SECTION V

________________________________________________
_

SECTION V

_Dryden engages in Politics--Absalom and Achitophel, Part First--The Medal--MacFlecknoe--Absalom and Achitophel, Part Second--The Duke of Guise._

The controversies, in which Dryden had hitherto been engaged, were of a private complexion, arising out of literary disputes and rivalry. But the country was now deeply agitated by political faction; and so powerful an auxiliary was not permitted by his party to remain in a state of inactivity. The religion of the Duke of York rendered him obnoxious to a large proportion of the people, still agitated by the terrors of the Popish Plot. The Duke of Monmouth, handsome, young, brave, and courteous, had all the external requisites for a popular idol; and what he wanted in mental qualities was amply supplied by the Machiavel subtlety of Shaftesbury. The life of Charles was the only isthmus between these contending tides, "which, mounting, viewed each other from afar, and strove in vain to meet." It was already obvious, that the king's death was to be the signal of civil war. His situation was doubly embarrassing, because, in all probability, Monmouth, whose claims were both unjust in themselves and highly derogatory to the authority of the crown, was personally amiable, and more beloved by Charles than was his inflexible and bigoted brother. But to consent to the bill for excluding the lawful heir from the crown, would have been at the same time putting himself in a state of pupillage for the rest of his reign, and evincing to his subjects, that they had nothing to expect from attachment to his person, or defence of his interest. This was a sacrifice not to be thought of so long as the dreadful recollection of the wars in the preceding reign determined a large party to support the monarch, while he continued willing to accept of their assistance. Charles accordingly adopted a determined course; and, to the rage rather than confusion of his partisans, Monmouth was banished to Holland, from whence he boldly returned without the king's licence, and openly assumed the character of the leader of a party. Estranged from court, he made various progresses through the country, and employed every art which the genius of Shaftesbury could suggest, to stimulate the courage, and to increase the number, of his partisans. The press, that awful power, so often and so rashly misused, was not left idle. Numbers of the booksellers were distinguished as Protestant or fanatical publishers; and their shops teemed with the furious declamations of Ferguson, the inflammatory sermons of Hickeringill, the political disquisitions of Hunt, and the party plays and libellous poems of Settle and Shadwell. An host of rhymers, inferior even to those last named, attacked the king, the Duke of York, and the ministry, in songs and libels, which, however paltry, were read, sung, rehearsed, and applauded. It was time that some champion should appear in behalf of the crown, before the public should have been irrecoverably alienated by the incessant and slanderous clamour of its opponents. Dryden's place, talents, and mode of thinking, qualified him for this task. He was the poet-laureate and household servant of the king thus tumultuously assailed. His vein of satire was keen, terse, and powerful, beyond any that has since been displayed. From the time of the Restoration, he had been a favourer of monarchy, perhaps more so, because the opinion divided him from his own family. If he had been for a time neglected, the smiles of a sovereign soon make his coldness forgotten; and if his narrow fortune was not increased, or even rendered stable, he had promises of provision, which inclined him to look to the future with hope, and endure the present with patience. If he had shared in the discontent which for a time severed Mulgrave from the royal party, that cause ceased to operate when his patron was reconciled to the court, and received a share of the spoils of the disgraced Monmouth.[1] If there wanted further impulse to induce Dryden, conscious of his strength, to mingle in an affray where it might be displayed to advantage, he had the stimulus of personal attachment and personal enmity, to sharpen his political animosity. Ormond, Halifax, and Hyde, Earl of Rochester, among the nobles, were his patrons; Lee and Southerne, among the poets, were his friends. These were partisans of royalty. The Duke of York, whom the "Spanish Friar" probably had offended, was conciliated by a prologue on his visiting the theatre at his return from Scotland,[2] and it is said, by the omission of certain peculiarly offensive passages, so soon as the play was reprinted.[3] The opposite ranks contained Buckingham, author of the "Rehearsal;" Shadwell, with whom our poet now urged open war; and Settle, the insolence of whose rivalry was neither forgotten nor duly avenged. The respect due to Monmouth was probably the only consideration to be overcome: but his character was to be handled with peculiar lenity; and his duchess, who, rather than himself, had patronised Dryden, was so dissatisfied with the politics, as well as the other irregularities, of her husband, that there was no danger of her taking a gentle correction of his ambition as any affront to herself. Thus stimulated by every motive, and withheld by none, Dryden composed, and on the 17th November 1681 published, the satire of "Absalom and Achitophel."

The plan of the satire was not new to the public. A Catholic poet had, in 1679, paraphrased the scriptural story of Naboth's vine-yard and applied it to the condemnation of Lord Stafford, on account of the Popish Plot.[4] This poem is written in the style of a scriptural allusion; the names and situations of personages in the holy text being applied to those contemporaries, to whom the author assigned a place in his piece. Neither was the obvious application of the story of Absalom and Achitophel to the persons of Monmouth and Shaftesbury first made by our poet. A prose paraphrase, published in 1080, had already been composed upon this allusion.[5] But the vigour of the satire, the happy adaptation, not only of the incidents, but of the very names to the individuals characterised, gave Dryden's poem the full effect of novelty. It appeared a very short time after Shaftesbury had been committed to the Tower, and only a few days before the grand jury were to take under consideration the bill preferred against him for high treason. Its sale was rapid beyond example; and even those who were most severely characterised, were compelled to acknowledge the beauty, if not the justice, of the satire. The character of Monmouth, an easy and gentle temper, inflamed beyond its usual pitch by ambition, and seduced by the arts of a wily and interested associate, is touched with exquisite delicacy. The poet is as careful of the offending Absalom's fame, as the father in Scripture of the life of his rebel son. The fairer side of his character is industriously presented, and a veil drawn over all that was worthy of blame. But Shaftesbury pays the lenity with which Monmouth is dismissed. The traits of praise, and the tribute paid to that statesman's talents, are so qualified and artfully blended with censure, that they seem to render his faults even more conspicuous, and more hateful. In this skilful mixture of applause and blame lies the nicest art of satire. There must be an appearance of candour on the part of the poet, and just so much merit allowed, even to the object of his censure, as to make his picture natural. It is a child alone who fears the aggravated terrors of a Saracen's head; the painter, who would move the awe of an enlightened spectator, must delineate his tyrant with human features. It seems likely, that Dryden considered the portrait of Shaftesbury, in the first edition of "Absalom and Achitophel," as somewhat deficient in this respect; at least the second edition contains twelve additional lines, the principal tendency of which is to praise the ability and integrity with which Shaftesbury had discharged the office of lord high chancellor. It has been reported, that this mitigation was intended to repay a singular exertion of generosity on Shaftesbury's part, who, while smarting under the lash of Dryden's satire, and in the short interval between the first and second edition of the poem, had the liberality to procure admission for the poet's son upon the foundation of the Charterhouse, of which he was then governor. But Mr. Malone has fully confuted this tale, and shown, from the records of the seminary, that Dryden's son Erasmus was admitted upon the recommendation of the king himself.[6] The insertion, therefore, of the lines in commemoration of Shaftesbury's judicial character, was a voluntary effusion on the part of Dryden, and a tribute which he seems to have judged it proper to pay to the merit even of an enemy. Others of the party of Monmouth, or rather of the opposition party (for it consisted, as is commonly the case, of a variety of factions, agreeing in the single principle of opposition to the government), were stigmatised with severity, only inferior to that applied to Achitophel. Among these we distinguish the famous Duke of Buckingham, with whom, under the character of Zimri, our author balanced accounts for his share in the "Rehearsal;" Bethel, the Whig sheriff, whose scandalous avarice was only equalled by his factious turbulence; and Titus Oates, the pretended discoverer of the Popish Plot. The account of the Tory chiefs, who retained, in the language of the poem, their friendship for David at the expense of the popular hatred, included, of course, most of Dryden's personal protectors. The aged Duke of Ormond is panegyrised with a beautiful apostrophe to the memory of his son, the gallant Earl of Ossory. The Bishops of London and Rochester; Mulgrave our author's constant patron, now reconciled with Charles and his government; the plausible and trimming Halifax; and Hyde, Earl of Rochester, second son to the great Clarendon, appear in this list. The poet having thus arrayed and mustered the forces on each side, some account of the combat is naturally expected; and Johnson complains, that, after all the interest excited, the story is but lamely winded up by a speech from the throne, which produces the instantaneous and even marvellous effect, of reconciling all parties, and subduing the whole phalanx of opposition. Even thus, says the critic, the walls, towers, and battlements of an enchanted castle disappear, when the destined knight winds his horn before it. Spence records in his Anecdotes, that Charles himself imposed on Dryden the task of paraphrasing the speech to his Oxford parliament, at least the most striking passages, as a conclusion to his poem of "Absalom and Achitophel."

But let us consider whether the nature of the poem admitted of a different management in the close. Incident was not to be attempted; for the poet had described living characters and existing factions, the issue of whose contention was yet in the womb of fate, and could not safely be anticipated in the satire. Besides, the dissolution of the Oxford parliament with that memorable speech, was a remarkable era in the contention of the factions, after which the Whigs gradually declined, both in spirit, in power, and in popularity. Their boldest leaders were for a time appalled;[7] and when they resumed their measures, they gradually approached rather revolution than reform, and thus alienated the more temperate of their own party, till at length their schemes terminated in the Rye-house Conspiracy. The speech having such an effect, was therefore not improperly adopted as a termination to the poem of "Absalom and Achitophel."

The success of this wonderful satire was so great, that the court had again recourse to the assistance of its author. Shaftesbury was now liberated from the Tower; for the grand jury, partly influenced by deficiency of proof, and partly by the principles of the Whig party, out of which the sheriffs had carefully selected them, refused to find the bill of high treason against him. This was a subject of unbounded triumph to his adherents, who celebrated his acquittal by the most public marks of rejoicing. Amongst others, a medal was struck, bearing the head and name of Shaftesbury, and on the reverse, a sun, obscured with a cloud, rising over the Tower and city of London, with the date of the refusal of the bill (24th November 1681), and the motto LAETAMUR. These medals, which his partisans wore ostentatiously at their bosoms, excited the general indignation of the Tories; and the king himself is said to have suggested it as a theme for the satirical muse of Dryden, and to have rewarded his performance with an hundred broad pieces. To a poet of less fertility, the royal command, to write again upon a character which, in a former satire, he had drawn with so much precision and felicity, might have been as embarrassing at least as honourable. But Dryden was inexhaustible; and easily discovered, that, though he had given the outline of Shaftesbury in "Absalom and Achitophel," the finished colouring might merit another canvas. About the sixteenth of March 1681, he published, anonymously "The Medal, a Satire against Sedition," with the apt motto,

"_Per Graium populos, mediaeque per Elidis urbem
Ibat ovans; Divumque sibi poscebat honores._"__

In this satire, Shaftesbury's history; his frequent political apostasies; his licentious course of life, so contrary to the stern rigour of the fanatics, with whom he had associated; his arts in instigating the fury of the anti-monarchists; in fine, all the political and moral bearings of his character sounded and exposed to contempt and reprobation, the beauty of the poetry adding grace to the severity of the satire. What impression these vigorous and well-aimed darts made upon Shaftesbury, who was so capable of estimating their sharpness and force, we have no means to ascertain; but long afterwards, his grandson, the author of the "Characteristics," speaks of Dryden and his works with a bitter affectation of contempt, offensive to every reader of judgment, and obviously formed on prejudice against the man, rather than dislike to the poetry.[8] It is said, that he felt more resentment on account of the character of imbecility adjudged to his father in "Absalom and Achitophel," than for all the pungent satire, there and in the "Medal," bestowed upon his grandfather; an additional proof, how much more easy it is to bear those reflections which render ourselves or our friends hateful, than those by which they are only made ridiculous and contemptible. The Whig poets, for many assumed that title, did not behold these attacks upon their leader and party with patience or forbearance; but they rushed to the combat with more zeal, or rather fury, than talent or policy. Their efforts are numbered and described elsewhere;[9] so that we need here only slightly notice those which Dryden thought worthy of his own animadversion. Most of them adopted the clumsy and obvious expedient of writing their answers in the style of the successful satire which had provoked them. Thus, in reply to "Absalom and Achitophel," Pordage and Settle imitated the plan of bestowing scriptural names on their poem and characters the former entitling his piece "Azaria and Hushai," the latter, "Absalom Senior, or Absalom and Achitophel transposed." But these attempts to hurl back the satire at him by whom it was first launched, succeeded but indifferently, and might have convinced the authors that the charm of "Absalom and Achitophel" lay not in the plan, but in the power of execution. It was easy to give Jewish titles to their heroes, but the difficulty lay in drawing their characters with the force and precision of their prototype. Buckingham himself was rash enough to engage in this conflict; but, whether his anger blunted his wit, or that his share in the "Rehearsal" was less even than what is generally supposed, he loses, by his "Reflections on Absalom and Achitophel," the credit we are disposed to allow him for talent on the score of that lively piece.[10] A nonconformist clergyman published two pieces, which I have never seen, one entitled, "A Whip for the Fool's Back, who styles honourable Marriage a cursed confinement, in his profane Poem of Absalom and Achitophel;" the other, "A Key, with the Whip, to open the Mystery and Iniquity of the Poem called Absalom and Achitophel." Little was to be hoped or feared from poems bearing such absurd titles: I throw, however, into the note, the specimen which Mr. Malone has given of their contents.[11] The reverend gentleman having announced, that Achitophel, in Hebrew, means "the brother of a fool," Dryden retorted, with infinite coolness, that in that case the author of the discovery might pass with his readers for next akin, and that it was probably the relation which made the kindness.

"The Medal" was answered by the same authors who replied to "Absalom and Achitophel," as if the Whigs had taken in sober earnest the advice which Dryden bestowed on them in the preface to that satire. And moreover (as he there expressly recommends) they railed at him abundantly, without a glimmering of wit to enliven their scurrility. Hickeringill, a crazy fanatic, began the attack with a sort of mad poem, called "The Mushroom." It was written and sent to press the very day on which "The Medal" appeared; a circumstance on which the author valued himself so highly, as to ascribe it to divine inspiration.[12] With more labour, and equal issue, Samuel Pordage, a minor poet of the day, produced "The Medal Reversed;" for which, and his former aggression, Dryden brands him, in a single line of the Second Part of "Absalom and Achitophel," as

"Lame Mephibosheth, the wizard's[13] son."

There also appeared "The Loyal Medal Vindicated," and a piece entitled "Dryden's Satire to his Muse," imputed to Lord Somers, but which, in conversation with Pope, he positively disavowed. All these, and many other pieces, the fruits of incensed and almost frantic party fury, are marked by the most coarse and virulent abuse. The events in our author's life were few, and his morals, generally speaking, irreproachable; so that the topics for the malevolence of his antagonists were both scanty and strained. But they ceased not, with the true pertinacity of angry dulness, to repeat, in prose and verse, in couplet, ballad, and madrigal, the same unvaried accusations, amounting in substance to the following: That Dryden had been bred a puritan and republican; that he had written an elegy on Cromwell (which one wily adversary actually reprinted); that he had been in poverty at the Restoration; that Lady Elizabeth Dryden's character was tarnished by the circumstances attending their nuptials; that Dryden had written the "Essay on Satire," in which the king was libelled; that he had been beaten by three men in Rose-alley; finally, that he was a Tory, and a tool of arbitrary power. This cuckoo song, garnished with the burden of _Bayes_ and _Poet Squab_,[14] was rung in the ear of the public again and again, and with an obstinacy which may convince us how little there was to be said, when that little was so often repeated. Feeble as these attacks were, their number, like that of the gnats described by Spenser,[15] seems to have irritated Dryden to exert the power of his satire, and, like the blast of the northern wind, to sweep away at once these clamorous and busy, though ineffectual assailants. Two, in particular, claimed distinction from the nameless crowd; Settle, Dryden's ancient foe, and Shadwell, who had been originally a dubious friend.

Of Dryden's controversy with Settle we have already spoken fully; but we may here add, that, in addition to former offences of a public and private nature, Elkanah, in the Prologue to the "Emperor of Morocco," acted in March 1681-2, had treated Dryden with great irreverence.[16] Shadwell had been for some time in good habits with Dryden; yet an early difference of taste and practice in comedy, not only existed between them, but was the subject of reciprocal debate, and something approaching to rivalry.

Dryden, as we have seen, had avowed his preference of lively dialogue in comedy to delineation of character, or, in other words, of wit and repartee to what was then called humour. On this subject Shadwell early differed from the laureate. Conscious of considerable powers in observing nature, while he was deficient in that liveliness of fancy which is necessary to produce vivacity of dialogue, Shadwell affected, or perhaps entertained, a profound veneration for the memory of Ben Jonson, and proposed him as his model in the representation of such characters as were to be marked by _humour_, or an affectation of singularity of manners, speech, and behaviour. Dryden, on the other hand, was no great admirer either of Jonson's plays in general, or of the low and coarse characters of vice and folly, in describing which lay his chief excellency; and this opinion he had publicly intimated in the "Essay of Dramatic Poesy." In the preface to the very first of Shadwell's plays, printed in 1668, he takes occasion bitterly, and with a direct application to Dryden, to assail the grounds of this criticism and the comedies of the author who had made it.[17] If this petulance produced any animosity, it was not lasting; for in the course of their controversy, Dryden appeals to Shadwell, whether he had not rather countenanced than impeded his first rise in public favour; and, in 1674, they made common cause with Crowne to write those Remarks, which were to demolish Settle's "Empress of Morocco." Even in 1670, while Shadwell expresses the same dissent from Dryden's opinion concerning the merit of Jonson's comedy, it is in very respectful terms, and with great deference to his respected and admired friend, of whom, though he will not say his is the best way of writing, he maintains his manner of writing it is most excellent[18]. But the irreconcilable difference in their taste soon after broke out in less seemly terms; for Shadwell permitted himself to use some very irreverent expressions towards Dryden's play of "Aureng-Zebe," in the Prologue and Epilogue to his comedy of the "Virtuoso;" and in the Preface to the same piece he plainly intimated, that he wanted nothing but a pension to enable him to write as well as the poet-laureate.[19] This attack was the more intolerable, as Dryden, in the Preface to that very play of "Aureng-Zebe," probably meant to include Shadwell among those contemporaries who, even in his own judgment excelled him in comedy. In 1678 Dryden accommodated with a prologue Shadwell's play of the "True Widow;" but to write these occasional pieces was part of his profession, and the circumstance does not prove that the breach between these rivals for public applause was ever thoroughly healed; on the contrary, it seems likely, that, in the case of Shadwell, as in that of Settle, political hatred only gangrened a wound inflicted by literary rivalry. After their quarrel became desperate, Dryden resumed his prologue, and adapted it to a play by Afra Behn, called the "Widow Ranter, or Bacon in Virginia."[20] Whatever was the progress of the dispute, it is certain that Shadwell, as zealously attached to the Whig faction as Dryden to the Tories, buckled on his armour among their other poetasters to encounter the champion of royalty. His answer to "The Medal" is entitled "The Medal of John Bayes:" it appeared in autumn 1681, and is distinguished by scurrility, even among the scurrilous lampoons of Settle, Care, and Pordage. Those, he coolly says, who know Dryden, know there is not an untrue word spoke of him in the poem; although he is there charged with the most gross and infamous crimes. Shadwell also seems to have had a share in a lampoon, entitled "The Tory Poets," in which both Dryden and Otway were grossly reviled.[21] On both occasions, his satire was as clumsy as his overgrown person, and as brutally coarse as his conversation: for Shadwell resembled Ben Jonson in his vulgar and intemperate pleasures, as well as in his style of comedy and corpulence of body.[22] Dryden seems to have thought, that such reiterated attacks, from a contemporary of some eminence, whom he had once called friend, merited a more severe castigation than could be administered in a general satire. He therefore composed "Mac-Flecknoe, or a Satire on the True Blue Protestant Poet, T.S., by the Author of Absalom and Achitophel," which was published 4th October 1682. Richard Flecknoe, from whom the piece takes its title, was so distinguished as a wretched poet, that his name had become almost proverbial. Shadwell is represented as the adopted son of this venerable monarch, who so long

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

The solemn inauguration of Shadwell as his successor in this drowsy kingdom, forms the plan of the poem; being the same which Pope afterwards adopted on a broader canvas for his "Dunciad." The vices and follies of Shadwell are not concealed, while the awkwardness of his pretensions to poetical fame are held up to the keenest ridicule. In an evil hour, leaving the composition of low comedy, in which he held an honourable station, he adventured upon the composition of operas and pastorals. On these the satirist falls without mercy; and ridicules, at the same time, his pretensions to copy Ben Jonson:__

"Nor let false friends seduce thy mind to fame,
By arrogating Jonson's hostile name;
Let father Flecknoe fire thy mind with praise,
And uncle Ogleby thy envy raise.
Thou art my blood, where Jonson has no part:
What share have we in nature or in art?
Where did his wit on learning fix a brand,
And rail at arts he did not understand?
Where made he love in Prince Nicander's vein,
Or swept the dust in Psyche's humble strain?"

This unmerciful satire was sold off in a very short time; and it seems uncertain whether it was again published until 1084, when it appeared with the author's name in Tonson's first Miscellany. It would seem that Dryden did not at first avow it, though, as the title-page assigned it to the author of "Absalom and Achitophel," we cannot believe Shadwell's assertion, that he had denied it with oaths and imprecations. Dryden, however, omits this satire in the [first [23]] printed list of his plays and poems, along with the Eulogy on Cromwell. But he was so far from disowning it, that, in his "Essay on Satire," he quotes "Mac-Flecknoe" as an instance given by himself of the Varronian satire. Poor Shadwell was extremely disturbed by this attack upon him; the more so, as he seems hardly to have understood its tendency. He seriously complains, that he is represented by Dryden as an Irishman, "when he knows that I never saw Ireland till I was three-and-twenty years old, and was there but for four months." He had understood Dryden's parable literally; so true it is, that a knavish speech sleeps in a foolish ear.

"Mac-Flecknoe," though so cruelly severe, was not the only notice which Shadwell received of Dryden's displeasure at his person and politics. "Absalom and Achitophel," and "The Medal," having been so successful, a second part to the first poem was resolved on, for the purpose of sketching the minor characters of the contending factions. Dryden probably conceiving that he had already done his part, only revised this additional book, and contributed about two hundred lines. The body of the poem was written by Nahum Tate, one of those second-rate bards, who, by dint of pleonasm and expletive can find smooth lines if any one will supply them with ideas. The Second Part of "Absalom and Achitophel" is, however, much beyond his usual pitch, and exhibits considerable marks of a careful revision by Dryden, especially in the satirical passages; for the eulogy on the Tory chiefs is in the flat and feeble strain of Tate himself, as is obvious when it is compared with the description of the Green-Dragon Club, the character of Corah, and other passages exhibiting marks of Dryden's hand.

But if the Second Part of "Absalom and Achitophel" fell below the first in its general tone, the celebrated passage inserted by Dryden possessed even a double portion of the original spirit. The victims whom he selected out of the partisans of Monmouth and Shaftesbury for his own particular severity, were Robert Ferguson, afterwards well known by the name of The Plotter; Forbes; Johnson, author of the parallel between James, Duke of York, and Julian the Apostate; but, above all, Settle and Shadwell, whom, under the names of Doeg and Og, he has depicted in the liveliest colours his poignant satire could afford. They who have patience to look into the lampoons which these worthies had published against Dryden, will, in reading his retort, be reminded of the combats between the giants and knights of romance. His antagonists came on with infinite zeal and fury, discharged their ill-aimed blows on every side, and exhausted their strength in violent and ineffectual rage. But the keen and trenchant blade of Dryden never makes a thrust in vain, and never strikes but at a vulnerable point. This, we have elsewhere remarked, is a peculiar attribute of his satire;[24] and it is difficult for one assailed on a single ludicrous foible to make good his respectability though possessed of a thousand valuable qualities; as it was impossible for Achilles, invulnerable everywhere else, to survive the wound which a dexterous archer had aimed at his heel. With regard to Settle, there is a contempt in Dryden's satire which approaches almost to good-humour, and plainly shows how far our poet was now from entertaining those apprehensions of rivalship, which certainly dictated his portion of the "Remarks on the Empress of Morocco." Settle had now found his level, and Dryden no longer regarded him with a mixture of rage and apprehension, but with more appropriate feelings of utter contempt. This poor wight had acquired by practice, and perhaps from nature, more of a poetical ear than most of his contemporaries were gifted with. His "blundering melody," as Dryden terms it, is far sweeter to the ear than the flat and ineffectual couplets of Tate; nor are his verses always destitute of something approaching to poetic fancy and spirit. He certainly, in his transposition of "Absalom and Achitophel," mimicked the harmony of his original with more success than was attained by Shadwell, Buckingham or Pordage.[25] But in this facility of versification all his merit began and ended; in our author's phrase,

"Doeg, though without knowing how or why,
Made still a blundering kind of melody;
Spurred boldly on, and dashed though thick and thin,
Through sense and nonsense, never out nor in;
Free from all meaning, whether good or bad,
And, in one word, heroically mad.
He was too warm on picking-work to dwell,
But faggoted his notions as they fell,
And, if they rhymed and rattled, all was well."

Ere we take leave of Settle, it is impossible to omit mentioning his lamentable conclusion; a tale often told and moralised upon, and in truth a piece of very tragical mirth. Elkanah, we have seen, was at this period a zealous Whig; nay, he was so far in the confidence of Shaftesbury that, under his direction, and with his materials, he had been intrusted to compose a noted libel against the Duke of York, entitled, "The Character of a Popish Successor." Having a genius for mechanics, he was also exalted to be manager of a procession for burning the Pope; which the Whigs celebrated with great pomp, as one of many artifices to inflame the minds of the people.[26] To this, and to the fireworks which attended its solemnisation, Dryden alludes in the lines to which Elkanah's subsequent disasters gave an air of prophecy:--

"In fireworks give him leave to vent his spite,
Those are the only servants he can write;
The height of his ambition is, we know,
But to be master of a puppet-show;
On that one stage his works may yet appear,
And a month's harvest keeps him all the year."

Notwithstanding the rank he held among the Whig authors,[27] Settle, perceiving the cause of his patron Shaftesbury was gradually becoming weaker, fairly abandoned him to his fate, and read a solemn recantation of his political errors in a narrative published in 1683. The truth seems to be, that honest Doeg was poet-laureate to the city, and earned some emolument by composing verses for pageants and other occasions of civic festivity; so that when the Tory interest resumed its ascendency among the magistrates, he had probably no alternative but to relinquish his principles or his post, and Elkanah, like many greater men, held the former the easier sacrifice. Like all converts, he became outrageous in his new faith, wrote a libel on Lord Russell a few days after his execution; indited a panegyric on Judge Jefferies; and, being _tam Marte quam Mercurio_, actually joined as a trooper the army which King James encamped upon Hounslow Heath. After the Revolution, he is enumerated, with our author and Tate, among those poets whose strains had been stifled by that great event.[28] He continued, however, to be the city-laureate;[29] but, in despite of that provision, was reduced by want to write plays, like Ben Jonson's Littlewit, for the profane _motions_, or puppet-shows, of Smithfield and Bartholomew fairs. Nay, having proceeded thus far in exhibiting the truth of Dryden's prediction, he actually mounted the stage in person among these wooden performers, and combated St. George for England in a green dragon of his own proper device. Settle was admitted into the Charterhouse in his old age, and died there in 1723. The lines of Pope on poor Elkanah's fate are familiar to every poetical reader:--

"In Lud's old walls though long I ruled, renowned
Far as loud Bow's stupendous bells resound;
Though my own aldermen conferred the bays,
To me committing their eternal praise,
Their full-fed heroes, their pacific mayors,
Their annual trophies and their monthly wars;
Though long my party built on me their hopes,
For writing pamphlets, and for roasting popes;
Yet lo! in me what authors have to brag on!
Reduced at last to hiss in my own dragon.
Avert it, heaven! that thou, or Cibber, e'er
Should wag a serpent-tail in Smithfield fair!
Like the vile straw that's blown about the streets,
The needy poet sticks to all he meets;
Coached, carted, trod upon, now loose, now fast,
And carried off in some dog's tail at last."

As Dryden was probably more apprehensive of Shadwell, who, though a worse poet than Settle, has excelled even Dryden in the lower walks of comedy, he has treated him with sterner severity. His person, his morals, his manners and his politics, all that had escaped or been but slightly touched upon in "Mac-Flecknoe," are bitterly reviewed in the character of Og; and there probably never existed another poet, who, at the distance of a month, which intervened between the publication of the two poems, could resume an exhausted theme with an energy which gave it all the charms of novelty. Shadwell did not remain silent beneath the lash; but his clamorous exclamations only tended to make his castigation more ludicrous.[30]

The Second Part of "Absalom and Achitophel" was followed by the "_Religio Laici_," a poem which Dryden published in the same month of November 1682. Its tendency, although of a political nature, is so different from that of the satires, that it will be most properly considered when we can place it in contrast to the "Hind and Panther." It was addressed to Henry Dickinson, a young gentleman, who had just published a translation of Simon's "Critical History of the New Testament."

As the publication of the two Parts of "Absalom and Achitophel," "The Medal," and "Mac-Flecknoe," all of a similar tone, and rapidly succeeding each other, gave to Dryden, hitherto chiefly known as a dramatist, the formidable character of an inimitable satirist, we may here pause to consider their effect upon English poetry. The witty Bishop Hall had first introduced into our literature that species of poetry; which, though its legitimate use be to check vice and expose folly, is so often applied by spleen or by faction to destroy domestic happiness, by assailing private character. Hall possessed a good ear for harmony; and, living in the reign of Elizabeth, might have studied it in Spenser, Fairfax, and other models. But from system, rather than ignorance or inability, he chose to be "hard of conceit, and harsh of style," in order that his poetry might correspond with the sharp, sour, and crabbed nature of his theme.[31] Donne, his successor, was still more rugged in his versification, as well as more obscure in his conceptions and allusions. The satires of Cleveland (as we have indeed formerly noticed) are, if possible, still harsher and more strained in expression than those of Donne. Butler can hardly be quoted as an example of the sort of satire we are treating of. "Hudibras" is a burlesque tale, in which the measure is intentionally and studiously rendered as ludicrous as the characters and incidents. Oldham, who flourished in Dryden's time, and enjoyed his friendship, wrote his satires in the crabbed tone of Cleveland and Donne. Dryden, in the copy of verses dedicated to his memory, alludes to this deficiency, and seems to admit the subject as an apology:--

"O early ripe! to thy abundant store
What could advancing age have added more!
It might (what nature never gives the young)
Have taught the numbers of thy native tongue.
But satire needs not those, and wit will shine
Through the harsh cadence of a rugged line."

Yet the apology which he admitted for Oldham, Dryden disdained to make use of himself. He did not, as has been said of Horace, wilfully untune his harp when he commenced satirist. Aware 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. He did not indeed, for that would have been pains misapplied, attempt to smooth his verses into the harmony of those in which he occasionally celebrates female beauty; but he gave them varied tone, correct rhyme, and masculine energy, all which had hitherto been strangers to the English satire.

Thus, while Dryden's style resembled that of Juvenal rather than Horace, he may claim a superiority, for uniform and undeviating dignity, over the Roman satirist. The age, whose appetite for scandal had been profusely fed by lampoons and libels, now learned, that there was a more elevated kind of satire, in which poignancy might be united with elegance, and energy of thought with harmony of versification. The example seems to have produced a strong effect. No poet, not even Settle (for even the worst artist will improve from beholding a masterpiece), afterwards conceived he had sufficiently accomplished his task by presenting to the public, thoughts, however witty or caustic he might deem them, clothed in the hobbling measure of Donne or Cleveland; and expression and harmony began to be consulted, in satire, as well as sarcastic humour or powerful illustration.

"Mac-Flecknoe," in some degree, differs from the other satires which Dryden published at this time. It is not confined to the description of character, but exhibits an imaginary course of incidents, in which the principal personage takes a ludicrous share. In this it resembles "Hudibras;" and both are quoted by Dryden himself as examples of the Varronian satire. But there was this pointed difference, that Butler's poem is burlesque, and Dryden's mock-heroic. "Mac-Flecknoe" is, I rather believe, the first poem in the English language, in which the dignity of a harmonised and lofty style is employed, not only to excite pleasure in itself, but to increase, by contrast, the comic effect of the scenes which it narrates; the subject being ludicrous, while the verse is noble. The models of satire afforded by Dryden, as they have never been equalled by any succeeding poet, were in a tone of excellence superior far to all that had preceded them.

These reflections on the nature of Dryden's satires, have, in some degree, interrupted our account of his political controversies. Not only did he pour forth these works, one after another, with a fertility which seemed to imply delight in his new labour; but, as if the spirit of the time had taught him speed, he found leisure to oppose the Whigs in the theatre, where the audience was now nearly as much divided as the kingdom by the contending factions. Settle had produced the tragedy of "Pope Joan," Shadwell the comedy of the "Lancashire Witches," to expose to hatred and ridicule the religion of the successor to the crown. Otway and D'Urfey, Crowne and Southerne, names unequal in fame, vied in producing plays against the Whigs, which might counterbalance the effect of these popular dramas. A licence similar to that of Aristophanes was introduced on the English stage; and living personages were exhibited under very slight disguises.[32] In the prologues and epilogues, which then served as a sort of moral to the plays, the veil, thin as it was, was completely raised, and the political analogies pointed out to such of the audience as might otherwise have been too dull to apprehend them. In this sharp though petty war Dryden bore a considerable share. His necessities obliged him, among other modes of increasing his income, to accept of a small pecuniary tribute for furnishing prologues on remarkable occasions, or for new plays; and his principles determined their tendency.[33] But this was not all the support which his party expected, and which he afforded them on the theatre, even while labouring in their service in a different department.

When Dryden had but just finished his "_Religio Laici_," Lee, who had assisted in the play of "Oedipus," claimed Dryden's promise to requite the obligation. It has been already noticed, that Dryden had, in the year succeeding the Restoration, designed a play on the subject of the Duke of Guise; and he has informed us he had preserved one or two of the scenes. These, therefore, were revised, and inserted in the new play, of which Dryden wrote the first scene, the whole fourth act, and great part of the fifth. Lee composed the rest of "The Duke Of Guise." The general parallel between the League in France and the Covenant in England, was too obvious to escape early notice; but the return of Monmouth to England against the king's express command, in order to head the opposition, perhaps the insurrection, of London, presented a still closer analogy to the entry of the Duke of Guise into Paris, under similar circumstances, on the famous day of the barricades. Of this remarkable incident, the united authors of "The Duke of Guise" naturally availed themselves; though with such precaution, that almost the very expressions of the scene are taken from the prose of Davila. Yet the plot, though capable of an application so favourable for the royal party, contained circumstances of offence to it. If the parallel between Guise and Monmouth was on the one hand felicitous, as pointing out the nature of the Duke's designs, the moral was revolting, as seeming to recommend the assassination of Charles's favourite son. The king also loved Monmouth to the very last; and was slow and reluctant in permitting his character to be placed in a criminal or odious point of view.[34] The play, therefore, though ready for exhibition before midsummer 1682, remained in the hands of Arlington the lord-chamberlain for two months without being licensed for representation. But during that time the scene darkened. The king had so far suppressed his tenderness for Monmouth, as to authorise his arrest at Stafford; and the influence of the Duke of York at court became daily more predominant. Among other evident tokens that no measures were hence-forward to be kept between the king and Monmouth, the representation of "The Duke of Guise" was at length authorised.

The two companies of players, after a long and expensive warfare, had now united their forces; on which occasion Dryden furnished them with a prologue, full of violent Tory principles. By this united company "The Duke of Guise" was performed on the 30th December 1682. It was printed with a dedication to Hyde, Earl of Rochester, subscribed by both authors, but evidently the work of Dryden. It is written in a tone of defiance to the Whig authors, who had assailed the dedicators, it alleges, "like footpads in the dark," though their blows had done little harm, and the objects of their malice yet lived to vindicate their loyalty in open day. The play itself has as determined a political character as the dedication. Besides the general parallel between the leaguers and the fanatical sectaries, and the more delicate, though not less striking, connection between the story of Guise and of Monmouth, there are other collateral allusions in the piece to the history of that unfortunate nobleman, and to the state of parties. The whole character of Marmoutiere, high-spirited, loyal, and exerting all her influence to deter Guise from the prosecution of his dangerous schemes, corresponds to that of Anne, Duchess of Monmouth.[35] The love too which the king professes to Marmoutiere, and which excites the jealousy of Guise, may bear a remote and delicate allusion to that partiality which the Duke of York is said to have entertained for the wife of his nephew.[36] The amiable colours in which Marmoutiere is painted, were due to the Duchess of Monmouth, Dryden's especial patroness. Another more obvious and more offensive parallel existed between the popular party in the city, with the Whig sheriffs at their head, and that of the _Echevins_, or sheriffs of Paris, violent demagogues and adherents to the League, and who, in the play, are treated with great contumely by Grillon and the royal guards. The tumults which had taken place at the election of these magistrates were warm in the recollection of the city; and the commitment of the ex-sheriffs, Shute and Pilkington, to the Tower, under pretext of a riot, was considered as the butt of the poet's satire. Under these impressions the Whigs made a violent opposition to the representation of the piece, even when the king gave it his personal countenance. And although, in despite of them, "The Duke of Guise" so far succeeded, as "to be frequently acted, and never without a considerable attendance," we may conclude from these qualified expressions of the author himself, that the play was never eminently popular. He, who writes for a party, can only please at most one half of his audience.

It was not to be expected that, at a time so very critical, a public representation, including such bold allusions, or rather parallels, should pass without critical censure. "The Duke of Guise" was attacked by Dryden's old foe Shadwell, in some verses, entitled, "A Lenten Prologue refused by the Players;"[37] and more formally, in "Reflections on the pretended Parallel in the Play called the Duke of Guise." In this pamphlet Shadwell seems to have been assisted by a gentleman of the Temple, so zealous for the popular cause, that Dryden says he was detected disguised in a livery-gown, proffering his vote at the Common-hall. Thomas Hunt, a barrister,[38] likewise stepped forth on this occasion; and in his "Defence of the Charter of London," then challenged by the famous process of _Quo Warranto_, he accuses Dryden of having prepared the way for that arbitrary step, by the degrading representation of their magistrates executed in effigy upon the stage. Dryden thought these pamphlets of consequence enough to deserve an answer, and published, soon after, "The Vindication of the Duke of Guise." In perusing the controversy, we may admire two circumstances, eminently characteristical of the candour with which such controversies are usually maintained: First, the anxiety with which the critics labour to fix upon Dryden a disrespectful parallel between Charles II. and Henry II. [III.] of France, which certainly our author did not propose to carry farther than their common point of situation; and secondly, the labour with which he disavows what he unquestionably did intend,--a parallel between the rebellious conduct of Monmouth and of Guise. The Vindication is written in a tone of sovereign contempt for the adversaries, particularly for Shadwell. Speaking of Thomas Hunt, Dryden says,--"Even this their celebrated writer knows no more of style and English than the Northern dictator; as if dulness and clumsiness were fatal to the name of _Tom_. It is true, he is a fool in three languages more than the poet; for, they say, 'he understands Latin, Greek, and Hebrew,' from all which, to my certain knowledge, I acquit the other. Og may write against the king, if he pleases, so long as he drinks for him, and his writings will never do the government so much harm, as his drinking does it good; for true subjects will not be much perverted by his libels; but the wine-duties rise considerably by his claret. He has often called me an atheist in print; I would believe more charitably of him, and that he only goes the broad way, because the other is too narrow for him. He may see, by this, I do not delight to meddle with his course of life, and his immoralities, though I have a long bead-roll of them. I have hitherto contented myself with the ridiculous part of him, which is enough, in all conscience, to employ one man; even without the story of his late fall at the Old Devil, where he broke no ribs, because the hardness of the stairs could reach no bones; and, for my part, I do not wonder how he came to fall, for I have always known him heavy: the miracle is, how he got up again. I have heard of a sea captain as fat as he, who, to escape arrests, would lay himself flat upon the ground, and let the bailiffs carry him to prison, if they could. If a messenger or two, nay, we may put in three or four, should come, he has friendly advertisement how to escape them. But to leave him, who is not worth any further consideration, now I have done laughing at him,--would every man knew his own talent, and that they, who are only born for drinking, would let both poetry and prose alone!" This was the last distinct and prolonged animadversion which our author bestowed upon his corpulent antagonist.

Soon after this time Dryden wrote a biographical preface to Plutarch's Lives, of which a new translation, by several hands, was in the press. The dedication is addressed to the Duke of Ormond, the Barzillai of "Absalom and Achitophel," whom Charles, after a long train of cold and determined neglect, had in emergency recalled to his favour and his councils. The first volume of Plutarch's Lives, with Dryden's Life of the author, appeared in 1683.

About the same time, the king's express command engaged Dryden in a work, which may be considered as a sort of illustration of the doctrines laid down in the "Vindication of the Duke of Guise." It was the translation of Maimbourg's "History of the League," expressly composed to draw a parallel between the Huguenots of France and the Leaguers, as both equal enemies of the monarchy. This comparison was easily transferred to the sectaries of England, and the association proposed by Shaftesbury. The work was published with unusual solemnity of title-page and frontispiece; the former declaring that the translation was made by his Majesty's command; the latter representing Charles on his throne, surrounded by emblems expressive of hereditary and indefeasible right.[39] The dedication to the king contains sentiments which savour strongly of party violence, and even ferocity. The forgiving disposition of the king is, according to the dedicator, the encouragement of the conspirators. Like Antaeus they rise refreshed from a simple overthrow. "These sons of earth are never to be trusted in their mother element; they must be hoisted into the air, and strangled." Thus exasperated were the most gentle tempers in these times of doubt and peril. The rigorous tone adopted, confirms the opinion of those historians who observe, that, after the discovery of the Rye-house Plot, Charles was fretted out of his usual debonair ease, and became more morose and severe than had been hitherto thought consistent with his disposition.

This translation was to be the last service which Dryden was to render his good-humoured, selfish, and thoughtless patron. While the laureate was preparing for the stage the opera of "Albion and Albanius," intended to solemnise the triumph of Charles over the Whigs, or, as the author expressed it, the double restoration of his sacred Majesty, the king died of an apoplexy upon the 6th February 1684-5. His death opened to many, and to Dryden among others, new hopes, and new prospects, which were, in his instance, doomed to terminate in disappointment and disgrace. We may therefore pause, and review the private life of the poet during the period which has occupied our last Sections.

The vigour and rapidity with which Dryden poured forth his animated satire, plainly intimates, that his mind was pleased with the exercise of that formidable power. It was more easy for him, he has himself told us, to write with severity, than with forbearance; and indeed, where is the expert swordsman, who does not delight in the flourish of his weapon? Neither could this self-complacent feeling be much allayed, by the vague and abusive ribaldry with which his satire was repaid. This was natural to the controversy, was no more than he expected and was easily retorted with terrible interest. "As for knave," says he, "and sycophant and rascal, and impudent, and devil, and old serpent, and a thousand such good morrows, I take them to be only names of parties; and could return murderer, and cheat, and whig-napper, and sodomite; and, in short, the goodly number of the seven deadly sins, with all their kindred and relations, which are names of parties too; but saints will be saints in spite of villainy." With such feelings, we may believe Dryden's rest was little disturbed by the litter of libels against him:--

"Sons of a day just buoyant on the flood,
Then numbered with the puppies in the mud."

But he who keenly engages in political controversy must not only encounter the vulgar abuse, which he may justly contemn, but the altered eye of friends, whose regard is chilled, or alienated. That Dryden sustained such misfortune we cannot doubt, when he informs us, that, out of the large party in opposition, comprehending, doubtless, many men of talent and eminence, who were formerly familiar with him, he had, during the course of a whole year, only spoken to four, and to those but casually and cursorily, and only to express a wish, that the times might come when the names of Whig and Tory might be abolished, and men live together as they had done before they were introduced.

Neither did the protecting zeal of his party-friends compensate for the loss of those whom Dryden had alienated in their service. True it is, that a host of Tory rhymers came forward with complimentary verses to the author of "Absalom and Achitophel," and of "The Medal." But of all payment, that in kind is least gratifying to a poverty-struck bard, and the courtly patrons of Dryden were in no haste to make him more substantial requital. A gratuity of an hundred broad pieces is said to have been paid him by Charles for one of his satires; but no permanent provision was made for him. He was coolly left to increase his pittance by writing occasional pieces; and it was probably with this view that he arranged for publication a miscellaneous collection of poetry, which he afterwards continued. It was published for Tonson in 1683-4, and contained several versions of Epistles from Ovid, and translations of detached pieces of Virgil, Horace, and Theocritus, with some smaller pieces by Dryden himself, and a variety of poems by other hands. The Epistles had appeared in 1680, in a version of the original by several hands, to which Dryden also contributed an introductory discourse on translation. Contrary to our author's custom, the miscellany appeared without either preface or dedication.

The miscellany, among other minor poems of Dryden, contained many of his occasional prologues and epilogues, the composition of which his necessity had rendered so important a branch of income, that, in the midst of his splendour of satirical reputation, the poet was obliged to chaffer about the scanty recompence which he drew from such petty sources. Such a circumstance attended the commencement of his friendship with Southerne. That poet then opening his dramatic career with the play of the "Loyal Brother," came, as was usual, to request a prologue from Dryden, and to offer him the usual compliment of five guineas. But the laureate demurred, and insisted upon double the sum, "not out of disrespect," he added, "to you, young man; but the players have had my goods too cheap." Hence Southerne, who was peculiarly fortunate in his dramatic revenue, is designed by Pope as

"Tom sent down to raise
The price of prologues and of plays."[40]

It may seem surprising that Dryden should be left to make an object of such petty gains, when, labouring for the service of government, he had in little more than twelve months produced both Parts of "Absalom and Achitophel," "The Medal," "Mac-Flecknoe," "_Religio Laici_" and "The Duke of Guise." But this was not the worst; for, although his pension as poet-laureate was apparently all the encouragement which he received from the crown, so ill-regulated were the finances of Charles, so expensive his pleasures, and so greedy his favourites, that our author, shortly after finishing these immortal poems, was compelled to sue for more regular payment of that very pension, and for a more permanent provision, in the following affecting Memorial, addressed to Hyde, Earl of Rochester:--"I would plead," says he, "a little merit, and some hazards of my life from the common enemies; my refusing advantages offered by them, and neglecting my beneficial studies, for the king's service; but I only think I merit not to starve. I never applied myself to any interest contrary to your lordship's; and, on some occasions, perhaps not known to you, have not been unserviceable to the memory and reputation of my lord, your father.[41] After this, my lord, my conscience assures me, I may write boldly, though I cannot speak to you. I have three sons, growing to man's estate. I breed them all up to learning, beyond my fortune; but they are too hopeful to be neglected, though I want. Be pleased to look on me with an eye of compassion: some small employment would render my condition easy. The king is not unsatisfied of me; the duke has often promised me his assistance; and your lordship is the conduit through which their favours pass. Either in the customs, or the appeals of the excise, or some other way, means cannot be wanting, if you please to have the will. _'Tis enough for one age to have neglected Mr. Cowley, and starved Mr. Butler_; but neither of them had the happiness to live till your lordship's ministry. In the meantime, be pleased to give me a gracious and a speedy answer to my present request of half a year's pension for my necessities. I am going to write somewhat by his Majesty's command,[42] and cannot stir into the country for my health and studies till I secure my family from want."

We know that this affecting remonstrance was in part successful; for long afterwards, he says, in allusion to this period, "Even from a bare treasury, my success has been contrary to that of Mr. Cowley; and Gideon's fleece has there been moistened, when all the ground was dry." But in the admission of this claim to the more regular payment of his pension, was comprehended all Rochester's title to Dryden's gratitude. The poet could not obtain the small employment which he so earnestly solicited; and such was the recompense of the merry monarch and his counsellors, to one whose productions had strengthened the pillars of his throne, as well as renovated the literary taste of the nation.[43]

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Mulgrave was created lieutenant of Yorkshire and governor of Hull, when Monmouth was deprived of these and other honours.

[2] See vol. x.

[3] This is objected to Dryden by one of his antagonists: "Nor could ever Shimei be thought to have cursed David more bitterly, than he permits his friend to blaspheme the Roman priesthood in his epilogue to the 'Spanish Friar.' In which play he has himself acted his own part like a true younger son of Noah, as may be easily seen in the first edition of that comedy, which would not pass muster a second time without emendations and corrections."--_The Revolter_, 1687, p. 29.

[4] See vol. ix.

[5] See vol. ix. This piece, entitled "Absalom's Conspiracy or the Tragedy of Treason," is printed in the same volume.

[6] See vol. ix.

[7] Lord Grey says in his narrative, "After the dissolution of the Oxford parliament, we were all very peaceably inclined, and nothing passed amongst us that summer of importance, which I can call to mind: I think my Lord Shaftesbury was sent to the Tower just before the long vacation; and the Duke of Monmouth, Mr. Montague, Sir Thomas Armstrong, and myself, went to Tunbridge immediately after his lordship's imprisonment, where we laid aside the thoughts of disturbing the peace of the government for those of diverting ourselves."

[8] He usually distinguishes Dryden by his "Rehearsal" title of Bayes; and, among many other oblique expressions of malevolence, he has this note:--

"To see the incorrigibleness of our poets in their pedantic manner, their vanity, defiance of criticism, their rhodomontade, and poetical bravado, we need only turn to our famous poet-laureat (the very Mr. Bayes himself), in one of his latest and most valued pieces, writ many years after the ingenious author of the 'Rehearsal' had drawn his picture. 'I have been listening (says our poet, in his Preface to 'Don Sebastian'), what objections had been made against the conduct of the play, but found them all so trivial, that if I should name them, a true critic would imagine that I played booty. Some are pleased to say the writing is dull; but _aedatum habet de se loquatur._ Others, that the double poison is unnatural; let the common received opinion, and Ausonius's famous epigram, answer that. Lastly, a more ignorant sort of creatures than either of the former maintain, that the character of Dorax is not only unnatural, but inconsistent with itself; let them read the play, and think again. A longer reply is what those cavillers deserve not. But I will give them and their fellows to understand, that the Earl of ---- was pleased to read the tragedy twice over before it was acted and did me the favour to send me word, that I had written beyond any of my former plays, and that he was displeased anything should be cut away. If I have not reason to prefer his single judgment to a whole faction, let the world be judge; for the opposition is the same with that of Lucan's hero against an army, _concurrere bellum atque virum_. I think I may modestly conclude,' etc.

"Thus he goes on, to the very end, in the self-same strain. Who, after this, can ever say of the 'Rehearsal' author, that his picture of our poet was overcharged, or the national humour wrong described?"

[9] See vol. ix.

[10] See some extracts from this piece, vol. ix.

[11]
"How well this Hebrew name with sense doth sound,
_A fool's my brother_,[11a] though in wit profound!
Most wicked wits are the devil's chiefest tools,
Which, ever in the issue, God befools.
Can they compare, vile varlet, once hold true,
Of the loyal lord, and this disloyal Jew?
Was e'er our English earl under disgrace,
And, unconscionable; put out of place?
Hath he laid lurking in his country-house
To plot rebellions, as one factious?
Thy bog-trot bloodhounds hunted have this stag,
Yet cannot fasten their foul fangs,--they flag.
Why didst not _thou_ bring in thy evidence
With them, to rectify the brave jury's sense,
And so prevent the _ignoramus_?--nay,
Thou wast cock-sure he wou'd he damned for aye,
Without thy presence;--thou wast then employed
To brand him 'gainst he came to be destroyed:
Forehand preparing for the hangman's axe,
Had not the witnesses been found so lax."

[11a] _Achi_, my brother, and _tophel_, a fool.--_Orig. Note_.

[12] Vol. ix.

[13] He was the son of Dr. John Pordage, minister of Bradfield expelled his charge for insufficiency in the year 1646. Among other charges against him were the following, which, extraordinary as they are, he does not seem to have denied:

"That he hath very frequent and familiar converse with angels.

"That a great dragon came into his chamber with a tail of eight yards long, four great teeth, and did spit fire at him; and that he contended with the dragon.

"That his own angel came and stood by him while he was expostulating with the dragon; and the angel came in his own shape and fashion, the same clothes, bands, and cuffs, the same bandstrings; and that his angel stood by him and upheld him.

"That Mrs. Pordage and Mrs. Flavel had their angels standing by them also, Mrs. Pordage singing sweetly, and keeping time upon her breast; and that his children saw the spirits coming into the house, and said, Look there, father; and that the spirits did after come into the chamber, and drew the curtains when they were in bed.

"That the said Mr. Pordage confessed, that a strong enchantment was upon him, and that the devil did appear to him in the shape of Everard, and in the shape of a fiery dragon; and the whole roof of the house was full of spirits."--_State Trials_.

[14] How little Dryden valued these nicknames appears from a passage in the "Vindication of the Duke of Guise:"--"Much less am I concerned at the noble name of Bayes; that is a brat so like his own father, that he cannot be mistaken for anybody else. They might as reasonably have called Tom Sternhold Virgil, and the resemblance would have held as well." Vol. vii.

[15]
"As when a swarm of gnats at eventide
Out of the fennes of Allan doe arise,
Their murmuring small trompetts sownden wide,
Whiles in the aire their clustring army flies,
That as a cloud doth seeme to dim the skies;
No man nor beast may rest or take repast
For their sharp wounds and noyous injuries,
Till the fierce northern wind with blustring blast
Doth blow them quite away, and in the ocean cast."

[16]
"How finely would the sparks be caught to-day,
Should a Whig poet write a Tory play,
And you, possessed with rage before, should send
Your random shot abroad and maul a friend?
For you, we find, too often hiss and clap,
Just as you live, speak, think, and fight--by hap.
And poets, we all know, can change, like you,
And are alone to their own interest true;
Can write against all sense, nay even their own:
The vehicle called _pension_ makes it down.
_No fear of cudgels_, where there's hope of bread;
A well-filled paunch forgets a _broken head_."

[17] I quote the passage at length, as evincing the difference between Dryden's taste in comedy and that of Shadwell:--

"I have endeavoured to represent variety of humours (most of the persons of the play differing in their characters from one another), which was the practice of Ben Jonson, whom I think all drammatick poets ought to imitate, though none are like to come near; he being the onely person that appears to me to have made perfect representation of human life: most other authors that I ever read, either have wilde romantick tales, wherein they strein love and honour to that ridiculous height, that it becomes burlesque; or in their lower comedies content themselves with one or two humours at most, and those not near so perfect characters as the admirable Jonson; always made, who never wrote comedy without seven or eight considerable humours. I never saw one, except that of Falstaffe, that was, in my judgment, comparable to any of Jonson's considerable humours. You will pardon this digression when I tell you, he is the man, of all the world, I most passionately admire for his excellency in drammatick poetry.

"Though I have known _some of late so insolent to say_, that Ben Jonson wrote his best playes without wit, imagining, that all the wit playes consisted in bringing two persons upon the stage to break jest, and to bob one another, which they call repartie, not considering, that there is more wit and invention required in the finding out good humour and matter proper for it, then in all their smart reparties; for, in the writing of a humour, a man is confined not to swerve from the character, and obliged to say nothing but what is proper to it; but in the playes which have been wrote of late, there is no such thing as perfect character, but the two chief persons are most commonly a swearing, drinking, whoring ruffian for a lover, and impudent, ill-bred tomrig for a mistress, and these are the fine people of the play; and there is that latitude in this, that almost anything is proper for them to say; but their chief subject is bawdy, and profaneness, which they call brisk writing, when the most dissolute of men, that relish those things well enough in private, are choked at 'em in publick: and, methinks, if there were nothing but the ill manners of it, it should make poets avoid that indecent way of writing."--_Preface to the Sullen Lovers_.

Lest this provocation should be insufficient, the Prologue of the same piece has a fling at heroic plays. The poet says he has

"No kind romantic lover in his play
To sigh and whine out passion, such as may
Charm waiting-women with heroic chime,
And still resolve to live and die in rhyme;
Such as your ears with love and honour feast,
And play at crambo for three hours at least,
That fight and wooe in verse in the same breath,
And make similitude and love in death."

Whatever symptoms of reconciliation afterwards took place between the poets, I greatly doubt if this first offence was ever cordially forgiven.

[18] Vol. vii.

[19] See these offensive passages, vol. x.

[20] Vol. x.

[21]
"The laurel makes a wit, a brave, the sword;
And all are wise men at the Council board:
Settle's a coward, 'cause fool Otway fought him,
And Mulgrave is a wit, because I taught him."
_The Tory Poets_, 4to, 1682.

[22] Jonson is described as wearing a loose coachman's coat, frequenting the Mermaid tavern, where he drunk seas of Canary, then reeling home to bed, and, after a profuse perspiration, arising to his dramatic studies. Shadwell appears, from the slight traits which remain concerning him, to have followed, as closely as possible, the same course of pleasure and of study. He was brutal in his conversation, and much addicted to the use of opium, to which indeed he is said finally to have fallen a victim.

[23] [I have inserted the word "first" because Scott's language is ambiguous. In the list of the bookseller's collection in _3_ vols. 4to, advertised in _Amphitryon_ (1690), "Mac-Flecknoe" and the Cromwell poem do not appear. The later plays, however, soon gave material for another volume, and in this 4-vol. edition, advertised in _Love Triumphant_, 1694, both poems figure.--ED.]

[24] Vol. x.

[25] See some specimens of these poems, vol. ix.

[26] Vol. vi.; vol. x

[27] In a satire against Settle, dated April 1682, entitled, "A Character of the True-blue Protestant Poet," the author exclaims, "One would believe it almost incredible, that any out of Bedlam should think it possible, a yesterday's fool, an errant knave, a despicable coward, and a prophane atheist, should be to-day by the same persons, a Cowley, a man of honour, an hero, and a zealous upholder of the Protestant cause and interest."

[28] In the "Deliverance," an address to the Prince of Orange, published about 9th February 1689:--

"Alas! the famous Settle, Durfey, Tate,
That early propped the deep intrigues of state,
Dull Whiggish lines the world could ne'er applaud,
While your swift genius did appear abroad:
And then, great Bayes, whose yet unconquered pen
Wrote with strange force as well of beasts as men,
Whose noble genius grieved from afar,
Because new worlds of Bayes did not appear,
Now to contend with the ambitious elf,
Begins a civil war against himself," etc.

[29] In 1702, probably in the capacity of civic-laureate, he wrote "_Carmen Irenicum_," upon the union of the two East India companies; and long afterward, in 1717, he is mentioned by Dennis as still the city poet.

[30] He published a translation of the tenth satire of Juvenal, in the preface to which he rails plentifully against Dryden.

[31] [The omission of Marston here is remarkable, because no satirist exhibits this extraordinary roughness of versification more glaringly. Scott can hardly have read him.--ED.]

I infer, that the want of harmony was intentional, from these expressions: "It is not for every one to relish a true and natural satire; being of itself, besides the nature and inbred bitterness and tartness of particulars, both hard of conceit and harsh of style, and therefore cannot but be unpleasing both to the unskilful and over-musical ear; the one being affected with only a shallow and easy, the other with a smooth and current, disposition."--_Postscript to Hall's Satires_.

[32] In "Venice Preserved," the character of the foolish senator Antonio, now judiciously omitted in the representation was said to be meant for Shaftesbury. But Crowne's "City Politics" contained the most barefaced exhibition of all the popular leaders, including Shaftesbury, College the Protestant joiner, Titus Oates, and Sir William Jones. The last is described under the character of Bartoline, with the same lisping imperfect enunciation which distinguished the original. Let us remark, however, to the honour of Charles II., that in "Sir Courtly Nice," another comedy which Crowne, by his express command, imitated from the Spanish, the furious Tory is ridiculed in the character of Hothead, as well as the fanatical Whig under that of Testimony.

[33] See the Prologues and Epilogues in vol. x.

[34] The concealed partiality of Charles towards Monmouth survived even the discovery of the Rye-house Plot. He could not dissemble his satisfaction upon seeing him after his surrender, and pressed his hand affectionately.--See Monmouth's Diary in _Wellwood's Memorials_, p. 322.

[35] Carte, in his "life of the Duke of Ormond," says, that Monmouth's resolutions varied from submission to resistance against the king, according to his residence with the Duchess at Moor-park, who schooled him to the former, or with his associates and partisans in the city, who instigated him to more desperate resolutions.

[36] This Dryden might learn from Mulgrave, who mentions in his Memoirs, as a means of Monmouth's advancement, the "great friendship which the Duke of York had openly professed to his wife, a lady of wit and reputation, who had both the ambition of making her husband considerable, and the address of succeeding in it, by using her interest in so friendly an uncle, whose design I believe was only to convert her. Whether this familiarity of theirs was contrived or only connived at by the Duke of Monmouth himself, is hard to determine. But I remember, that, after these two princes had become declared enemies, the Duke of York one day told me, with some emotion, as conceiving it a new mark of his nephew's insolence, that he had forbidden his wife to receive any more visits from him; at which I could not help frankly replying, that I, who was not used to excuse him, yet could not hold from doing it in that case, wishing his highness might have no juster cause to complain of him. Upon which the duke, surprised to find me excuse his and my own enemy, changed the discourse immediately."--_Memoirs_, p. 13.

I have perused letters from Sir Gideon Scott of Highchester to the Duchess of Monmouth, recommending a prudent and proper attention to the Duke of York: and this advice she probably followed; for, after her husband's execution, James restored to her all her family estates.

[37] Bought by Mr. Luttrell, 11th April 1683. See it in vol. x. It is expressly levelled against "The Duke of Guise," and generally against Dryden as a court poet. I may, however be wrong in ascribing it to Shadwell.

[38] I observe Anthony Wood, as well as Mr. Malone, suppose Hunt and the Templar associated in the Reflections to be the same person. But in the "Vindication of the Duke of Guise" Shadwell and they are spoke of as three distinct persons.

[39] See vol. xvii. In this edition I have retained a specimen of a translation which our author probably executed with peculiar care; selecting it from the account of the barricades of Paris, as illustrating the tragedy of "The Duke of Guise."

[40] [This story is told with great variation of figures. Johnson mentions two and three guineas as the old and new prices; others give four and six.--ED.]

[41] Probably alluding to having defended Clarendon in public company; for nothing of the kind occurs in Dryden's publications. [It is not impossible that the New Year's Day Poem (1662) to the Lord Chancellor is partly referred to here.--ED.]

[42] Probably the translation of "_Religio Laici_."

[43] [Some important evidence has come to light since Scott wrote, which shows that the response to Dryden's petitions and the reward of his services was not so insignificant as appears from the text, though it was meagre enough. The facts were not known fully even to Macaulay, and his ignorance enabled him, in perfect honesty, to make the case against Dryden, for supposed venal apostasy, stronger than it might otherwise appear. The documents referred to were discovered by Mr. Peter Cunningham and by Mr. Charles Beville Dryden, the latter of whom communicated his discovery to Mr. Robert Bell. As the facts are undoubted, and Macaulay's ignorance of them equally so, it seems a little remarkable that a reviewer of the little book on Dryden to which I am too often obliged to refer my readers, should have announced his adherence to "Macaulay and fact" rather than "Mr. Bell and sophistry." It is not obvious how fact can be on the side of a writer who was, owing to no fault of his own, ignorant of the fact, and whose ignorance furnished him with his premises. The state of the case is this. Dryden's application to Hyde produced the following Treasury warrant:--

--of the sume of Fifty pounds for one
quarter of the said Annuity or Pencon due at Mid-summer
1680. And by Vertue of his Ma'ts Lres of Privy
Scale directing an additionall Annuity of One hundred
pounds to him the said John Dryden to draw one or
more orders for payment of the sume of Twenty five
Pounds for one Quarter of the said Annuity due at
Lady day 1680. And let both the said sumes making
the sume of Seaventy Five Pounds be satisfyed out of
any his Ma'ts Treasure now or hereafter being and
remaining in the Receipt of Excheq'r not appropriated
to particular uses For w'ch this shal be your Warrant.

Whitehall Treasury Chambers May the 6th 1684

To our very Loving friend S'r Robert Rochester
howard Kn't Auditor of the Receipt J Ernle'r
of his Ma'ts Excheq'r. Ed Dering
Int'r. in officio Auditor Ste: ffox
Recpt see-ij Dni Regis Int'r in Oficio Clei Pell &c.
Mr. Dryden 75_l_.

It will be seen from this that independently of the appointment of the laureateship, Dryden had in or before the year 1679 received an additional pension of L100 a year. Confirmatory of this is a Treasury order for the quarter of the same pension, due January 5th, 1679, and a secret service payment of the same year, apparently referring to the same pension. Moreover, on December 17th, 1683, Dryden was appointed collector of customs in the port of London. The value of this is unknown, but the sum of L5 for collecting the duties on cloth, which is the only part of the emoluments as to which there is documentary evidence, must have been a very small part of it. Now these two appointments, the laureateship and the collectorship, were by letters-patent, and were, in the usual course, confirmed on the accession of the new Sovereign, though James characteristically cut out the butt of sack. But the extra pension, which was merely granted by letters of privy seal, lapsed, and it was absolutely within the discretion of the new Sovereign to continue or discontinue it. It was not formally regranted for a year, and this pension was mistaken by Macaulay for an original one granted in payment of apostasy. That the difference is very considerable must strike every one, and I for one cannot see that the drawing of the obvious inference can be called sophistry. If the time between the lapsing and the regranting seems long, it has to be observed, first, that arrears to the date of the lapse are carefully specified; secondly, that even in the case of the laureateship patent, four whole months, as has been seen, elapsed between the instruction for it and the patent itself. The circumstances are, of course, consistent with the supposition that apostasy was made a condition of the renewal; but they cannot be said to supply of themselves any argument in favour of such a supposition.--ED.] _

Read next: SECTION VI

Read previous: SECTION IV

Table of content of Dramatic Works of John Dryden Volume 1


GO TO TOP OF SCREEN

Post your review
Your review will be placed after the table of content of this book