Commons, spoke of him as "his favourite poet:" and his preference is mentioned in Rogers's Human Life. Gray wrote to Beattie, "Remember Dryden, and be blind to all his faults:" and the passage in his Progress of Poesy, is well known. Johnson begins his life of him with more

enthusiasm than usual; "Of the great poet whose life I am now to undertake," &c. Pope's enthusiastic praise of his versification is familiar to us. What Pope praises with so much discrimination, he scarce ever attempted to imitate, except in the passage itself in which he praises it. The spleen, I may almost call it, of Hume, who calls the bulk of his works "the refuse of our language," is remarkable; especially as Dryden was a Tory. But it is insufferable, that Hume should speak in that manner, who had no great right to call English his language at all. Dryden is exactly the best model of language, in prose or verse, we have to produce. We find that Mr. Fox had, at one time, intended to insert no word in his History, for which an authority could not be found in Dryden.

But this want of popularity is partly owing to his inequalities. Much of his poetry is uninteresting; and a good deal is incorrect, over-fanciful, or coarse; so much of the latter, that it is alone a sufficient reason, why his entire poems cannot be given to women, or to young persons with a view to education. Many of his poems, too, are occasional; and relate, as a whole, to subjects no longer interesting.

Our general impression of his tragedies, especially those in verse, is, that they consist chiefly in absurd bluster (we are told that the Conquest of Granada was received by the audience, or at least by audiences after his time, as comedy); in chop-logic; and Frenchified galanterie; except what is mere inanity. I hope this collection will show, that there are other qualities, scattered at least: bursts of imagination, the more remarkable because they seem to force their way in spite of the spirit of the age, instead of harmonizing with it, as in

the case of Shakespeare: (I might say, in spite of dramatic propriety too, and of French example; for they are often in the form of regular similes)—very simple, child-like, and tender feeling-more rarely, that feeling which is to be expected in tragedy, grand flow of manly spirit.

There is, probably, no poet, who writes what is ridiculous, so much as Dryden in his plays; which is the more remarkable, because he himself ridiculed others more than any writer, perhaps. Many of these passages could not have been intended to be considered as altogether serious: and the same thing may be said of many passages in Corneille. I have inserted a few of these, to illustrate his character.

I do not pretend to make this an edition of Dryden in which only the tedious and disagreeable parts are left out: for that, I am afraid, would still be much too long for the general taste at present.

Walter Scott, in Marmion, speaks with most serious admiration, of the supposed merits which Dryden would have shown in his intended epic poem; and of the constraints imposed upon him, in making him write plays, &c. But I cannot help thinking there is some doubt about all this. There are very hasty and contradictory things in many of Dryden's prose works. Where he says that his genius did not much incline him to the stage, there is some truth in that, certainly; judging from the plays themselves. But he did not think so while he was writing them. On the contrary, he certainly meant, in all but plain terms, to boast, that he had surpassed his dramatic predecessors. And in a very curious letter, by Mrs. Evelyn, it appears that others, good judges, thought so too.