John Dryden - Delphi Poets Series

by John Dryden

  There are, however, in this part some passages that deserve attention; as in the beginning:

  The diligence of trades and noiseful gain,

  And luxury, more late, asleep were laid;

  All was the night’s, and in her silent reign

  No sound the rest of nature did invade

  In this deep quiet ——

  The expression, “all was the night’s,” is taken from Seneca, who remarks on Virgil’s line,

  Omnia noctis erant, placida composta quiete,

  that he might have concluded better,

  Omnia noctis erant.

  The following quatrain is vigorous and animated:

  The ghosts of traitors from the bridge descend,

  With hold fanatick spectres to rejoice;

  About the fire into a dance they bend,

  And sing their sabbath notes with feeble voice.

  His prediction of the improvements which shall be made in the new city is elegant and poetical, and, with an event which poets cannot always boast, has been happily verified. The poem concludes with a simile that might have better been omitted.

  Dryden, when he wrote this poem, seems not yet fully to have formed his versification, or settled his system of propriety.

  From this time he addicted himself almost wholly to the stage, “to which,” says he, “my genius never much inclined me,” merely as the most profitable market for poetry. By writing tragedies in rhyme, he continued to improve his diction and his numbers. According to the opinion of Harte, who had studied his works with great attention, he settled his principles of versification in 1676, when he produced the play of Aureng Zebe; and, according to his own account of the short time in which he wrote Tyrannick Love, and the State of Innocence, he soon obtained the full effect of diligence, and added facility to exactness.

  Rhyme has been so long banished from the theatre, that we know not its effect upon the passions of an audience; but it has this convenience, that sentences stand more independent on each other, and striking passages are, therefore, easily selected and retained. Thus the description of night in the Indian Emperor, and the rise and fall of empire in the Conquest of Granada, are more frequently repeated than any lines in All for Love, or Don Sebastian.

  To search his plays for vigorous sallies and sententious elegancies, or to fix the dates of any little pieces which he wrote by chance, or by solicitation, were labour too tedious and minute.

  His dramatick labours did not so wholly absorb his thoughts, but that he promulgated the laws of translation in a preface to the English Epistles of Ovid; one of which he translated himself, and another in conjunction with the earl of Mulgrave.

  Absalom and Achitophel is a work so well known, that particular criticism is superfluous. If it be considered as a poem political and controversial, it will be found to comprise all the excellencies of which the subject is susceptible; acrimony of censure, elegance of praise, artful delineation of characters, variety and vigour of sentiment, happy turns of language, and pleasing harmony of numbers; and all these raised to such a height as can scarcely be found in any other English composition.

  It is not, however, without faults; some lines are inelegant or improper, and too many are irreligiously licentious. The original structure of the poem was defective; allegories drawn to great length will always break; Charles could not run continually parallel with David.

  The subject had likewise another inconvenience; it admitted little imagery or description; and a long poem of mere sentiments easily becomes tedious; though all the parts are forcible, and every line kindles new rapture, the reader, if not relieved by the interposition of something that sooths the fancy, grows weary of admiration, and defers the rest.

  As an approach to historical truth was necessary, the action and catastrophe were not in the poet’s power; there is, therefore, an unpleasing disproportion between the beginning and the end. We are alarmed by a faction formed out of many sects various in their principles, but agreeing in their purpose of mischief, formidable for their numbers, and strong by their supports, while the king’s friends are few and weak. The chiefs on either part are set forth to view; but when expectation is at the height, the king makes a speech, and

  Henceforth a series of new times began.

  Who can forbear to think of an enchanted castle, with a wide moat and lofty battlements, walls of marble and gates of brass, which vanishes at once into air, when the destined knight blows his horn before it?

  In the second part, written by Tate, there is a long insertion, which, for poignancy of satire, exceeds any part of the former. Personal resentment, though no laudable motive to satire, can add great force to general principles. Self-love is a busy prompter.

  The Medal, written upon the same principles with Absalom and Achitophel, but upon a narrower plan, gives less pleasure, though it discovers equal abilities in the writer. The superstructure cannot extend beyond the foundation; a single character or incident cannot furnish as many ideas, as a series of events, or multiplicity of agents. This poem, therefore, since time has left it to itself, is not much read, nor, perhaps, generally understood; yet it abounds with touches both of humorous and serious satire. The picture of a man whose propensions to mischief are such, that his best actions are but inability of wickedness, is very skilfully delineated and strongly coloured:

  Power was his aim; but, thrown from that pretence,

  The wretch turn’d loyal in his own defence,

  And malice reconcil’d him to his prince.

  Him, in the anguish of his soul, he serv’d;

  Rewarded faster still than he deserv’d:

  Behold him now exalted into trust;

  His counsels oft convenient, seldom just.

  Ev’n in the most sincere advice he gave,

  He had a grudging still to be a knave.

  The frauds he learnt in his fanatick years,

  Made him uneasy in his lawful gears:

  At least as little honest as he could;

  And, like white witches, mischievously good.

  To this first bias, longingly he leans;

  And rather would be great by wicked means.

  The Threnodia, which, by a term I am afraid neither authorized nor analogical, he calls Augustalis, is not among his happiest productions. Its first and obvious defect is the irregularity of its metre, to which the ears of that age, however, were accustomed. What is worse, it has neither tenderness nor dignity; it is neither magnificent nor pathetick. He seems to look round him for images which he cannot find, and what he has he distorts by endeavouring to enlarge them. “He is,” he says, “petrified with grief;” but the marble sometimes relents, and trickles in a joke:

  The sons of art all med’cines try’d,

  And ev’ry noble remedy apply’d:

  With emulation each essay’d

  His utmost skill; nay, more, they prayd;

  Was never losing game with better conduct play’d.

  He had been a little inclined to merriment before upon the prayers of a nation for their dying sovereign; nor was he serious enough to keep heathen fables out of his religion:

  With him th’ innumerable crowd of armed prayers

  Knock’d at the gates of heav’n, and knock’d aloud;

  The first well-meaning rude petitioners

  All for his life assail’d the throne;

  All would have brib’d the skies by off’ring up their own.

  So great a throng not heav’n itself could bar;

  ’Twas almost borne by force, as in the giants’ war.

  The pray’rs, at least, for his reprieve were heard:

  His death, like Hezekiah’s, was deferr’d.

  There is, throughout the composition, a desire of splendour without wealth. In the conclusion he seems too much pleased with the prospect of the new reign to have lamented his old master with much sincerity.

  He did not miscarry in this attempt for want of skill either in lyrick or elegiack poetry. His poem on th
e death of Mrs. Killigrew is, undoubtedly, the noblest ode that our language ever has produced. The first part flows with a torrent of enthusiasm: “Fervet immensusque ruit.” All the stanzas, indeed, are not equal. An imperial crown cannot be one continued diamond; the gems must be held together by some less valuable matter.

  In his first ode for Cecilia’s day, which is lost in the splendour of the second, there are passages which would have dignified any other poet. The first stanza is vigorous and elegant, though the word diapason is too technical, and the rhymes are too remote from one another:

  From harmony, from heavenly harmony,

  This universal frame began:

  When nature underneath a heap of jarring atoms lay,

  And could not heave her head,

  The tuneful voice was heard from high.

  Arise, ye more than dead.

  Then cold and hot, and moist and dry,

  In order to their stations leap,

  And musick’s power obey.

  From harmony, from heavenly harmony,

  This universal frame began;

  From harmony to harmony

  Through all the compass of the notes it ran,

  The diapason closing full in man.

  The conclusion is likewise striking; but it includes an image so awful in itself, that it can owe little to poetry; and I could wish the antithesis of musick untuning had found some other place:

  As from the power of sacred lays

  The spheres began to move.

  And sung the great creator’s praise

  To all the bless’d above:

  So, when the last and dreadful hour

  This crumbling pageant shall devour,

  The trumpet shall be heard on high,

  The dead shall live, the living die,

  And musick shall untune the sky.

  Of his skill in elegy he has given a specimen in his Eleonora, of which the following lines discover their author:

  Though all these rare endowments of the mind

  Were in a narrow space of life confin’d,

  The figure was with full perfection crown’d;

  Though not so large an orb, as truly round:

  As when in glory, through the publick place,

  The spoils of conquer’d nations were to pass,

  And but one day for triumph was allow’d,

  The consul was constrain’d his pomp to crowd;

  And so the swift procession hurry’d on,

  That all, tho’ not distinctly, might be shown;

  So, in the straiten’d bounds of life confin’d,

  She gave but glimpses of her glorious mind:

  And multitudes of virtues pass’d along;

  Each pressing foremost in the mighty throng,

  Ambitious to be seen, and then make room

  For greater multitudes that were to come.

  Yet unemployed no minute slipp’d away;

  Moments were precious in so short a stay.

  The haste of heaven to have her was so great,

  That some were single acts, though each complete;

  And ev’ry act stood ready to repeat.

  This piece, however, is not without its faults; there is so much likeness in the initial comparison, that there is no illustration. As a king would be lamented, Eleonora was lamented:

  As, when some great and gracious monarch dies,

  Soft whispers, first, and mournful murmurs rise

  Among the sad attendants; then the sound

  Soon gathers voice, and spreads the news around,

  Through town and country, till the dreadful blast

  Is blown to distant colonies at last;

  Who then, perhaps, were off’ring vows in vain,

  For his long life, and for his happy reign:

  So slowly, by degrees, unwilling fame

  Did matchless Eleonora’s fate proclaim,

  Till publick as the loss the news became.

  This is little better than to say in praise of a shrub, that it is as green as a tree; or of a brook, that it waters a garden, as a river waters a country.

  Dryden confesses that he did not know the lady whom he celebrates: the praise being, therefore, inevitably general, fixes no impression upon the reader, nor excites any tendency to love, nor much desire of imitation. Knowledge of the subject is to the poet what durable materials are to the architect.

  The Religio Laici, which borrows its title from the Religio Medici of Browne, is almost the only work of Dryden which can be considered as a voluntary effusion; in this, therefore, it might be hoped, that the full effulgence of his genius would be found. But, unhappily, the subject is rather argumentative than poetical; he intended only a specimen of metrical disputation:

  And this unpolish’d rugged verse I chose

  As fittest for discourse, and nearest prose.

  This, however, is a composition of great excellence in its kind, in which the familiar is very properly diversified with the solemn, and the grave with the humorous; in which metre has neither weakened the force, nor clouded the perspicuity of argument; nor will it be easy to find another example equally happy of this middle kind of writing, which, though prosaick in some parts, rises to high poetry in others, and neither towers to the skies, nor creeps along the ground.

  Of the same kind, or not far distant from it, is the Hind and Panther, the longest of all Dryden’s original poems; an allegory intended to comprise and to decide the controversy between the Romanists and protestants. The scheme of the work is injudicious and incommodious; for what can be more absurd, than that one beast should counsel another to rest her faith upon a pope and council? He seems well enough skilled in the usual topicks of argument, endeavours to show the necessity of an infallible judge, and reproaches the reformers with want of unity; but is weak enough to ask, why, since we see without knowing how, we may not have an infallible judge without knowing where?

  The hind, at one time, is afraid to drink at the common brook, because she may be worried; but, walking home with the panther, talks by the way of the Nicene fathers, and at last declares herself to be the catholick church.

  This absurdity was very properly ridiculed in the City Mouse and Country Mouse of Montague and Prior; and, in the detection and censure of the incongruity of the fiction, chiefly consists the value of their performance, which, whatever reputation it might obtain by the help of temporary passions, seems, to readers almost a century distant, not very forcible or animated.

  Pope, whose judgment was, perhaps, a little bribed by the subject, used to mention this poem as the most correct specimen of Dryden’s versification. It was, indeed, written when he had completely formed his manner, and may be supposed to exhibit, negligence excepted, his deliberate and ultimate scheme of metre. We may, therefore, reasonably infer, that he did not approve the perpetual uniformity which confines the sense to couplets, since he has broken his lines in the initial paragraph:

  A milk-white hind, immortal and unchang’d.

  Fed on the lawns, and in the forest rang’d:

  Without unspotted, innocent within,

  She fear’d no danger, for she knew no sin.

  Yet had she oft been chas’d with horns and hounds,

  And Scythian shafts, and many winged wounds

  Aim’d at her heart; was often forc’d to fly,

  And doom’d to death, though fated not to die.

  These lines are lofty, elegant, and musical, notwithstanding the interruption of the pause, of which the effect is rather increase of pleasure by variety, than offence by ruggedness.

  To the first part it was his intention, he says, “to give the majestick turn of heroick poesy;” and, perhaps, he might have executed his design not unsuccessfully, had not an opportunity of satire, which he cannot forbear, fallen sometimes in his way. The character of a presbyterian, whose emblem is the wolf, is not very heroically majestick:

  More haughty than the rest, the wolfish race

  Appear with belly gaunt and famish
’d face:

  Never was so deform’d a beast of grace.

  His ragged tail betwixt his legs he wears,

  Close clapp’d for shame; but his rough crest he rears,

  And pricks up his predestinating ears.

  His general character of the other sorts of beasts that never go to church, though sprightly and keen, has, however, not much of heroick poesy:

  These are the chief; to number o’er the rest,

  And stand like Adam naming ev’ry beast,

  Were weary work; nor will the muse describe

  A slimy-born, and sun-begotten tribe,

  Who, far from steeples and their sacred sound,

  In fields their sullen conventicles found.

  These gross, half-animated lumps I leave;

  Nor can I think what thoughts they can conceive;

  But, if they think at all, ’tis sure no higher

  Than matter, put in motion, may aspire;

  Souls that can scarce ferment their mass of clay,

  So drossy, so divisible are they,

  As would but serve pure bodies for allay:

  Such souls as shards produce, such beetle things

  As only buzz to heaven with evening wings;

  Strike in the dark, offending but by chance;

  Such are the blindfold blows of ignorance.

  They know no being, and but hate a name;

  To them the hind and panther are the same.

  One more instance, and that taken from the narrative part, where style was more in his choice, will show how steadily he kept his resolution of heroick dignity:

  For when the herd, suffic’d, did late repair

  To ferny heaths and to their forest lair,

  She made a mannerly excuse to stay,

  Proff’ring the hind to wait her half the way;

  That, since the sky was clear, an hour of talk

  Might help her to beguile the tedious walk.

  With much good-will the motion was embrac’d,

  To chat awhile on their adventures past:

  Nor had the grateful hind so soon forgot

  Her friend and fellow-suff’rer in the plot.

  Yet, wond’ring how of late she grew estrang’d,

  Her forehead cloudy and her count’nance chang’d,

  She thought this hour th’ occasion would present