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In the art of arguing in verse, as exemplified in these two poems, Dryden was never excelled, perhaps never equalled. Pope came next to him, but within far narrower limits. The difference between them is, that Dryden thought out the subject for himself, and argued it logically by the mere force of his own understanding; while Pope adopted the argument and method of another, and had only to supply the expression. What was improperly denominated Metaphysical Poetry preceded the early efforts of Dryden; but the age had already demanded something less pedantic, and a simpler style had been favourably represented in the works of Waller, Suckling, Denham, and others, which also had the patronage of ladies of fashion, who began to demand something more intelligible and musical in verse than they had been accustomed to from the disciples of Donne and Cowley. Sir William D'Avenant, in his Gondibert, while holding partly by the old school, yet initiated a new one by the attention he paid to the harmony of his syllables. By his example Dryden evidently benefited. It was only by Occasional Poems that he could exhibit his talents at the beginning of his career, such as his Astræa Redux, the Panegyric to his Sacred Majesty, and the verses addressed to Lord Chancellor Hyde on the New-Year's day of 1662, and a short satire on the Dutch. For such poems a gratuity was generally expected from the person to whom they were addressed, and doubtless was received by Dryden. Such presents, and the small dole paid to him by Herringman the bookseller for prefaces and other literary assistance, contributed towards his scanty income.

Among the sources from which Dryden nourished his intellect was science, as distinguished from philosophy, and of which traces are to be found in his works. The poet was, indeed, a member of the Royal Society, then newly instituted. To this fact we owe his Epistle to Dr. Walter Charleton,-an elegant poem, in which he celebrates Stonehenge, on which the doctor had written a treatise; and mentions Gilbert, Boyle, Harvey, and Ent as followers of Bacon. Says the poet :

"Among the assertors of free reason's claim,
Our nation's not the least in worth or fame.
The world to Bacon does not only owe
Its present knowledge, but its future too."

And we shall better understand Dryden's intellectual status and moral character, if we bear in mind that he was attached early to that pole of philosophy which has been termed experimental. It was thus that his genius in its development became so dependent on external progress.

It was not until 1665 that Dryden entirely dismissed the vestiges of the metaphysical style that appear in his earliest verses, and, in a poem celebrating the Duke of York's victory over the Dutch fleet, adopted thoroughly the style of Waller. Next year, in his Annus Mirabilis, he aimed to shoot in the stronger bow of the author of Gondibert. In his Absalom and Achitophel, Dryden had effectually released himself from all bonds of imitation, and walked a free man and an original poet.

He was now perfectly successful, and the court knew the advantage of his aid. He had, at the royal command, to undertake "a satire against sedition," under the title of The Medal, in which the Earl of Shaftesbury's life and character were fully exposed. In this we find the same reckless use of sacred images, and the same reference to the Bible as a repertoire for jests. The likeness of Shaftesbury on the medal is accordingly thus satirised:

"Five days he sate, for every cast and look,-
Four more than God to finish Adam took.
But who can tell what essence Angels are?
Or how long Heaven was making Lucifer ?"

Nor did Dryden see that this profane use of his wit was condemned by himself in the following lines in the same poem:

"Thus men are raised by factions, and decried;
And rogue and saint distinguished by their side.
They rack even Scripture to confess their cause,
And plead a call to preach, in spite of laws;
But that's no news to the poor injured page;
It has been used as ill in every age,

And is constrained with patience all to take:

For what defence can Greek and Hebrew make?"

So blind are men to their own faults, while open-eyed to those of others! Dryden's enemies, though, in answering these famous satires, were guilty of the same offence; for we find that Pordage and Settle bestowed, in the same manner, scriptural names on their poems and characters. The former entitled his piece, Azaria and Hushai; and the latter, Absalom Senior, or Absalom and Achitophel transposed There were some of them, however, who condemned the practice as profane, and attacked Dryden on that ground. On all alike the poet emptied the vials of his wrath in his Mac-Flecknoe, a poor writer, who

"In prose and verse was owned, without dispute,
Through all the realms of Nonsense absolute;"

and to whom Dryden declares that Shadwell, who had taken part in the general crusade against him, was the successor. Nor can he even, on so poor a subject, refrain from misusing such religious ideas as these, while apostrophising the supposed dunce:

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'Heywood and Shirley were but types of thee,

Thou last great prophet of tautology.

Even I, a dunce of more renown than they,
Was sent before but to prepare thy way;

And, coarsely clad in Norwich drugget, came
To teach the nations in thy greater name."

But Dryden was as reckless in his satire as he was merciless. On this account he gained a formidable character, and was much feared by public men. He had also made satire a more polished weapon than previously it had been in the hands of Hall, Donne, Cleveland, and Butler. "Aware," writes Scott, "that a wound may be given more deeply with a burnished than with a rusty blade, he bestowed upon the versification of his satires

the same pains which he had given to his rhyming plays and serious poems." The same writer thinks that Mac-Flecknoe is the first mockheroic poem in the English language. Notwithstanding, however, the merit of Dryden and that of Pope as satirists, the art has not commended itself to the favour of the present age, owing, perhaps, in part, to the tendency to profanity which, in their hands, it seemed to encourage. Yet this was, after all, a private bias in regard to these great writers, or the fault of an undisciplined age, which both had to outgrow. Both were equally profane in their panegyric as in their satire. Thus Dryden, even in his Britannia Rediviva, makes the most absurd and arbitrary use of religious ideas, at a time when the claims of religion apparently had begun to impress him with a seriousness previously not experienced. The Trinity, the Tetragrammaton, the Paraclete, are all pressed into the service of a loyal eulogium, mixed with many allusions to classical mythology, the latter seeming to have as much weight as the former with the poet. In all, the inherent blasphemy of which he was guilty remained unsuspected; for neither he nor the age in which he lived was conscious of the impropriety.

Nowhere has Dryden, as a poet, risen to the perception of those sublime ideas which, since the French Revolution, have found expression in the works of modern poets. There are no intuitions of an Eternal Intelligence ever present and communicating with the conscience, in those moods of silence when the contemplant spirit, abstracted from the world of sense, surrenders itself to the inspirations of an invisible agency. Dryden's religious feelings were not of this character. They were neither mystical, nor transcendental, nor æsthetical. They began and ended in conventionalism, and but changed one form of it for another. His polemical controversies were the result of external circumstances, and his religious sphere of activity was bounded by the experiences of such men as Xavier, whose life he is supposed to have translated, as also Bossuet's Exposition of the Catholic Doctrine. His ideal was derived from sources like these, and not the product of inward spiritual discernment.

We must judge of him as we find him. In the limited sphere indicated, he was a Great Man; and the narrowness of the arena gave intensity to his operations within the charmed circle to which they were confined. Here he "greatly found his quarrel," even in relation to some things which time now makes us esteem to have been of little concernment. Not seldom, too, we discern his wings to be beating against the wires of his cage, much to the danger of the latter. But from that, it was written that he should not be delivered, until he had "shuffled off the mortal coil" altogether.

Within similar limits his poetic efforts were restrained. He fell into the habit of translation, partly from necessity, partly from choice. He translated not only from the dead languages, but from his own, converting old English into new, giving to Chaucer a modern dress, as well as to Theocritus, Homer, Virgil, Ovid, Lucretius, Juvenal, Persius, and Horace an English one. Though short of thé sublime, however, many

of his original pieces have great elevation. His Ode to St. Cecilia, and that to the memory of Mrs. Anne Killigrew, are pronounced by distinguished critics as among the best in our language. In undertaking his classic translations, Dryden simply gratified a want of his time, and called in the aid of others to the task, including his two sons, with Congreve, Creech, and Tate. His aim was to present the public with a complete version of the works of Juvenal and Persius. Among his original compositions is one on the death of the Countess of Abingdon, called Eleonora, a lady with whom he was unacquainted, but to whom he has attributed all the virtues under heaven. The earl, though now unknown to Dryden, was in his way, and after the fashion of his age, what is euphuistically called "a patron of the Muses," who, not satisfied with the volunteer effusions of minor poets, employed a mutual friend to engage Dryden to compose a more beautiful tribute to his consort's memory, and for which a consideration, according to custom, was paid. The fee and the application, says Scott, were not then judged more extraordinary than the similar request and payment made to the divine who preached the funeral sermon. The same writer instances a curious imprecation concluding a similar tribute to the memory of the same lady, under the title of Mirana, a Funeral Eclogue, as illustrating the now happily obsolete usage. The imprecation alluded to is as follows:

"Here, friend, my sacred imprecation hear,
And let both of us kneel, and both be bare.
Doom me, ye powers, to misery and shame;
Let mine be the most ignominious name;
Let me, each day, be with new griefs perplext,
Curst in this life, nor blessed in the next,-
If I believe the like of her survives,

Or if I think her not the best of mothers, and of wives."

It was easy, of course, for Dryden to better this style of doing the thing. He took, too, his time about it, in order to do it well; and imagined for the nonce an ideal person who might be an object of imitation for other ladies of wealth and rank. He might have done far worse than this, and deserved praise; yet critics have grudged commendation to a poem which possesses many beauties, and was written with evident care and ambition.

Of all Dryden's translations, that of Virgil is the most important. It had great interest for the public of the time. "The names of Virgil and of Dryden," says Scott, "were talismans powerful to arrest all the literature of England, and fix universal attention upon the progress of the work." The nation, we are further told, considered its honour interested in the event. A Mr. Gilbert Dolben gave Dryden various editions of Virgil; Dr. Knightly Chetwood furnished him with the poet's biography and the preface to the Pastorals; while Addison supplied the arguments of the several books, and an "Essay on the Georgics." Dryden, too, wrote the first lines of this great poet which he translated on a pane of glass in one of the windows of Chesterton House, in Huntingdonshire, with a

diamond. The place was the residence of his kinsman and namesake, John Driden, Esq. Malone, to whom we are indebted for these items of information, records also that the version of the first Georgic, and of a great part of the last Æneid, were made at Denham Court, in Buckinghamshire, the seat of Sir William Bowyer, Baronet; and that the seventh Æneid was translated at Burleigh, the noble mansion of the Earl of Exeter. Dryden got high terms from his subscribers. Of these there were two classes the first of whom paid five guineas apiece to adorn the work with engravings; beneath each of which, in due and grateful remembrance, was blazoned the arms of a subscriber. This class numbered 101 patrons, and offers an assemblage of noble names. The second subscribers were

250 persons, at two guineas each. The expense of the engravings had to be deducted from these amounts; no very large sum, as they consisted of the plates from Ogilby's Virgil, a little retouched. Tonson also paid Dryden fifty pounds for each book of the Georgics and Eneid, and a similar sum for the Pastorals. Such encouragement indicates a change for the better in the public taste, and in harmony with the outward reformation of manners which had set in with the reign of William and Mary. In about three years the translation was completed; and when published (1697), the edition was exhausted in a few months. It was printed in a large folio, well bound, and dedicated to three several patrons-Clifford, Chesterfield, and Mulgrave. This work of Dryden was severely satirised by Swift, and malignantly criticised by Luke Milbourne, a clergyman, who held revolution principles, and had projected a translation of the Roman epic poet himself. With a degree of fairness, however, commended by Pope, he appended to his criticism a specimen of his own translation, which so far his readers might compare with Dryden's. Oldmixon and Parker came to Dryden's defence; but their aid was not wanted.

Dryden, as we have intimated, attempted Homer after Virgil; but he proceeded no further than the first book of the Iliad. This, also, he turned into rhyme; though there is an anecdote which states that he regretted not having rendered Virgil in blank verse. Little reliance is to be placed on such anecdotes.

This intention appears to have been changed in favour of his renderings of Boccaccio and Chaucer, which were published under the title of Fables. Among these, Dryden introduced the "Character of the Good Parson," to confute those who had accused him of libelling the priestly office, and to show that he could estimate clerical virtue where it existed. Prefixed, also, were introductory verses addressed to the Duchess of Ormond, distinguished for her beauty and virtue, and for which the poet is said to have been rewarded with five hundred pounds.

The last few months of Dryden's life were embittered with acrimonious controversy. He had to defend his reputation against his literary adversaries. Nor could he solace himself with the success of his last work. Though the best of his productions, his Fables, were not wel

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