John Dryden - Delphi Poets Series
Page 453
Charles II. had, at Dryden’s request, to whom arrears for four years had been due, raised his laureate salary to £300. The additional hundred dropped at the king’s death, and James was mean enough even to curtail the annual butt of sack. He probably had little hope of converting the author of “Religio Laici” to his faith, else he would not have withheld what Charles had so recently granted. Afterwards, when he ascertained that an interesting process was going on in Dryden’s mind, tending to Popery, he perhaps thought that a little money cast into the crucible might materially determine the projection in the proper way; or perhaps the prospect produced, or at least accelerated, the process. We admire much in Scott’s elaborate and ingenious defence of Dryden’s change of faith; and are ready to grant that it was only a Pyrrhonist, not a Protestant, who became a Papist after all — but there was, as Dr Johnson also thinks, an ugly coincidence between the pension and the conversion. Grant that it was not bestowed for the first time by James, it had been withheld by him, and its restoration immediately followed the change of his faith. Dr Johnson was pleased, when Andrew Miller said that he “thanked God he was done with him,” to know that Miller “thanked God for anything;” and so, when we consider the blasphemy, profanity, and filth of Dryden’s plays, and the unsettled and veering state of his religious and political opinions, we are almost glad to find him becoming “anything,” although it was only the votary of a dead and corrupted form of Christianity. You like to see the fierce, capricious, and destructive torrent fixed, although it be fixed in ice.
That he found comfort in his new religion, and proved his sincerity by rearing up his children in the faith which his wife had also embraced, and by remaining a Roman Catholic after the Revolution, and to his own pecuniary loss, has often been asserted. But surely there is a point where the most inconsistent man is obliged to stop, if he would escape the character of an absolute weather-cock; and that there are charms and comforts in the Popish creed for one who felt with Dryden, that he had, partly in his practice, and far more in his writings, sinned against the laws of morality and common decency, we readily grant. Whether these charms he legitimate, and these comforts sound, is a very different question. Had Dryden, besides, turned Protestant again, we question if it would have saved him his laureate pensions, and it would certainly have blasted him for ever, under the charge of ingratitude to his benefactor James. On the whole, this passage of the poet’s life is not very creditable to his memory, and his indiscriminate admirers had better let it alone. It would have strained the ingenuity and the enthusiasm of Claud Halcro himself to have extracted matter for a panegyrical ode on this conversion of “glorious John.”
Admitted into the bosom of the Church, he soon found that he must prove his faith by his works. He was employed by James to defend the reasons of conversion to the Catholic faith alleged by Anne Duchess of York, and the two other papers on the same subject which, found in Charles’ strong box, James had imprudently given to the world. This led him to a contest with Stillingfleet, in which Dryden came off only second best. He next, in an embowered walk, in a country retirement at Rushton, near his birthplace, composed his strange, unequal, but brilliant and ingenious poem, “The Hind and the Panther,” the object of which was to advocate King James’ repeal of the Test Act, and to prove the immeasurable superiority of the Church of Rome to that of England, as well as to all the dissenting sects. This piece produced a prodigious clamour against the author. Its plan was pronounced ridiculous — its argument one-sided — its zeal assumed — and Montague and Prior, two young men then rising into eminence, wrote a clever parody on it, entitled the “Town and Country Mouse.” In addition to this, he wrote a translation of Varilla’s “History of Heresies,” and a life of Francis Xavier, the famous apostle of the Indies, whose singular story, a tale of heroic endurance and unexampled labours, but bedropt with the most flagrant falsehoods, whether it be read in Dryden’s easy and fascinating narrative, or in the more gorgeous and coloured account of Sir James Stephen, in the “Edinburgh Review,” forms one of the most impressive displays of human strength and folly, of the greatness of devoted enthusiasm, and of the weakness and credulity of abject superstition.
In spite of all these attempts to bolster up a tottering throne and an effete faith, the Revolution came, and Dryden’s hopes and prospects sank like a vision of the night. And now came the hour of his enemies’ revenge! How the Settles, the Shadwells, and the Ravenscrofts, rejoiced at the downfall of their great foe! and what ironical condolence, or bitter satirical exultation, they poured over his humiliation! And, worst of all, he durst not reply. “His powers of satire,” says Scott, “at this period, were of no more use to Dryden than a sword to a man who cannot draw it.” The fate of Milton in miniature had now befallen him; and it says much for the strength of his mind, that, as in Milton’s case, Dryden’s purest and best titles to fame date from his discomfiture and degradation. Antæus-like, he had now reached the ground, and the touch of the ground to him, as to all giants, was inspiration.
His history, from this date, becomes, still more than in the former portions of it, a history of his publications. He was forced back by necessity to the stage. In 1690, and in the next two years, he produced four dramas, — one of them, indeed, adapted from the French, but the other three, original; and one, Don Sebastian, deemed to rank among the best of his dramatic works. In 1693, another volume of miscellanies, with more translations, appeared. He also published, about this time, a new version of “Juvenal and Persius,” portions of which were contributed by his sons John and Charles. His last play, “Love Triumphant,” was enacted — as his first, the “Wild Gallant,” had been — without success; and it is remarkable, that while the curtain dropped heavily and slowly upon Dryden, it was opening upon Congreve, whose first comedy was enacted the same year with Dryden’s last, and who became the lawful heir of much of Dryden’s licentiousness, and of more than his elegance and wit.
He next commenced the translation of “Virgil,” which in the course of three years he completed, and gave to the world. It was published in July 1697. He had dashed it off with the utmost freedom and fire, and no work was ever more thoroughly identified with its translator. It is Dryden’s “Virgil,” every line of it. A great and almost national interest was felt in the undertaking, such as would be felt now, were it announced that Tennyson was engaged in a translation of Goethe. Addison supplied arguments, and an essay on the “Georgics.” A dedication to the new king was expected by the Court, but inexorably declined by the poet. It came forth, notwithstanding, amidst universal applause; nor was the remuneration for the times small, amounting to at least £1200 or £1400.
So soon as this great work was off his hands, by way, we suppose, as Scott was used to say, of “refreshing the machiner,” Dryden wrote his famous ode, “Alexander’s Feast,” for a meeting of the Musical Society on St Cecilia’s day, — wrote it, according to Bolingbroke, at one sitting, although he spent, it is said, a fortnight in polishing it into its present rounded and perfect form. It took the public by storm, and excited a greater sensation than any of the poet’s productions, except “Absalom and Achitophel.” Dryden himself, when complimented on it as the finest ode in the language, owned the soft impeachment, and said, “A nobler ode never was produced, and never will;” and in a manner, if not absolutely, he was right.
Dryden was now again at sea for a subject. Sometimes he revolved once more his favourite plan of an Epic poem, and “Edward the Black Prince” loomed for a season before him as its hero. Sometimes he looked up with an ambitious eye to Homer, and we see his hand “pawing” like the hoof of the war-horse in Job, as he smelled his battle afar off, and panted to do for Achilles and Hector what he had done for Turnus and Æneas. He meant to have turned the “Iliad” into blank verse; but, after all, translated the only book of it which he published into rhyme. But, in fine, he determined to modernise some of the fine old tales of Boccacio and Chaucer; and in March 1699-1700, appeared his brilliant “Fable
s,” with some other poems from his pen, for which he received £300 at Jonson’s hands.
This was his last publication of size, although he was labouring on when death surprised him, and within the last three weeks of his life had written the “Secular Margin,” and the prologue and the epilogue to Fletcher’s “Pilgrim,” — productions remarkable as showing the ruling passion strong in death, — the squabbling litterateur and satirist combating and kicking his enemies to the last, — Jeremy Collier, for having accused him of licentiousness in his dramas; Milbourne, for having attacked his “Georgics;” and poor Blackmore for having doubted the orthodoxy of “Religio Laici,” and the decency of “Amphitryon” and “Limberham.”
He had now to go a pilgrimage himself to a far country. He had long been troubled with gout and gravel; but next came erysipelas in one of his legs; and at last mortification, superinduced by a neglected inflammation in his toe, carried him off at three o’clock on Wednesday morning the 1st of May 1700. He died a Roman Catholic, and in “entire resignation to the Divine will.” He died so poor, that he was buried by subscription, Lords Montague and Jeffries delaying the interment till the necessary funds were raised. The body, after lying embalmed and in state for ten days in the College of Physicians, was buried with great pomp in Westminster Abbey, where now, between the graves of Chaucer and Cowley, reposes the dust of Dryden.
His lady survived him fourteen years, and died insane. His eldest son Charles was drowned in 1704 at Datchett, while seeking to swim across the Thames. John died at Rome of a fever in 1701. Erasmus, who was supposed to inherit his mother’s malady, died in 1710; and the title which he had derived from Sir Robert passed to his uncle, the brother of the poet, and thence to his grandson. Sir Henry Edward Leigh Dryden, of Canons-Ashby, is now the representative of the ancient family.
We reserve till our next volume a criticism on Dryden’s genius and works. As to his habits and manners, little is known, and that little is worn threadbare by his many biographers. In appearance he became, in his maturer years, fat and florid, and obtained the name of “Poet Squab.” His portraits show a shrewd, but rather sluggish face, with long gray hair floating down his cheeks, not unlike Coleridge, but without his dreamy eye, like a nebulous star. His conversation was less sprightly than solid. Sometimes men suspected that he had “sold all his thoughts to his booksellers.” His manners are by his friends pronounced “modest;” and the word modest has since been amiably confounded by his biographers with “pure.” Bashful he seems to have been to awkwardness; but he was by no means a model of the virtues. He loved to sit at Will’s coffee-house, and be the arbiter of criticism. His favourite stimulus was snuff, and his favourite amusement angling. He had a bad address, a down look, and little of the air of a gentleman. Addison is reported to have taught him latterly the intemperate use of wine; but this was said by Dennis, who admired Dryden, and who hated Addison; and his testimony is impotent against either party. We admire the simplicity of the critics who can read his plays, and then find himself a model of continence and virtue. “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh;” and a more polluted mouth than Dryden’s never uttered its depravities on the stage. We cannot, in fine, call him personally a very honest, a very high-minded, or a very good man, although we are willing to count him amiable, ready to make very considerable allowance for his period and his circumstances, not disposed to think him so much a renegado and deliberate knave as a fickle, needy, and childish changeling, in the matter of his “perversion” to Popery; although we yield to none in admiration of the varied, highly-cultured, masculine, and magnificent forces of his genius.
Dryden died on May 12, 1700 and was initially buried here, in St. Anne’s cemetery in Soho, before being exhumed and reburied in Westminster Abbey ten days later.
Westminster Abbey, London – Dryden’s final resting place
Poets’ Corner, Westminster Abbey. Dryden was buried in the Abbey close to Chaucer’s tomb, in the area now known as Poets’ Corner.
A contemporary illustration of Dryden’s tomb
Dryden’s tomb