Dryden's Excellences
John Dryden.. By David Nichol Smith. The Clark Lectures, 1948-.0. (Cambridge University Press. 7s. 6d.) THE study of English literature as a branch of learning has spread widely in recent years and must have produced many more students of Dryden than of old. For it is impossible to imagine how Milton could have been followed by Pope at an interval of less than fifty years without studying Dryden's verse and the admirably readable prefaces which he .prefixed to his plays and poems. But the real question is whether there are now more readers of Dryden than there used to be, since poets are meant to be read rather than studied. Study is the poet's own business, but his undertaking is to give pleasure, to which he may add instruction if he chooses. And so the question is: Who reads Dryden now ? And the answer would seem to be: Not many. The observance of the centenary of Wordsworth's death on April 23rd assumed the proportions of a national event. The 250th anniversary of the death of Dryden on May 1st passed almost entirely unnoticed, and this was not because it was overcast by the threat of Labour or Communist agitation on that day. It simply was that there were not enough to care.
But we ought to care, for glorious John was a 'great writer and a great critic, a critic so valuable indeed that it looks as though he and Mr. Bernard Shaw may be destined for the same fate, namely to be more famous-in the end for the prefaces to their works than for the works themselves. Yet no one could read Dryden's prefaces without wishing to read the works, and, if he did read them, he would find an unusually vigorous mind at work in producing most accomplished poems. But he ought to find more, if it were not for certain difficulties about Dryden. And one of these Dr. Nichol Smith is speaking of when he says, " We cannot easily ignore his historical setting," though he adds very wisely: " Some knowledge of history, however desirable or even unavoidable, takes us only a short distance ht the study of a poet, or a critic. It can never explain his quality or account for his pre-eminence." And so Dr. Nichol Smith has set himself, as far as he can within the limit
of four lectures, to give enough of the setting and enough apprecia- tion to enable the reader of Dryden to see a great deal in him.
No one was better qualifiethto do so. It was Dr. Nichol Smith's combination of knowledge and taste that made the Oxford Book of Eighteenth-Century Verse perhaps the best of that series for the double purpose of providing the student with specimens and the reader with a delightful anthology. And now he has given us a key to Dryden's excellences, and thereby an admirable preliminary to the eighteenth-century poets. This book tells us what Dryden was aiming at, what kinds of poetry he attempted—and they were many; kinds—and where his strength and weakness lie. You cannot ask
Previous page
