John Dryden - Delphi Poets Series

by John Dryden

  When once he had engaged himself in disputation, thoughts flowed in on either side: he was now no longer at a loss; he had always objections and solutions at command; “verbaque provisam rem” — give him matter for his verse, and he finds, without difficulty, verse for his matter.

  In comedy, for which he professes himself not naturally qualified, the mirth which he excites will, perhaps, not be found so much to arise from any original humour, or peculiarity of character nicely distinguished and diligently pursued, as from incidents and circumstances, artifices and surprises; from jests of action rather than of sentiment. What he had of humorous or passionate, he seems to have had not from nature, but from other poets; if not always as a plagiary, at least as an imitator.

  Next to argument, his delight was in wild and daring sallies of sentiment, in the irregular and eccentrick violence of wit. He delighted to tread upon the brink of meaning, where light and darkness begin to mingle; to approach the precipice of absurdity, and hover over the abyss of unideal vacancy. This inclination sometimes produced nonsense, which he knew; as,

  Move swiftly, sun, and fly a lover’s pace,

  Leave weeks and months behind thee in thy race.

  Amamel flies

  To guard thee from the demons of the air;

  My flaming sword above them to display,

  All keen, and ground upon the edge of day.

  And sometimes it issued in absurdities, of which, perhaps, he was not conscious:

  Then we upon our orb’s last verge shall go,

  And see the ocean leaning on the sky;

  From thence our rolling neighbours we shall know,

  And on the lunar world securely pry.

  These lines have no meaning; but may we not say, in imitation of Cowley on another book,

  ’Tis so like sense ‘twill serve the turn as well?

  This endeavour after the grand and the new, produced sentiments either great or bulky, and many images either just or splendid:

  I am as free as nature first made man,

  Ere the base laws of servitude began,

  When wild in woods the noble savage ran.

  — ’Tis but because the living death ne’er knew,

  They fear to prove it, as a thing that’s new:

  Let me th’ experiment before you try,

  I’ll show you first how easy ’tis to die.

  — There with a forest of their darts he strove,

  And stood like Capaneus defying Jove,

  With his broad sword the boldest beating down,

  While fate grew pale, lest he should win the town,

  And turn’d the iron leaves of his dark book

  To make new dooms, or mend what it mistook.

  — I beg no pity for this mouldering clay;

  For if you give it burial, there it takes

  Possession of your earth;

  If burnt, and scatter’d in the air, the winds

  That strew my dust diffuse my royalty,

  And spread me o’er your clime; for where one atom

  Of mine shall light, know there Sebastian reigns.

  Of these quotations the two first may be allowed to be great, the two latter only tumid.

  Of such selection there is no end. I will add only a few more passages; of which the first, though it may, perhaps, not be quite clear in prose, is not too obscure for poetry, as the meaning that it has is noble:

  No, there is a necessity in fate,

  Why still the brave bold man is fortunate;

  He keeps his object ever full in sight;

  And that assurance holds him firm and right;

  True, ’tis a narrow way that leads to bliss,

  But right before there is no precipice;

  Fear makes men look aside, and so their footing miss.

  Of the images which the two following citations afford, the first is elegant, the second magnificent; whether either be just, let the reader judge:

  What precious drops are these,

  Which silently each other’s track pursue,

  Bright as young diamonds in their infant dew?

  Resign your castle ——

  — Enter, brave sir; for, when you speak the word,

  The gates shall open of their own accord;

  The genius of the place its lord shall meet,

  And bow its tow’ry forehead at your feet.

  These bursts of extravagance, Dryden calls the “Dalilahs” of the theatre; and owns that many noisy lines of Maximin and Almanzor call out for vengeance upon him: “but I knew,” says he, “that they were bad enough to please, even when I wrote them.” There is, surely, reason to suspect that he pleased himself, as well as his audience; and that these, like the harlots of other men, had his love, though not his approbation.

  He had, sometimes, faults of a less generous and splendid kind. He makes, like almost all other poets, very frequent use of mythology, and sometimes connects religion and fable too closely without distinction.

  He descends to display his knowledge with pedantick ostentation; as when, in translating Virgil, he says, “tack to the larboard,” — and “veer starboard;” and talks, in another work, of “virtue spooning before the wind.” — His vanity now and then betrays his ignorance:

  They nature’s king through nature’s opticks view’d;

  Revers’d, they view’d him lessen’d to their eyes.

  He had heard of reversing a telescope, and unluckily reverses the object. He is, sometimes, unexpectedly mean. When he describes the supreme being as moved by prayer to stop the fire of London, what is his expression?

  A hollow crystal pyramid he takes,

  In firmamental waters dipp’d above,

  Of this a broad extinguisher he makes,

  And hoods the flames that to their quarry strove.

  When he describes the last day, and the decisive tribunal, he intermingles this image:

  When rattling bones together fly,

  From the four quarters of the sky.

  It was, indeed, never in his power to resist the temptation of a jest. In his elegy on Cromwell:

  No sooner was the Frenchman’s cause embrac’d,

  Than the light monsieur the grave don outweigh’d;

  His fortune turn’d the scale ——

  He had a vanity, unworthy of his abilities, to show, as may be suspected, the rank of the company with whom he lived, by the use of French words, which had then crept into conversation; such as fraicheur for coolness, fougue for turbulence, and a few more, none of which the language has incorporated or retained. They continue only where they stood first, perpetual warnings to future innovators.

  These are his faults of affectation; his faults of negligence are beyond recital. Such is the unevenness of his compositions, that ten lines are seldom found together without something of which the reader is ashamed. Dryden was no rigid judge of his own pages; he seldom struggled after supreme excellence, but snatched in haste what was within his reach; and when he could content others, was himself contented. He did not keep present to his mind an idea of pure perfection; nor compare his works, such as they were, with what they might be made. He knew to whom he should be opposed. He had more musick than Waller, more vigour than Donham, and more nature than Cowley; and from his contemporaries he was in no danger. Standing, therefore, in the highest place, he had no care to rise by contending with himself; but while there was no name above his own, was willing to enjoy fame on the easiest terms.

  He was no lover of labour. What he thought sufficient, he did not stop to make better; and allowed himself to leave many parts unfinished, in confidence that the good lines would overbalance the bad. What he had once written, he dismissed from his thoughts; and, I believe, there is no example to be found of any correction or improvement made by him after publication. The hastiness of his productions might be the effect of necessity; but his subsequent neglect could hardly have any other cause than impatience of study.

  What can be said of his versification,
will be little more than a dilatation of the praise given it by Pope:

  Waller was smooth; but Dryden taught to join

  The varying verse, the full resounding line,

  The long majestick march, and energy divine.

  Some improvements had been already made in English numbers; but the full force of our language was not yet felt; the verse that was smooth was commonly feeble. If Cowley had sometimes a finished line, he had it by chance. Dryden knew how to choose the flowing and the sonorous words; to vary the pauses, and adjust the accents; to diversify the cadence, and yet preserve the smoothness of his metre.

  Of triplets and alexandrines, though he did not introduce the use, he established it. The triplet has long subsisted among us. Dryden seems not to have traced it higher than to Chapman’s Homer; but it is to be found in Phaer’s Virgil, written in the reign of Mary; and in Hall’s Satires, published five years before the death of Elizabeth.

  The alexandrine was, I believe, first used by Spenser, for the sake of closing his stanza with a fuller sound. We had a longer measure of fourteen syllables, into which the Aeneid was translated by Phaer, and other works of the ancients by other writers; of which Chapman’s Iliad was, I believe, the last.

  The two first lines of Phaer’s third Aeneid will exemplify this measure:

  When Asia’s state was overthrown, and Priam’s kingdom stout,

  All guiltless, by the power of gods above was rooted out.

  As these lines had their break, or caesura, always at the eighth syllable, it was thought, in time, commodious to divide them: and quatrains of lines, alternately, consisting of eight and six syllables, make the most soft and pleasing of our lyrick measures; as,

  Relentless time, destroying pow’r,

  Which stone and brass obey,

  Who giv’st to ev’ry flying hour

  To work some new decay.

  In the alexandrine, when its power was once felt, some poems, as Drayton’s Polyolbion, were wholly written; and sometimes the measures of twelve and fourteen syllables were interchanged with one another. Cowley was the first that inserted the alexandrine at pleasure among the heroick lines of ten syllables, and from him Dryden professes to have adopted it.

  The triplet and alexandrine are not universally approved. Swift always censured them, and wrote some lines to ridicule them. In examining their propriety, it is to be considered that the essence of verse is regularity, and its ornament is variety. To write verse, is to dispose syllables and sounds harmonically by some known and settled rule; a rule, however, lax enough to substitute similitude for identity, to admit change without breach of order, and to relieve the ear without disappointing it. Thus a Latin hexameter is formed from dactyls and spondees, differently combined; the English heroick admits of acute or grave syllables, variously disposed. The Latin never deviates into seven feet, or exceeds the number of seventeen syllables; but the English alexandrine breaks the lawful bounds, and surprises the reader with two syllables more than he expected.

  The effect of the triplet is the same: the ear has been accustomed to expect a new rhyme in every couplet; but is on a sudden surprised with three rhymes together, to which the reader could not accommodate his voice, did he not obtain notice of the change from the braces of the margins. Surely there is something unskilful in the necessity of such mechanical direction.

  Considering the metrical art simply as a science, and, consequently, excluding all casualty, we must allow that triplets and alexandrines, inserted by caprice, are interruptions of that constancy to which science aspires. And though the variety which they produce may very justly be desired, yet, to make our poetry exact, there ought to be some stated mode of admitting them.

  But till some such regulation can be formed, I wish them still to be retained in their present state. They are sometimes grateful to the reader, and sometimes convenient to the poet. Fenton was of opinion, that Dryden was too liberal, and Pope too sparing, in their use.

  The rhymes of Dryden are commonly just, and he valued himself for his readiness in finding them; but he is sometimes open to objection.

  It is the common practice of our poets to end the second line with a weak or grave syllable:

  Together o’er the Alps methinks we fly,

  Fill’d with ideas of fair Italy.

  Dryden sometimes puts the weak rhyme in the first:

  Laugh all the powers that favour tyranny,

  And all the standing army of the sky.

  Sometimes he concludes a period or paragraph with the first line of a couplet, which, though the French seem to do it without irregularity, always displeases in English poetry.

  The alexandrine, though much his favourite, is not always very diligently fabricated by him. It invariably requires a break at the sixth syllable; a rule which the modern French poets never violate, but which Dryden sometimes neglected:

  And with paternal thunder vindicates his throne.

  Of Dryden’s works it was said by Pope, that he “could select from them better specimens of every mode of poetry than any other English writer could supply.” Perhaps no nation ever produced a writer that enriched his language with such variety of models. To him we owe the improvement, perhaps the completion, of our metre, the refinement of our language, and much of the correctness of our sentiments. By him we are taught “sapere et fari,” to think naturally and express forcibly. Though Davies has reasoned in rhyme before him, it may be, perhaps, maintained that he was the first who joined argument with poetry. He showed us the true bounds of a translator’s liberty. What was said of Rome, adorned by Augustus, may be applied by an easy metaphor to English poetry, embellished by Dryden, “lateritiam invenit, marmoream reliquit.” He found it brick, and he left it marble.

  The invocation before the Georgicks is here inserted from Mr. Milbourne’s version, that, according to his own proposal, his verses may be compared with those which he censures:

  What makes the richest tilth, beneath what signs

  To plough, and when to match your elms and vines;

  What care with flocks, and what with herds agrees,

  And all the management of frugal bees;

  I sing, Maecenas! Ye immensely clear,

  Vast orbs of light, which guide the rolling year;

  Bacchus, and mother Ceres, if by you

  We fatt’ning corn for hungry mast pursue,

  If, taught by you, we first the cluster prest,

  And thin cold streams with sprightly juice refresht;

  Ye fawns, the present numens of the field,

  Wood nymphs and fawns, your kind assistance yield;

  Your gifts I sing! And thou, at whose fear’d stroke

  From rending earth the fiery courser broke,

  Great Neptune, O assist my artful song!

  And thou to whom the woods and groves belong,

  Whose snowy heifers on her flow’ry plains

  In mighty herds the Caean isle maintains!

  Pan, happy shepherd, if thy cares divine

  E’er to improve thy Maenalas incline,

  Leave thy Lycaean wood and native grove,

  And with thy lucky smiles our work approve!

  Be Pallas too, sweet oil’s inventor, kind;

  And he who first the crooked plough design’d!

  Sylvanus, god of all the woods, appear,

  Whose hands a new-drawn tender cypress bear!

  Ye gods and goddesses, who e’er with love

  Would guard our pastures and our fields improve!

  You, who new plants from unknown lands supply,

  And with condensing clouds obscure the sky,

  And drop ‘em softly thence in fruitful show’rs;

  Assist my enterprise, ye gentler pow’rs!

  And thou, great Caesar! though we know not yet

  Among what gods thou’lt fix thy lofty seat;

  Whether thou’lt be the kind tutelar god

  Of thy own Rome; or with thy awful nod

  Guide the vast world, w
hile thy great hand shall bear

  The fruits and seasons of the turning year,

  And thy bright brows thy mother’s myrtles wear;

  Whether thou’lt all the boundless ocean sway,

  And seamen only to thyself shall pray,

  Thule, the farthest island, kneel to thee,

  And, that thou may’st her son by marriage be,

  Tethys will for the happy purchase yield

  To make a dowry of her wat’ry field;

  Whether thou’lt add to heaven a brighter sign,

  And o’er the summer months serenely shine;

  Where between Cancer and Erigone,

  There yet remains a spacious room for thee;

  Where the hot Scorpion too his arms declines,

  And more to thee than half his arch resigns;

  Whate’er thou’lt be; for sure the realms below

  No just pretence to thy command can show:

  No such ambition sways thy vast desires,

  Though Greece her own Elysian fields admires.

  And now, at last, contented Proserpine

  Can all her mother’s earnest pray’rs decline.

  Whate’er thou’lt be, O guide our gentle course;

  And with thy smiles our bold attempts enforce;

  With me th’ unknowing rustics’ wants relieve,

  And, though on earth, our sacred vows receive!

  Mr. Dryden, having received from Rymer his Remarks on the Tragedies of the last Age, wrote observations on the blank leaves; which, having been in the possession of Mr. Garrick, are, by his favour, communicated to the publick, that no particle of Dryden may be lost:

  “That we may the less wonder why pity and terrour are not now the only springs on which our tragedies move, and that Shakespeare may be more excused, Rapin confesses that the French tragedies, now all run on the tendre; and gives the reason, because love is the passion which most predominates in our souls, and that, therefore, the passions represented become insipid, unless they are conformable to the thoughts of the audience. But it is to be concluded, that this passion works not now amongst the French so strongly as the other two did amongst the ancients. Amongst us, who have a stronger genius for writing, the operations from the writing are much stronger; for the raising of Shakespeare’s passions is more from the excellency of the words and thoughts, than the justness of the occasion; and if he has been able to pick single occasions, he has never founded the whole reasonably: yet, by the genius of poetry in writing, he has succeeded.