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His modesty was by no means inconsistent with ostentatiousness: he is diligent enough to remind the world of his merit, and expresses with very little scruple his high opinion of his own powers; but his self-commendations' are read without scorn or indignation: we allow his claims, and love his frankness 2. 163 Tradition, however, has not allowed that his confidence in himself exempted him from jealousy of others 3. He is accused of envy and insidiousness; and is particularly charged with inciting Creech to translate Horace, that he might lose the reputation which Lucretius had given him*.

164 Of this charge we immediately discover that it is merely conjectural: the purpose was such as no man would confess; and a crime that admits no proof, why should we believe?

165

166

He has been described as magisterially presiding over the younger writers, and assuming the distribution of poetical fame; but he who excels has a right to teach, and he whose judgement is incontestable may, without usurpation, examine and decide 3. Congreve represents him as ready to advise and instruct; but there is reason to believe that his communication was rather

I Ante, DRYDEN, 102.
2 Post, DRYDEN, 214.

3 BAYES. I despise your Jonson and Beaumont, that borrowed all they writ from Nature; I am for fetching it purely out of my own fancy.'

'SMITH. But what think you of Sir John Suckling, Sir?

'BAYES. By gad, I am a better poet than he.' The Rehearsal, p. 51.

'Even Dryden,' said Jacob Tonson, 'was very suspicious of rivals. He would compliment Crowne, when a play of his failed, but was cold to him if he met with success. He used sometimes to own that Crowne had some genius; but then added that his father and Crowne's mother were very well acquainted.' Spence's Anec. p. 45.

For a comedy, by John Crowne, ' acted at Court by the ladies only,' in 1674, see Evelyn's Diary, ii. 100.

* Malone (i. 506) traces this slander to Tom Brown's Reasons of Mr. Bayes's changing his Religion, Part ii. 53 (ante, DRYDEN, 128; quoted in the Works, viii. 223 n.). To a reprint of Creech's Lucretius had been

prefixed some anonymous recommendatory verses, assigned by Wood (Ath. Oxon. iv. 739) to Dryden among other writers. Lines so poor could not have been by him. For them see Works, xviii. 323; N. & Q. 6 S. iv. 24. When Creech hanged himself (in June, 1700) 'the act was ascribed by some writers to the ill success of his Horace (published 16 years earlier); and it was insinuated that Dryden was ultimately the cause of his end.' His Horace had reached two editions. Creech, in the Preface, says to Dryden :-'You are ready to reach out a helping hand to all those who endeavour to climb that height where you are already seated.' For Dryden's praise of Creech see Works, viii. 223; xii. 296; xiv. 218, and for Creech see post, DRYDEN, 300.

5 Dennis wrote to him in 1694:'You with a breath can bestow or confirm reputation; a whole numberless people proclaims the praise which you give, and the judgments of three mighty kingdoms appear to depend upon yours.' depend upon yours.' Works, xviii. 114. See post, DRYDEN, 190.

useful than entertaining. He declares of himself that he was saturnine, and not one of those whose spritely sayings diverted company1; and one of his censurers makes him say,

'Nor wine nor love [Nor love nor wine] could ever see me gay; To writing bred, I knew not what to say?'

There are men whose powers operate only at leisure and in 167 retirement, and whose intellectual vigour deserts them in conversation; whom merriment confuses, and objection disconcerts; whose bashfulness restrains their exertion, and suffers them not to speak till the time of speaking is past; or whose attention to their own character makes them unwilling to utter at hazard what has not been considered, and cannot be recalled.

Of Dryden's sluggishness in conversation it is vain to search 168 or to guess the cause. He certainly wanted neither sentiments nor language; his intellectual treasures were great, though they were locked up from his own use. 'His thoughts,' when he wrote, 'flowed in upon him so fast, that his only care was which to chuse, and which to reject 3.' Such rapidity of composition naturally promises a flow of talk, yet we must be content to believe what an enemy says of him, when he likewise says it of himself. But whatever was his character as a companion, it appears that he lived in familiarity with the highest persons of his time. It is related by Carte of the duke of Ormond that he used often to pass a night with Dryden, and those with whom Dryden consorted*: who they were Carte has not told;

''My conversation is slow and dull, my humour saturnine and reserved; in short, I am none of those who endeavour to break jests in company or make repartees.' Works, ii. 297. 'That I admire not any comedy equally with tragedy is perhaps from the sullenness of my humour.' Ib. iii. 240. One sprightly saying of his' to his wife [I wish I were a book and then I should have more of your company.' 'Pray my dear, if you do become a book let it be an almanac, for then I shall change you every year'] related by Horace Walpole (Prior's Malone, p. 436), Mr. Saintsbury has found in a French work most of which was written before his marriage. Works, i. 382 n. For Pope's want of 'vivacity

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3 'Thoughts, such as they are, come crowding in so fast upon me that my only difficulty is to choose or to reject.' Works, xi. 213.

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4 Once in a quarter of a year he used to have the Marquis of Halifax, the Earls of Mulgrave, Dorset, and Danby, Mr. Dryden, and others of that set of men at supper, and then they were merry, and drank hard.' Carte's Life of Ormond, 1851, iv. 699.

Of Carte's Life of Ormond, Johnson said that 'two good volumes in duodecimo might be made out of the two in folio.' Boswell's Johnson, v. 296. It was reprinted in Oxford

but certainly the convivial table at which Ormond sat was not surrounded with a plebeian society. He was indeed reproached with boasting of his familiarity with the great; and Horace will support him in the opinion that to please superiors is not the lowest kind of merit1.

169 The merit of pleasing must, however, be estimated by the means. Favour is not always gained by good actions or laudable qualities. Caresses and preferments are often bestowed on the auxiliaries of vice, the procurers of pleasure, or the flatterers of vanity. Dryden has never been charged with any personal agency unworthy of a good character: he abetted vice and vanity only with his pen. One of his enemies has accused him of lewdness in his conversation 2; but if accusation without proof be credited, who shall be innocent 3?

170

171

His works afford too many examples of dissolute licentiousness and abject adulation; but they were probably, like his merriment, artificial and constrained-the effects of study and meditation, and his trade rather than his pleasure *.

Of the mind that can trade in corruption, and can deliberately pollute itself with ideal wickedness for the sake of spreading the contagion in society, I wish not to conceal or excuse the depravity. -Such degradation of the dignity of genius, such abuse of superlative abilities, cannot be contemplated but with grief and

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Gent. Mag. 1745, p. 99.

"I have frequently heard it offered in his favour that his necessities obliged him to a constancy of writing for the entertainment of the town, the taste of which was very much depraved.' JACOB, Poet. Register, i. 86.

Burnet (Hist. of my Own Time, i. 300) describes him as a monster of immodesty and of impurity of all sorts.' Lord Lansdowne, defending him, said: 'He was so much a stranger to immodesty that modesty in too great a degree was his failing. He was a man of regular life and conversation, as all his acquaintance can vouch.' Letter to the Author of the Reflexions Historical and Political, &c., p. 5, quoted in Biog. Brit. p. 1760. For Lansdowne's indecency in one of his plays see post, GRANVILLE, 10.

indignation. What consolation can be had Dryden has afforded, by living to repent, and to testify his repentance 2.

Of dramatick immorality he did not want examples among his 172 predecessors, or companions among his contemporaries 3; but in the meanness and servility of hyperbolical adulation I know not whether, since the days in which the Roman emperors were deified, he has been ever equalled, except by Afra Behn in an address to Eleanor Gwyn*. When once he has undertaken the task of praise he no longer retains shame in himself, nor supposes it in his patron 5. As many odoriferous bodies are observed to diffuse perfumes from year to year without sensible diminution of bulk or weight, he appears never to have impoverished his mint of flattery by his expences, however lavish. He had all forms of excellence, intellectual and moral, combined in his mind, with endless variation; and when he had scattered on the hero of the day the golden shower of wit and virtue, he had ready for him, whom he wished to court on the morrow, new wit and virtue with another stamp".

''Writers of great talents, who employ their parts in propagating immorality, and seasoning vicious sentiments with wit and humour, are to be looked upon as the pest of society and the enemies of mankind: they leave books behind them (as it is said of those who die in distempers which breed an ill will towards their own species) to scatter infection and destroy their posterity.' ADDISON, The Spectator, No. 166.

'Ogracious God! how far have we Profaned thy heavenly gift of poesy!

Made prostitute and profligate the
Muse,

Debased to each obscene and im-
pious use,

Whose harmony was first ordained above

For tongues of angels, and for hymns of love!'

Ode to Mrs. Killigrew, Works, xi. 107.

Dryden, after writing this, went on ‘debasing his Muse.' See also ib. xi. 231, and post, DRYDEN, 175, for his penitence in the Preface to his last work.

3 Evelyn wrote in 1666 (Diary, ii.

Of this kind of meanness

19) that he 'very seldom went to the
public theatres ... as they were
abused to an atheistical liberty;
foul and undecent women now (and
never till now) permitted to appear
and act.'

Cibber (Apology, p. 155), writing of the stage half a century later, says that ladies rarely came upon the first days of acting a new comedy but in masks, until they had been assured they might do it without the risk of an insult to their modesty.'

* Prefixed to The Feign'd Curtizans, 1679. Malone's Dryden, i. 2. 323. Pope in The Guardian, No. 4, attacks this prostitution of praise,' in dedications.

5' Burnet treats the Duke of Leeds severely; the Peerage [Collins, 1756, i. 252] vindicates him by a dedication of Dryden's [Works, v. 316], which one must allow is authority to such a book; for nothing can exceed the flattery of a genealogist but that of a dedicator.' HORACE WALPOLE, Works, i. 423.

6 Ante, DRYDEN, 88. set his genius to sale.' 270.

'Pope never
Post, POPE,

173

he never seems to decline the practice, or lament the necessity: he considers the great as entitled to encomiastick homage, and brings praise rather as a tribute than a gift, more delighted with the fertility of his invention than mortified by the prostitution of his judgement'. It is indeed not certain that on these occasions his judgement much rebelled against his interest. There are minds which easily sink into submission, that look on grandeur with undistinguishing reverence, and discover no defect where there is elevation of rank and affluence of riches.

With his praises of others and of himself is always intermingled a strain of discontent and lamentation, a sullen growl of resentment, or a querulous murmur of distress 2. His works are undervalued, his merit is unrewarded, and he has few thanks to pay his stars that he was born among Englishmen3. To his criticks he is sometimes contemptuous, sometimes resentful, and sometimes submissive. The writer who thinks his works formed for duration mistakes his interest when he mentions his enemies. He degrades his own dignity by shewing that he was affected by their censures, and gives lasting importance to names which, left to themselves, would vanish from remembrance. From this principle Dryden did not oft depart; his complaints are for the greater part general; he seldom pollutes his page

Burke pointed out to Malone that these extravagant panegyrics were the vice of the time, not of the man;... the contest being who should go farthest in the most graceful way.... Butler had well illustrated the principle on which they went, where he compares their endeavours to those of the archer who draws his arrow to the head whether his object be a swan or a goose [Hudibras, ii. 1. 630].' Prior's Malone, p. 251; Malone's Dryden, i. 2. 322. For instances of these panegyrics see ib. i. 245.

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opinion of the world. . . . For my comfort they are but Englishmen ; and as such if they think ill of me to-day, they are inconstant enough to think well of me to-morrow. And after all I have not much to thank my fortune that I was born amongst them.' Scott's Dryden, 1821, xi. 125.]

Boswell believed that Johnson only once in the whole course of his life condescended to oppose anything that was written against him.' Boswell's Johnson, i. 314. See also ib. ii. 61; v. 274; John. Misc. i. 270; John. Letters, ii. 148; post, ADDISON,

70.

5 I have seldom answered any scurrilous lampoon, when it was in my power to have exposed my enemies; and, being naturally vindicative, have suffered in silence, and possessed my soul in quiet.' Works, xiii. 83.

For pollutes see post, POPE,

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