BOOKS.

THE POETICAL WORKS OF JOHN DRYDEN.* THE high rank of Dryden in our literature has been acknowledged for more than a century and a half, and although the chief poets of modern days belong to another and nobler school of poetry, they have not failed in doing homage to his claims as a great English classic. Neither has the public been insensible to his merits, and within the last twenty years the publication of six or seven new editions of his works proves that, despite the fecun- dity of modern literature, Dryden has still many admirers and readers.

There are few poets more deserving of such a recognition than "glorious John." With all his faults, and they are legion, the praise he won in his life-time is still his due. We cannot, indeed, accept Sir Walter Scott's eulogistic statement that Dryden's place in our poetical Walhalla is next to that of Shakespeare and Milton ; but this, at least, may be said of him, that with the exception of Pope—and the exception is doubtful — he is the greatest satirist in verse this country has produced ; that he was a masterly writer of idiomatic prose, when his contemporaries wrote for the most part in a crude, fantastic, or pedantic style ; that he is a fine critic, and shows a generous appreciation of all literary excellence, and that as a man of letters, considering the variety of his resources, the readiness of his wit, the abundant vigour of his intellect, he was the most con- spicuous figure, although not the greatest poet, of his time. Milton in his old age dwelt apart and comparatively unheeded by the world, but Dryden, who depended for his bread upon imme- diate popularity, and whose chief endeavours, as he himself declared, were to delight the age in which be lived, strove in a variety of ways to attract the attention of the town, and succeeded in the effort. Many of his defects and some of his most grievous errors may be traced to this cause. It is said by Mr. Christie, but, we think, without sufficient proof, that Dryden was a notor- ious libertine ; it is certain that he was one of the coarsest writers of a coarse age. Some of his plays rank with the grossest in the language, and the most indecent of them is stated to have been even worse as exhibited upon the stage than in the published copy.

"His first plays," writes Mr. Christie, "pandered to low tastes

• The Poetical Works of John Dryden. The Globe Edition. Edited, with a Memoir, Revised Text, and Notes, by W. D. Christie, MA, London : Macmillan and Co, 1870,

by coarse language and indecent ideas ; and in this respect Dryden continued as he began, showing not only in his comedies, but in other works, as in Translations, and even in his latest Fables from Chaucer and Boccacio, a prurient love of the indecent, which is a blot on his character and tarnishes his fame." This is perfectly true, and if, as seems probable, the poet married the daughter of an Earl from mercenary motives, despite the knowledge of her lapse from virtue, it speaks badly for his moral sensitiveness. Then, again, it cannot be denied that Dryden outbid all his contempor- aries in the fulsomeness of his flattery, and in the facility with which he changed the idols of his worship. All the world knows how he lauded the "immortal memory" of Oliver Cromwell in 1658, and bepraised Charles U. three years afterwards as the saviour of the country, who had brought to it from milder heavens

"Virtues unknown to these rough northern climes."

For members of the Royal family and of the nobility he had always the most absurd flattery at command. Thus, he tells the Duchess of York that she is the most perfect work of Heaven, and above all mortal wishes ; thus, he declares of a poor versemaker, but a wealthy nobleman, that the Muses' empire is restored by Ros- comon's pen ; thus, he praises Lady Castlemaine, the mistress of Charles, as if she were a woman of exalted virtue, who had no foes save the men and women who disliked her goodness. It has been said that a fault like this should be credited to the age rather than to the poet, and that the nonsense perpetrated in the dedications written by the poetasters who were his contemporaries, and a little later by the choicest wits of the so-called Augustan age, mitigates the offence of which Dryden was guilty. The late Mr. Bell, for instance, declares, in his interesting memoir, that "the dedication, with its preposterous tropes of bombastic flattery, was as unIch a part of the manners of the day as the Chadrenx periwig or the laced steinkirk," and that "if Dryden went beyond all his contemporaries in that respect, as he unquestionably did, it was simply because he could not help going beyond them in every- thing." If we allow any weight to this argument, and if we accept a similar plea for the impurity of his dramas, which he was himself frank enough to own and to deplore, it is but an acknowledg- ment that Dryden's greatness as a poet did not exempt him from the low aims and mean vices of inferior men. His change of reli- gion is another charge against Dryden, not lightly to be passed over, and if his conversion to the Roman Catholic faith were . thoroughly sincere, it is unfortunate for the poet's good name that it chanced to be for his worldly advantage. It is yet more unfor- tunate that we know of no instance in which Dryden sacrificed his interest for the sake of his principles. On the point of Dryden's conversion, Mr. Christie differs from Sir Walter Scott, Mr. Bell, and the Rev. Richard Hooper, and agrees in the main with the scornful judgment of Lord Macaulay :-

"It is said," he writes, "that Dryden's thorough single-mindedness is proved by his carrying all his sons with him into the Roman Catholic Church, and by his firm adherence to his religion after the Revolution, when it was an insuperable bar to preferment and royal favour. That Dryden's three sons, varying in age from twenty to sixteen, should have followed their father in his change of religion seems natural and likely ; and it is, at any rate, difficult to understand how, if worldly advantage were any part of Dryden's motives, that would have made him less zealous to convert his children. As to his not recanting, two years hence, after all ho had written in the short interval in defence and propa- gation of the creed which at the mature age of fifty-four he had adopted, when his new religion brought loss and injury instead of favour and gain, that can only show that he was not entirely callous to the world's opinion and dead to decency; and it is hard to believe that a reconver- sion under such circumstances could have benefited Dryden, or procured for him anything but scorn from William and his government."

Mr. Christie, by the way, points out that there is no ground for the statement made by Scott, and by more recent biographers, that before her husband's change of faith Dryden's wife was a Roman Catholic. That Scott does not give his authority is certain, but it is equally certain he was not a man to make rash statements. It is curious, however, to note how many assertions have been made by Dryden's biographers, from Derrick downwards, which it would be difficult thoroughly to substantiate. The truth is that the biographer of Dryden, having comparatively few facts to relate, is compelled to have recourse to conjectures, and in some cases the surmises of one writer have been accepted as substantial truths by another.

Although the "famous poet," as Evelyn calls him, was for forty years. the most conspicuous man of letters in London, and gained as many enemies as friends, although the wits of the town were perpetually assailing him and receiving hard blows in return, although he numbered among his intimate acquaintances the first writers and statesmen of his time, and grew daily in reputation up to a serene old age. it is remarkable how little we know with cer-

Minty about him. When Dr. Johnson wrote his Life of Dryden he complained that while his contemporaries reverenced his genius, they neglected: to write his biography, and that "nothing therefore can be known beyond what casual mention and uncertain tradition have supplied." Additional knowledge of the poet has been gained since that day, thanks to the investigations of Malone and others ; but in spite of all this, as Mr. Christie truly says, "the deficiency of information as to the life of one famous so long before his death is still remarkable, and the names, and dates, and order of his publications make a large portion of his biography."

There is much of literary interest in the connection between Dryden and the Queen Anne men. In early life Dryden had visited Milton, who, according to tradition, considered him a good rhymist, but no poet. In later life Dryden had himself told his cousin, Jonathan Swift, that he would never be a poet, to the bating mortification of that wonderful writer. In his old age, again, it is said that Dryden was allured from a temperate life by that exemplary Christian, Joseph Addison, who lauded him in flattering lines, which sound in these days marvelously like ridicule, when he sings of the great poet's "sacred lays," and asks, no doubt for the sake of the rhyme, how long they shall "Provoke our wonder and transcend our praise."

Pope, who was sixteen years younger than Addison, was taken, or went of his own accord, before he was twelve years old to see Dryden as he sat in his accustomed armchair at Will's coffee-house. " Virgilium tantum vidi," he said afterwards, and he showed his admiration of Dryden by acknowledging him as his poetical master. In the careers of the two poets there are many points of similarity. It would be hard to say which deserves the more enduring fame, or which, considering the difference of circum- stances, has sinned most against society. Dryden probably was the greater poet, and he showed, upon the whole, greater reck- lessness as a satirist ; but Pope's exquisite literary finish is at least as remarkable as the carelessness of his predecessor, and much may be forgiven to the man of robust constitution and naturally coarse tastes, which is less pardonable in a feeble and finical valetudinarian, whose life was one long disease. Both poets had a swarm of enemies, whose attacks they provoked, and by whom they were continually assailed ; both were guilty of mean acts, yet it would be hard to say that they were mean men ; both made their foes ridiculous, and immortalized their folly. If Dryden slew his Shadwells, Blackmores, and Settles, and vented his scorn upon Shaftesbury, Pope with equal power held up to laughter Theobald and Cibber, Dennis and Lord Hervey. Both again had a low idea of female character, both flattered the great men of the

day in their poems, letters, or dedications ; yet neither of them was lacking in self-respect or disposed to servility, both quarrelled with their publishers, and both showed their bad taste and ill-feeling by satirizing men and women with whom previously they had been on terms of intimacy and friendship. Then, again, it may be noted that these poets were in their own day in equal repute as translators, that both were Roman Catholics, and that if one of them suffered under a violent chastisement from cowardly foes, the other was accused of having endured a similar castiga- tion, and was forced to deny the scandal in the newspapers. There can be no question that both were under considerable obligations to French literature, but it is difficult to say how far they were injured or benefited by the study. The biographers and critics of the poets differ considerably upon this point. "Dryden's practical knowledge of English," said Horne Tooke, "was be- yond all others exquisite and wonderful." Johnson remarked that we owed to him the refinement of our language, and Mr. Lowell, the American poet, in an elaborate and suggestive essay, calls him "the most English of our poets," an assertion which had been previously made by Mr. Bell, who adds that he is as emphatically "Saxon as Pope is conspicuously French."

Hallam considers that Dryden, "a master of the English lan- guage," formed his style on Montaigne, Balzac, and Voiture, and must be reckoned above all the three ; and adds that his prose compositions were superior as regards style to any England had seen, evidently meaning that if he gained help from French authors and surpassed them, it was not bt sacrificing the purity of his English. Mr. Ward, on the contrary, in his recent memoir of Pope, asserts that foreign literary models had been thoughtlessly adopted by Dryden, and that his successor was less immediately under the influence of French models. We shall not attempt to settle a question so difficult. It is never safe to pronounce how much or how little a man of genius has appropriated from others ; but it is evident, we think, even to the cursory reader, that

although Pope had the advantage of being trained in Dryden's G:eelit, and Co. 1870.

school, his style is less idiomatic, just as his rhythm is less musical than that of his great master. The points of contrast and simi- larity between the genius of the two poets were finely noted by Dr. Johnson in the last century, and by Hazlitt in our own.

The contrast between the genius of Dryden and that of Pope is perhaps more strongly marked than the points of resemblance to which we have alluded ; but Mr. Lowell surely exaggerates when he says that no two natures were ever much more unlike. In one respect, at least, Dryden is leas fortunate than Pope. With the exception of the Pastorals, and of a few other early pieces, the Twickenham poet has left nothing the world can afford to let die. Dryden, whose poetical wealth was probably greater, has scattered it with too lavish a hand ; and there are several of his poems, to say nothing of his dramas, which are read only by students of poetry, and would not be read by them were it not for the great name of the author.

Mr. Christie- in this latest and beat edition of Dryden's poems devotes a considerable portion of his brief biography to an exami- nation of the plays and poetry. His criticism is almost always just and shows a thorough mastery of his subject, while his remarks on Dryden's moral character although severe, are not to be gain- said. There are few conspicuous men of letters about whom we know so little and yet know so much that is unworthy, but it must be remembered to the poet's credit that he was no hypocrite, that he never denied the faults of which he had been guilty, and that in his old age he more than once expressed his remorse, and wished that what had been done could be undone. It is impossible to write unkindly of a man who has given us so much pleasure. We like to think of him in his arm-chair at the coffee-house by the open window in summer time, or the fire-side in winter ; we like to think of him in his old age as the generous admirer of men who, like Congreve and Addison, were winning their first laurels ; we like to remember him as the writer of the earliest criticism worthy of the name this country has produced, and of poems which, notwith- standing manifold changes in literature and in life, have the fresh dew of the morning upon them still.

Mr. Ohristie deserves our thanks for drawing attention once more to an old favourite and a masterly writer of English. If his memoir of Dryden be less freshly written than that of the late Mr. Robert Bell, it is, we think, more judicious and impartial, and both the narrative and the criticism, the one admirably succinct, the other generous and appreciative, are well adapted to a popular edition of the poet. We should add that the text of the "Globe" Dryden has been carefully corrected and purified, and that most of the corrections made are mentioned in the notes.