that he thinks, and that on his own behalf; that he combines and verifies his thoughts; that beyond all this, he naturally has a just perception, and that with his method he has good sense. He has the tastes and the weaknesses which suit his cast of intellect. He holds in the highest estimation 'the admirable Boileau, whose numbers are excellent, whose expressions are noble, whose thoughts are just, whose language is pure, whose satire is pointed, and whose sense is close. What he borrows from the ancients, he repays with usury of his own, in coin as good, and almost as universally valuable.'1 He has the stiffness of the logician poets, too strict and argumentative, blaming Ariosto, who neither designed justly, nor observed any unity of action, or compass of time, or moderation in the vastness of his draught; his style is luxurious, without majesty or decency, and his adventures without the compass of nature and possibility.' He understands delicacy no better than fancy. Speaking of Horace, he finds that his wit is faint and his salt almost insipid. Juvenal is of a more vigorous and masculine wit; he gives me as much pleasure as I can bear.' 3 For the same reason he depreciates the French style: "Their language is not strung with sinews, like our English; it has the nimbleness of a greyhound, but not the bulk and body of a mastiff. . . . They have set up purity for the standard of their language; and a masculine vigour is that of ours. Two or three such words depict a man; Dryden has just affirmed, unwittingly, the measure and quality of his mind. 12 13 This mind, as we may imagine, is heavy, and especially in flattery. Flattery is the chief art in a monarchical age. Dryden is hardly skilful in it, any more than his contemporaries. Across the Channel, at the same epoch, they praised just as much, but without cringing too low, because praise was decked out; now disguised or relieved by charm of style; now looking as if men took to it as to a fashion. Thus delicately rendered, people are able to digest it. But here, far from the fine aristocratic kitchen, it weighs like an undigested mass upon the stomach. I have related how Lord Clarendon, hearing that his daughter had just married the Duke of York in secret, begged the king to have her instantly beheaded; how the Commons, composed for the most part of Presbyterians, declared themselves and the English people rebels, worthy of the punishment of death, and went moreover to cast themselves at the king's feet, with contrite air to beg him to pardon the House and the nation. Dryden is no more delicate than statesmen and legislators. His dedications are as a rule nauseous. He says to the Duchess of Monmouth: 6 'To receive the blessings and prayers of mankind, you need only be seen together. We are ready to conclude, that you are a pair of angels sent below to 1 Essay on Satire, dedicated to the Earl of Dorset, xiii. 16. 3 Ibid. 84. 5 See vol. i. 466. 2 Ibid. * Dedication of the Eneis, xiv. 204. See vol. i. 467. make virtue amiable in your persons, or to sit to poets when they would pleasantly instruct the age, by drawing goodness in the most perfect and alluring shape of nature. . . . No part of Europe can afford a parallel to your noble Lord in masculine beauty, and in goodliness of shape.'1 Elsewhere he says to the Duke of Monmouth : 'You have all the advantages of mind and body, and an illustrious birth, conspiring to render you an extraordinary person. The Achilles and the Rinaldo are present in you, even above their originals; you only want a Homer or a Tasso to make you equal to them. Youth, beauty, and courage (all which you possess in the height of their perfection) are the most desirable gifts of Heaven.' 2 His Grace did not frown nor hold his nose, and his Grace was right.3 Another author, Mrs. Aphra Behn, burned a still more ill-savoured incense under the nose of Nell Gwynne: people's nerves were strong in those days, and they breathed freely where others would be suffocated. The Earl of Dorset having written some little songs and satires, Dryden swears that in his way he equalled Shakspeare, and surpassed all the ancients. And these barefaced panegyrics go on imperturbably for a score of pages, the author alternately passing in review the various virtues of his great man, always finding that the last is the finest; after which he receives by way of recompense a purse of gold. Observe that in this Dryden is not more a flunkey than the others. The corpora- • tion of Hull, harangued one day by the Duke of Monmouth, made him a present of six broad pieces, which were presented to Monmouth by Marvell, the member for Hull.5 Modern scruples were not yet born. I can believe that Dryden, with all his prostrations, lacked spirit more than honour. A second talent, perhaps the first in carnival time, is the art of saying pretty things, and the Restoration was a carnival, about as delicate as a bargee's ball. There are strange songs and more than adventurous prologues in Dryden's plays. His Marriage à la Mode opens with these verses sung by a married woman: 1 Dedication of The Indian Emperor, ii. 261. 2 Dedication of Tyrannic Love, iii. 347. 3 He also says in the same epistle dedicatory: All men will join me in the adoration which I pay you.' To the Earl of Rochester he writes in a letter (xviii. 90): I find it is not for me to contend any way with your Lordship, who can write better on the meanest subject than I can on the best. . . . You are above any incense I can give you.' In his dedication of the Fables (xi. 195) he compares the Duke of Ormond to Joseph, Ulysses, Lucullus, etc. In his fourth poetical epistle (xi. 20) he compares Lady Castlemaine to Cato. * Dedication of the Essay of Dramatic Poesy, xv. 286. * See Andrew Marvell's Works, i. 210. We lov'd, and we lov'd as long as we cou'd, "Till our love was lov'd out in us both. But our marriage is dead when the pleasure is fled; 'Twas pleasure first made it an oath.' The reader may read the rest for himself in Dryden's plays; it cannot be quoted. Besides, Dryden does not succeed well; his mind is on too solid a basis; his mood is too serious, even reserved, taciturn. As Sir Walter Scott well said, 'his indelicacy was like the forced impudence of a bashful man." He wished to wear the fine exterior of a Sedley or a Rochester, made himself petulant of set purpose, and squatted clumsily in the filth in which others simply sported. Nothing is more nauseous than studied lewdness, and Dryden studies everything, even pleasantness and politeness. He wrote to Dennis, who had praised him: 'They (the commendations) are no more mine when I receive them than the light of the moon can be allowed to be her own, who shines but by the reflexion of her brother. '2 He wrote to his cousin, in a diverting narration, these details of a fat woman, with whom he had travelled: 'Her weight made the horses travel very heavily; but, to give them a breathing time, she would often stop us, . . . and tell us we were all flesh and blood.'3 It seems that these pretty things would then amuse a lady. His letters are made up of heavy official civilities, vigorously hewn compliments, mathematical salutes; his badinage is a dissertation, he props up his trifles with periods. I have found in him beautiful pieces, but never pleasing ones; he cannot even argue with taste. The characters in his Essay of Dramatic Poesy think themselves still at school, learnedly quote Paterculus, and in Latin too, opposing the definition of the other side, and observing that it was only à genere et fine, and so not altogether perfect.' In one of his prefaces he says in a professorial tone: 'It is charged upon me that I make debauched persons my protagonists, or the chief persons of the drama; and that I make them happy in the conclusion of my play; against the law of comedy, which is to reward virtue, and punish vice.' Elsewhere he declares: 'It is not that I would explode the use of metaphors from passion, for Longinus thinks them necessary to raise it.' His great essay upon satire swarms with useless or long protracted passages, with the inquiries and comparisons of a commentator. He cannot get rid of the scholar, the logician, the rhetorician, and show the natural man. But the man of spirit was often manifest; in spite of several falls 1 Scott's Life of Dryden, i. 447. 2 Letter 2, 'to Mr. John Dennis,' xviii. 114. and many slips, he shows a mind constantly upright, bending rather from conventionality than from nature, with a dash and afflatus, occupied with grave thoughts, and subjecting his conduct to his convictions. He was converted loyally and by conviction to the Roman Catholic creed, persevered in it after the fall of James II., lost his post of historiographer and poet-laureate, and though poor, burdened with a family, and infirm, refused to dedicate his Virgil to King William. He wrote to his sons: 'Dissembling, though lawful in some cases, is not my talent: yet, for your sake, I will struggle with the plain openness of my nature. . . . In the mean time, I flatter not myself with any manner of hopes, but do my duty, and suffer for God's sake. . . . You know the profits (of Virgil) might have been more; but neither my conscience nor my honour would suffer me to take them; but I can never repent of my constancy, since I am thoroughly persuaded of the justice of the cause for which I suffer.'1 One of his sons having been expelled from school, he wrote to the master, Dr. Busby, his own old teacher, with extreme gravity and nobleness, asking without humiliation, disagreeing without giving offence, in a sustained and proud style, which is calculated to please, seeking again his favour, if not as a debt to the father, at least as a gift to the son, and concluding, 'I have done something, so far to conquer my own spirit as to ask it.' He was a good father to his children, as well as liberal, and sometimes even generous, to the tenant of his little estate." He says: 3 'More libels have been written against me than almost any man now living. ... I have seldom answered any scurrilous lampoon, . . . and, being naturally vindictive, have suffered in silence, and possessed my soul in quiet.' Insulted by Collier as a corrupter of morals, he endured this coarse reproof, and nobly confessed the faults of his youth: 'I shall say the less of Mr. Collier, because in many things he has taxed me justly; and I have pleaded guilty to all thoughts and expressions of mine which can be truly argued of obscenity, profaneness, or immorality, and retract them. If he be my enemy, let him triumph; if he be my friend, as I have given him no personal occasion to be otherwise, he will be glad of my repentance.'4 There is some wit in what follows: 'He (Collier) is too much given to horseplay in his raillery, and comes to battle like a dictator from the plough. I will not say "the zeal of God's house has eaten him up," but I am sure it has devoured some part of his good manners and civility.'5 Such a repentance raises a man; to humble oneself thus, one must be a great man. He was so in mind and in heart, full of solid arguments and individual opinions, above the petty mannerism of rhetoric and 1 Letter 23, to his sons at Rome,' xviii. 133. * Scott's Life of Dryden, i. 449. 3 Essay on Satire, xiii. 80. Preface to the Fables, xi. 238. 5 Ibid. affectations of style, a master of verse, a slave to his idea, with that abundance of thoughts which is the sign of true genius: 'Thoughts, such as they are, come crowding in so fast upon me, that my only difficulty is to chuse or to reject, to run them into verses, or to give them the other harmony of prose: I have so long studied and practised both, that they are grown into a habit, and become familiar to me.'1 With these powers he entered upon his second career; the English constitution and genius opened it to him. VII. 'A man,' says La Bruyère, born a Frenchman and a Christian finds himself constrained in satire; great subjects are forbidden to him; he essays them sometimes, and then turns aside to small things, which he elevates by the beauty of his genius and his style.' It was not so in England. Great subjects were given up to vehement discussion; politics and religion, like two arenas, invited to boldness and to battle, every talent and every passion. The king, at first popular, had roused opposition by his vices and errors, and bent before public discontent as before the intrigue of parties. It was known that he had sold the interests of England to France; it was believed that he would deliver up the consciences of Protestants to the Papists. The lies of Oates, the murder of the magistrate Godfrey, his corpse solemnly paraded in the streets of London, had inflamed the imagination and prejudices of the people; the judges, blind or intimidated, sent innocent Roman Catholics to the scaffold, and the mob received with insults and curses their protestations of innocence. The king's brother had been excluded from his offices, it was endeavoured to exclude him from the throne. The pulpit, the theatres, the press, the hustings, resounded with discussions and recriminations. The names of Whigs and Tories arose, and the deepest debates of political philosophy were carried on, nursed by sentiments of present and practical interests, embittered by the rancour of old as well as of freshly roused passions. Dryden plunged in; and his poem of Absalom and Achitophel was a political pamphlet. They who can criticise so weakly,' he says in the preface, 'as to imagine that I have done my worst, may be convinced at their own cost that I can write severely with more ease than I can gently.' A biblical allegory, suited to the taste of the time, hardly concealed the names, and did not hide the men. He describes the tranquil old age and incontestable right of King David; the charm, pliant humour, popularity of his natural son Absalom; the genius and treachery of Achitophel, who stirs up the 1 Preface to the Fables, xi. 209. 4 The Earl of Shaftesbury : 3 The Duke of Monmouth. Of these the false Achitophel was first, |