The Waste Land

by T. S. Eliot

  unforgotten.26 A small pamphlet issued for the London County Council

  ( Proposed Demolition of Nineteen City Churches: P. S. King & Son, Ltd., 2–4

  Gt. Smith Street, Westminster, S.W.1, 3s.6d. net) should be enough to per-

  suade of what I have said.27

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  i f t h e p r o s p e c t o f delight be wanting (which alone justifies the perusal of poetry) we may let the reputation of Dryden sleep in the manu-

  als of literature.2 To those who are genuinely insensible of his genius (and

  these are probably the majority of living readers of poetry) we can only

  oppose illustrations of the following proposition: that their insensibility

  does not merely signify indi¤erence to satire and wit, but lack of percep-

  tion of qualities not confined to satire and wit and present in the work of

  other poets whom these persons feel that they understand. To those whose

  taste in poetry is formed entirely upon the English poetry of the nine-

  teenth century—to the majority—it is diªcult to explain or excuse Dry-

  den: the twentieth century is still the nineteenth, although it may in time

  acquire its own character. The nineteenth century had, like every other,

  limited tastes and peculiar fashions; and, like every other, it was unaware

  of its own limitations. Its tastes and fashions had no place for Dryden; yet

  Dryden is one of the tests of a catholic appreciation of poetry.

  He is a successor of Jonson, and therefore the descendant of Marlowe;

  he is the ancestor of nearly all that is best in the poetry of the eighteenth

  century. Once we have mastered Dryden—and by mastery is meant a full

  and essential enjoyment, not the enjoyment of a private whimsical fash-

  ion—we can extract whatever enjoyment and edification there is in his

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  contemporaries—Oldham, Denham, or the less remunerative Waller;3

  and still more his successors—not only Pope, but Phillips, Churchill,

  Gray, Johnson, Cowper, Goldsmith.4 His inspiration is prolonged in Crabbe

  and Byron; it even extends, as Mr. Van Doren cleverly points out, to Poe.5

  Even the poets responsible for the revolt were well acquainted with him:

  Wordsworth knew his work, and Keats invoked his aid. We cannot fully

  enjoy or rightly estimate a hundred years of English poetry unless we fully

  enjoy Dryden; and to enjoy Dryden means to pass beyond the limitations

  of the nineteenth century into a new freedom.

  All, all of a piece throughout:

  Thy Chase had a Beast in View;

  Thy Wars brought nothing about;

  Thy Lovers were all untrue.

  ’Tis well an Old Age is out,

  And time to begin a New.6

  The world’s great age begins anew,

  The golden years return,

  The earth doth like a snake renew

  Her winter weeds outworn:

  Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam

  Like wrecks of a dissolving dream.7

  The first of these passages is by Dryden, the second by Shelley; the second

  is found in the Oxford Book of English Verse, the first is not; yet we might defy anyone to show that the second is superior on intrinsically poetic

  merit.8 It is easy to see why the second should appeal more readily to the

  nineteenth, and what is left of the nineteenth under the name of the twen-

  tieth, century. It is not so easy to see propriety in an image which divests

  a snake of “winter weeds”; and this is a sort of blemish which would have

  been noticed more quickly by a contemporary of Dryden than by a contem-

  porary of Shelley.

  These reflections are occasioned by an admirable book on Dryden

  which has appeared at this very turn of time, when taste is becoming per-

  haps more fluid and ready for a new mould.9 It is a book which every prac-

  titioner of English verse should study. The consideration is so thorough,

  the matter so compact, the appreciation so just, temperate, and enthusiastic,

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  and supplied with such copious and well-chosen extracts from the poetry,

  the suggestion of astutely placed facts leads our thought so far, that there

  only remain to mention, as defects which do not detract from its value,

  two omissions: the prose is not dealt with, and the plays are somewhat

  slighted. What is especially impressive is the exhibition of the very wide

  range of Dryden’s work, shown by the quotations of every species. Everyone

  knows MacFlecknoe, and parts of Absalom and Achitophel; 10 in consequence, Dryden has sunk by the persons he has elevated to distinction—Shadwell

  and Settle, Shaftesbury and Buckingham.11 Dryden was much more than

  a satirist: to dispose of him as a satirist is to place an obstacle in the way

  of our understanding. At all events, we must satisfy ourselves of our defini-

  tion of the term satire; we must not allow our familiarity with the word

  to blind us to di¤erences and refinements; we must not assume that satire

  is a fixed type, and fixed to the prosaic, suited only to prose; we must ac-

  knowledge that satire is not the same thing in the hands of two di¤erent

  writers of genius. The connotations of “satire” and of “wit,” in short, may

  be only prejudices of nineteenth-century taste. Perhaps, we think, after

  reading Mr. Van Doren’s book, a juster view of Dryden may be given by

  beginning with some other portion of his work than his celebrated satires;

  but even here there is much more present, and much more that is poetry,

  than is usually supposed.

  The piece of Dryden’s which is the most fun, which is the most sus-

  tained display of surprise after surprise of wit from line to line, is MacFleck-

  noe. Dryden’s method here is something very near to parody; he applies

  vocabulary, images, and ceremony which arouse epic associations of gran-

  deur, to make an enemy helplessly ridiculous. But the e¤ect, though dis-

  astrous for the enemy, is very di¤erent from that of the humour which

  merely belittles, such as the satire of Mark Twain. Dryden continually en-

  hances: he makes his object great, in a way contrary to expectation; and

  the total e¤ect is due to the transformation of the ridiculous into poetry.

  As an example may be taken a fine passage plagiarized from Cowley, from

  lines which Dryden must have marked well, for he quotes them directly

  in one of his prefaces.12 Here is Cowley:

  Where their vast courts the mother-waters keep

  And undisturbed by moons in silence sleep . . .

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  Beneath the dens where unfledged tempests lie,

  And infant winds their tender voices try.13

  In MacFlecknoe this becomes:

  Where their vast courts the mother-strumpets keep,

  And undisturbed by watch, in silence sleep.

  Near these, a nursery erects its head,

  Where queens are formed, and future heroes bred;

  Where unfledged actors learn to laugh and cry,

  Where infant punks their tender voices try,

  And little Maximins the gods defy.14

  The passage from Cowley is by no means despicable verse. But it is a com-

  monplace description of commonly poetic objects; it has not th
e element

  of surprise so essential to poetry, and this Dryden provides. A clever versifier might have written Cowley’s lines; only a poet could have made what Dryden made of them. It is impossible to dismiss his verses as “prosaic”; turn

  them into prose and they are transmuted, the fragrance is gone. The re-

  proach of the prosaic, levelled at Dryden, rests upon a confusion between

  the emotions considered to be poetic, which is a matter allowing consider-

  able latitude of fashion, and the result of personal emotion in poetry; and,

  in the third place, there is the emotion depicted by the poet in some kinds

  of poetry, of which the “Testament” of Villon is an example.15 Again, there

  is the intellect, the originality and independence and clarity of what we

  vaguely call the poet’s “point of view.” Our valuation of poetry, in short,

  depends upon several considerations, upon the permanent and upon the

  mutable and upon the transitory. When we try to isolate the essentially

  poetic, we bring our pursuit in the end to something insignificant; our

  standards vary with every poet whom we consider. All we can hope to do,

  in the attempt to introduce some order into our preferences, is to clarify

  our reasons for finding pleasure in the poetry that we like.

  With regard to Dryden, therefore, we can say this much. Our taste in

  English poetry has been largely founded upon a partial perception of the

  value of Shakespeare and Milton, a perception which dwells upon sub-

  limity of theme and action. Shakespeare had a great deal more; he had

  nearly everything to satisfy our various desires for poetry. The point is that

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  the depreciation or neglect of Dryden is not due to the fact that his work

  is not poetry, but to a prejudice that the material, the feelings, out of which

  he built it is not poetic. Thus Matthew Arnold observes, in mentioning

  Dryden and Pope together, that “their poetry is conceived and composed

  in their wits, genuine poetry is conceived in the soul.”16 Arnold was, perhaps,

  not altogether the detached critic when he wrote this line: he may have

  been stirred to a defence of his own poetry, conceived and composed in

  the soul of a mid-century Oxford graduate. Pater remarks that Dryden

  . . . loved to emphasize the distinction between poetry and

  prose, the protest against their confusion coming with some-

  what diminished e¤ect from one whose poetry was so prosaic.17

  But Dryden was right, and the sentence of Pater is cheap journalism. Haz-

  litt, who had perhaps the most uninteresting mind of all our distinguished

  critics, says:

  Dryden and Pope are the great masters of the artificial style

  of poetry in our language, as the poets of whom I have already

  treated—Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton—were

  of the natural.18

  In one sentence Hazlitt has committed at least four crimes against taste.

  It is bad enough to lump Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton to-

  gether under the denomination of “natural”; it is bad to commit Shake-

  speare to one style only; it is bad to join Dryden and Pope together; but the

  last absurdity is the contrast of Milton, our greatest master of the artificial

  style, with Dryden, whose style (vocabulary, syntax, and order of thought)

  is in a high degree natural. And what all these objections come to, we re-

  peat, is a repugnance for the material out of which Dryden’s poetry is built.

  It would be truer to say, indeed, even in the form of the unpersuasive

  paradox, that Dryden is distinguished principally by his poetic ability. We prize him, as we do Mallarmé, for what he made of his material.19 Our estimate is only in part the appreciation of ingenuity: in the end the result

  is poetry. Much of Dryden’s unique merit consists in his ability to make

  the small into the great, the prosaic into the poetic, the trivial into the

  magnificent. In this he di¤ers not only from Milton, who required a can-

  vas of the largest size, but from Pope, who required one of the smallest.

  If you compare any satiric “character” of Pope with one of Dryden, you

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  will see that the method and intention are widely divergent. When Pope

  alters, he diminishes; he is a master of miniature. The singular skill of

  his portrait of Addison, for example, in the “Epistle to Arbuthnot,” depends

  upon the justice and reserve, the apparent determination not to exagger-

  ate.20 The genius of Pope is not for caricature. But the e¤ect of the portraits

  of Dryden is to transform the object into something greater, as were trans-

  formed the verses of Cowley quoted above.

  A fiery soul, which working out its way,

  Fretted the pigmy body to decay:

  And o’er informed the tenement of clay.21

  These lines are not merely a magnificent tribute. They create the object

  which they contemplate; the poetry is purer than anything in Pope except

  the last lines of the “Dunciad.” Dryden is in fact much nearer to the mas-

  ter of comic creation than to Pope. As in Jonson, the e¤ect is far from

  laughter; the comic is the material, the result is poetry. The Civic Guards

  of Rhodes:

  The country rings around with loud alarms,

  And raw in fields the rude militia swarms;

  Mouths without hands; maintained at vast expense,

  In peace a charge, in war a weak defence;

  Stout once a month they march, a blust’ring band,

  And ever, but in times of need, at hand;

  This was the morn, when issuing on the guard,

  Drawn up in rank and file they stood prepared

  Of seeming arms to make a short essay,

  Then hasten to be drunk, the business of the day.22

  Sometimes the wit appears as a delicate flavour to the magnificence, as

  in “Alexander’s Feast”:

  Sooth’d with the sound the king grew vain;

  Fought all his battles o’er again;

  And thrice he routed all his foes, and thrice he slew the slain.23

  The great advantage of Dryden over Milton is that while the former is

  always in control of his ascent, and can rise or fall at will (and how master-

  fully, like his own Timotheus, he directs the transitions!), the latter has

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  elected a perch from which he cannot a¤ord to fall, and from which he is

  in danger of slipping.

  food alike those pure

  Intelligential substances require

  As doth your Rational; and both contain

  Within them every lower faculty

  Of sense, whereby they hear, see, smell, touch, taste,

  Tasting concoct, digest, assimilate,

  And corporeal to incorporeal turn.24

  Dryden might have made poetry out of that; his translation from Lucretius

  is poetry. But we have an ingenious example, on which to test our contrast

  of Dryden and Milton: it is Dryden’s “opera,” called The State of Innocence

  and Fall of Man of which Nathaniel Lee neatly says in his preface:

  For Milton did the wealthy mine disclose,

  And rudely cast what you could well dispose:

  He roughly drew, on an old-fashioned ground,

  A
chaos, for no perfect world were found,

  Till through the heap, your mighty genius shined.25

  In the author’s preface Dryden acknowledges his debt generously enough:

  The original being undoubtedly, one of the greatest, most

  noble, and most sublime poems, which either this age or

  nation has produced.26

  The poem begins auspiciously:

  Lucifer: Is this the seat our conqueror has given?

  And this the climate we must change for Heaven?

  These regions and this realm my wars have got;

  This mournful empire is the loser’s lot:

  In liquid burnings, or on dry to dwell,

  Is all the sad variety of hell.

  It is an early work; it is on the whole a feeble work; it is not deserving of

  sustained comparison with Paradise Lost. But “all the sad variety of Hell”!

  Dryden is already stirring; he has assimilated what he could from Milton;

  and he has shown himself capable of producing as splendid verse.

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  The capacity for assimilation, and the consequent extent of range, are

  conspicuous qualities of Dryden. He advanced and exhibited his variety

  by constant translation; and his translations of Horace, of Ovid, of Lucretius,

  are admirable.27 His gravest defects are supposed to be displayed in his

  dramas, but if these were more read they might be more praised. From

  the point of view of either the Elizabethan or the French drama they are

  obviously inferior; but the charge of inferiority loses part of its force if we

  admit that Dryden was not quite trying to compete with either, but was

  pursuing a direction of his own. He created no character; and although

  his arrangements of plot manifest exceptional ingenuity, it is the pure

  magnificence of diction, of poetic diction, that keeps his plays alive:

  How I loved

  Witness ye days and nights, and all ye hours,

  That danced away with down upon your feet,

  As all your business were to count my passion.

  One day passed by, and nothing saw but love;

  Another came, and still ’twas only love:

  The suns were wearied out with looking on,

  And I untired with loving.

  I saw you every day and all the day;

  And every day was still but as the first:

  So eager was I still to see you more . . .

  While within your arms I lay,

  The world fell mould’ring from my hands each hour.28