317 318 In this volume are interspersed some short original poems', which, with his prologues, epilogues, and songs, may be comprised in Congreve's remark, that even those, if he had written nothing else, would have entitled him to the praise of excellence in his kind2. One composition must however be distinguished. The ode for St. Cecilia's Day3, perhaps the last effort of his poetry, has been always considered as exhibiting the highest flight of fancy and the exactest nicety of art. This is allowed to stand without a rival. If indeed there is any excellence beyond it in some other of Dryden's works that excellence must be found. Compared with the Ode on Killigrew it may be pronounced perhaps superior in the whole; but without any single part equal to the first stanza of the other. 319 It is said to have cost Dryden a fortnight's labour; but it does not want its negligences: some of the lines are without corre 6 2 What he has done in any one species [of writting] would have been sufficient to have acquired him a great name. If he had written nothing but his prefaces, or nothing but his songs, or his prologues, each of them would have entitled him to the preference and distinction of excelling in his kind.' CONGREVE, Dryden's Works, ii. 20. For his prologues see Boswell's Johnson, ii. 325. 3 The second ode-Alexander's Feast. It was not 'the last effort of Dryden's poetry,' for it was written nearly three years before his death. Ante, DRYDEN, 150n. His last efforts were the Prologue and Epilogue to Vanbrugh's revised version of Fletcher's comedy, The Pilgrim. These were written, according to Malone (i. 335), 'not above three weeks before his death.' To it also he supplied a song and a Secular Masque. Works, viii. 481, 489, 502. I am glad to hear from all hands,' wrote Dryden, 'that my Ode is esteemed the best of all my poetry by all the town. I thought so myself when I writ it; but being old, I mistrusted my own judgment.' Works, xviii. 139. The Irish Chief Justice Marlay (father of Bishop Marlay, Boswell's Johnson, iv. 73), frequenting Will's as a Templar, 'congratulated Dryden on having produced the noblest Ode that had ever been written in any language. "You are right, young gentleman," he replied; "a nobler Ode never was produced, nor ever will."' Malone's Dryden, i. 476. It 'This Ode has been more applauded perhaps than it has been felt.' GOLDSMITH, Works, iii. 436. is said that he wrote it with a view to its being set by Purcell, but that Purcell declined the task, as thinking it beyond the power of music.' Purcell had died nearly two years earlier. Hawkins's Hist. of Music, iv. 522. Hawkins adds that' Dryden knew little about music.' lb. i. 167 n. Perhaps his authority was the line of a ballad addressed to Bayes, quoted by Malone (i. 517):— "Though thy dull ear be to music untrue.' Malone says that 'in 1736 Handel set the Ode anew.' Ib. i. 307. 5 Ante, DRYDEN, 278. spondent rhymes: a defect, which I never detected but after an acquaintance of many years, and which the enthusiasm of the writer might hinder him from perceiving. His last stanza has less emotion than the former; but is not 320 less elegant in the diction. The conclusion is vicious; the musick of Timotheus, which raised a mortal to the skies,' had only a metaphorical power; that of Cecilia, which 'drew an angel down,' had a real effect; the crown therefore could not reasonably be divided". 3 IN a general survey of Dryden's labours 3 he appears to have 321 had a mind very comprehensive by nature, and much enriched with acquired knowledge. His compositions are the effects of a vigorous genius operating upon large materials. The power that predominated in his intellectual operations was 322 rather strong reason than quick sensibility. Upon all occasions that were presented he studied rather than felt, and produced sentiments not such as Nature enforces, but meditation supplies. With the simple and elemental passions, as they spring separate in the mind, he seems not much acquainted, and seldom describes them but as they are complicated by the various relations of society and confused in the tumults and agitations of life *. 'Happy, happy, happy pair! None but the brave, None but the brave, None but the brave deserves the fair.' See also 11. 75-9, 116-20. A writer in N. & Q. 4 S. i. 239 maintains that in these cases,' though the words are repeated thrice, they are in reality only the first half of the line. Just as well might the members of a congregation complain that in the well-known "Oh my poor pol, Oh my poor polluted soul!" there was no rhyme to "pol." There are too many faulty rhymes, -'son' and 'throne,' 'Jove' and 'above,' 'God' and 'rode,' 'good' and blood,' 'need' and 'fed,' 'move' and 'love,' 'rear' and 'hair,' 'high' and ‘joy,’ ́abodes' and 'gods.' 2 Ante, DRYDEN, 280. Johnson finds the same fault in Pope's Ode. Post, POPE, 326. In reviewing Warton's Essay on Pope, he writes:-'The author observes very justly that the Odes, both of Dryden and Pope, conclude unsuitably and unnaturally with epigram.' Johnson's Works, vi. 41. See Warton's Essay, i. 60. 'St. Cecilia's music-book is interlined with epigrams, and Alexander's Feast smells of gin at second-hand, with true Briton fiddlers full of native talent in the orchestra.' LANDOR, Imag. Conv. iv. 275. 3In drawing Dryden's character, Johnson has given, though I suppose unintentionally, some touches of his own.' Boswell's Johnson, iv. 45. See also ante, DRYDEN, 211; post, POPE, 310. * 'Ses ouvrages sont pleins de détails naturels à la fois, et brillans, animés, vigoureux, hardis, passionnés, mérite qu'aucun poète de sa nation 323 What he says of love may contribute to the explanation of his character: 'Love various minds does variously inspire; With pride it mounts, or [and] with revenge it glows'.' 324 Dryden's was not one of the' gentle bosoms': Love, as it subsists in itself, with no tendency but to the person loved and wishing only for correspondent kindness, such love as shuts out all other interest, the Love of the Golden Age, was too soft and subtle to put his faculties in motion. He hardly conceived it but in its turbulent effervescence with some other desires: when it was inflamed by rivalry or obstructed by difficulties; when it invigorated ambition or exasperated revenge. 325 He is therefore, with all his variety of excellence, not often pathetick2; and had so little sensibility of the power of effusions purely natural that he did not esteem them in others. Simplicity gave him no pleasure; and for the first part of his life he looked on Otway with contempt 3, though at last, indeed very late, he confessed that in his play 'there was Nature, which is the chief beauty".' 326 We do not always know our own motives. I am not certain whether it was not rather the difficulty which he found in exhibiting the genuine operations of the heart than a servile submission to an injudicious audience that filled his plays with false magnificence. It was necessary to fix attention; and the mind can be n'égale, et qu'aucun ancien n'a surpassé.' VOLTAIRE, Œuvres, xviii. 273. 'From Tyrannic Love, act 11. sc. 3. Works, iii. 407. 2 Landor wrote of him:-'Tho' never tender nor sublime, He wrestles with and conquers Time.' Poems, &c. ii. 180. 'He never aimed at any high mark. His good sense prevented him from overvaluing himself, and aspiring to become eminent either as a sublime or a pathetic poet.' SOUTHEY, Cowper's Works, ii. 138. 3 Dryden commonly expressed a very mean, if not contemptible opinion, of Otway.' GILDON, The Laws of Poetry, 1721, p. 211. Nature is there, which is the greatest beauty.' A Parallel of Poetry and Painting (1695), Works, xvii. 326; ante, OTWAY, 15. 5 In the Dedication of The Spanish Friar (1681, ante, DRYDEN, 66) he writes:-'I scorn as much to take it [reputation] from half-witted judges as I should to raise an estate by cheating of bubbles. Neither do I discommend the lofty style in tragedy, which is naturally pompous and magnificent; but nothing is truly sublime that is not just and proper.' Works, vi. 407. See ante, DRYDEN, 45; post, 334. captivated only by recollection or by curiosity; by reviving natural sentiments or impressing new appearances of things: sentences were readier at his call than images; he could more easily fill the ear with some splendid novelty than awaken those ideas that slumber in the heart. The favourite exercise of his mind was ratiocination'; and, 327 that argument might not be too soon at an end, he delighted to talk of liberty and necessity, destiny and contingence; these he discusses in the language of the school with so much profundity that the terms which he uses are not always understood. It is indeed learning, but learning out of place. When once he had engaged himself in disputation, thoughts 328 flowed in on either side: he was now no longer at a loss; he had always objections and solutions at command: 'verbaque provisam rem 2'-give him matter for his verse, and he finds without difficulty verse for his matter 3. In comedy, for which he professes himself not naturally quali- 329 fied, the mirth which he excites will perhaps not be found so much to arise from any original humour or peculiarity of character nicely distinguished and diligently pursued, as from incidents and circumstances, artifices and surprises; from jests of action rather than of sentiment 5. What he had of humorous or 1 Ante, DRYDEN, 125; post, 356; BLACKMORE, 46. A friend of Scott's, urging him not to neglect the law, wrote:-'The reasoning talents visible in Dryden's verses assure me that he would have ruled in Westminster Hall as easily as he did at Button's [Will's].' Lockhart's Scott, ii. 41. 2 'Verbaque provisam rem non invita sequentur.' HORACE, Ars Poet. 1. 311. 3 'Whatever he does, whether he reasons, relates or describes, he is never, to use his own phrase, "cursedly confined" [Absalom and Achitophel, 1. 4]; never loiters about a single thought or image, or seems to labour about the turn of a phrase.... His thoughts, his language, his versification, have all a certain animation and elasticity which no one else has ever equally possessed.' Hallam, Edin. Review, vol. xiii. p. 132. 4 Ante, DRYDEN, 12, 91, 264. 'I never thought myself very fit for an employment, where many of my predecessors have excelled me in all kinds [of plays]; and some of my contemporaries, even in my own partial judgment, have out-done me in comedy. Works, v. 195. 'If Shadwell was preferred to Dryden, it was not for his rhymes but his comedies; and perhaps the public were not wrong.' HALLAM, Edin. Review, vol. xiii. p. 135. 'I am not at all happy when I peruse some of Dryden's comedies: they are very stupid as well as indelicate; sometimes, however, there is a considerable vein of liveliness and humour, and all of them present extraordinary pictures of the age in which he lived.' SCOTT, Lockhart's Scott, ii. 283. 5 PARTHENOPE. Give you good ev'n, Sir. Exit. VOLSCIUS. O inauspicious stars! that I was born 330 passionate, he seems to have had not from nature, but from other poets; if not always as a plagiary, at least as an imitator'. Next to argument, his delight was in wild and daring sallies of sentiment, in the irregular and excentrick violence of wit 2. He delighted to tread upon the brink of meaning, where light and darkness begin to mingle; to approach the precipice of absurdity, and hover over the abyss of unideal vacancy 3. This inclination sometimes produced nonsense, which he knew, as 'Move swiftly, sun, and fly a lover's pace, Leave weeks and months behind thee in thy race". 'Amariel flies... To guard thee from the demons of the air; My flaming sword above them to display, All keen, and ground upon the edge of day". And sometimes it issued in absurdities, of which perhaps he was not conscious: 'Then we upon our orb's last verge shall go, And see the ocean leaning on the sky; From thence our rolling neighbours we shall know, To sudden love, and to more sud- Exeunt, laughing. So. BAYES. Why did you not observe? He first resolves to go out of town; and then, as he is pulling on his boots, falls in love. Ha! ha! ha! SMITH. O, I did not observe; that, indeed, is a very good jest.' The Rehearsal, p. 85. 1 Ante, DRYDEN, 103, 229. 3 And he who servilely creeps after sense Is safe, but ne'er will reach an excellence.' In the Preface he explains this as meaning: He who creeps after plain, dull, common sense is safe from committing absurdities; but can never reach any height or excellence of wit; and sure I could not mean that any excellence were to be found in nonsense.' Works, iii. 381, 383. 'Very near that precipitous border line [of the sublime and the ridiculous] there is a charmed region, where, if the statelier growths of philosophy die out and disappear, the flowers of poetry next the very edge of the chasm have a peculiar and mysterious beauty.' O. W. HOLMES, Life of Emerson, 1885, p. 398. Ante, DRYDEN, 58. 4 Dryden writes in the Prologue to Tyrannic Love :— Poets, like lovers, should be bold and dare, They spoil their business with an 5 Tyrannic Love, iv. 1, Works, iii. 425. Annus Mirabilis, stanza 164, Works, ix. 151. Ante, DRYDEN, 257 n. |