WORKS OF JOHN DRYDEN
JOHN DRYDEN
POETICAL WORKS
OF
JOHN DRYDEN.
With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes.
VOL. II.
M. DCCC. LV.
CRITICAL ESTIMATE
OF THE
GENIUS AND POETICAL WORKS OF JOHN DRYDEN.
In our Life of Dryden we promised to say something about the question,
how far is a poet, particularly in the moral tendency and taste of his
writings, to be tried--and either condemned or justified--by the
character and spirit of his age? To a rapid consideration of this
question we now proceed, before examining the constituent elements or
the varied fruits of the poet's genius.
And here, unquestionably, there are extremes, which every critic should
avoid. Some imagine that a writer of a former century should be tried,
either by the standard which prevails in the cultured and civilised
nineteenth, or by the exposition of moral principles and practice which
is to be found in the Scriptures. Now, it is obviously, so far as taste
is concerned, as unjust to judge a book written in the style and manner
of one age by the merely arbitrary and conventional rules established in
another, as to judge the dress of our ancestors by the fashions of the
present day. And in respect of morality, it is as unfair to visit with
the same measure of condemnation offences against decorum or decency,
committed by writers living before or living after the promulgation of
the Christian code, as it would be to class the Satyrs, Priapi, and
Bacchantes of an antique sculptor, with their imitations, by inferior
and coarser artists, in later times. There must be a certain measure of
allowance made for the errors of Genius when it was working as the
galley-slave of its tradition and period, and when it had not yet
received the Divine Light which, shining into the world from above, has
supplied men with higher ęsthetic as well as spiritual models of
principles, and revealed man's body to be the temple of the Holy Ghost.
To look for our modern philanthropy in that "Greek Gazette," the Iliad
of Homer--to expect that reverence for the Supreme Being which the Bible
has taught us in the Metamorphoses of Ovid--or to seek that refinement
of manners and language which has only of late prevailed amongst us, in
the plays of Aristophanes and Plautus--were very foolish and very vain.
In ages not so ancient, and which have revolved since the dawn of
Christianity, a certain coarseness of thought and language has been
prevalent; and for it still larger allowance should be made, because it
has been applied to simplicity rather than to sensuality--to rustic
barbarism, not to civilised corruption--and carries along with it a
rough raciness, and a reference to the sturdy aboriginal beast--just as
acorns in the trough suggest the immemorial forests where they grew, and
the rich greenswards on which they fell.
In two cases, it thus appears, should the severest censor be prepared to
modify his condemnation of the bad taste or the impurity to be found in
writers of genius--first, in that of a civilization, perfect in its
kind, but destitute of the refining and sublimating element which a
revelation only can supply; and, secondly, in that of those ages in
which the lights of knowledge and religion are contending with the gloom
of barbarian rudeness. Perhaps there are still two other cases capable
of palliation--that of a mind so constituted as to be nothing, if not a
mirror of its age, and faithfully and irresistibly reflecting even its
vices and pollutions; or that of a mind morbidly in love with the
morbidities and the vile passages of human nature. But suppose the case
of a writer, sitting under the full blaze of Gospel truth, professedly a
believer in the Gospel, and intimately acquainted with its oracles,
living in a late and dissipated, not a rude and simple age--possessed of
varied and splendid talents, which qualified him to make as well as to
mirror, and with a taste naturally sound and manly, who should yet seek
to shock the feelings of the pious, to gratify the low tendencies, and
fire to frenzy the evil passions of his period--he is not to be shielded
by the apology that he has only conformed to the bad age on which he was
so unfortunate as to fall. Prejudice may, indeed, put in such a plea in
his defence; but the inevitable eye of common sense, distinguishing
between necessity and choice, between coarseness and corruption, between
a man's passively yielding to and actively inviting and encouraging the
currents of false taste and immorality which he must encounter, will
find that plea nugatory, and bring in against the author a verdict of
guilty.
Now this, we fear, is exactly the case of Dryden. He was neither a
"barbarian" nor a "Scythian." He was a conscious artist, not a high
though helpless reflector of his age. He had not, we think, like his
relative, Swift, originally any diseased delight in filth for its own
sake; was not--shall we say?--a natural, but an artificial _Yahoo_. He
wielded a power over the public mind, approaching the absolute, and
which he could have turned to virtuous, instead of vicious account--at
first, it might have been amidst considerable resistance and obloquy,
but ultimately with triumphant success. This, however, he never
attempted, and must therefore be classed, in this respect, with such
writers as Byron, whose powers gilded their pollutions, less than their
pollutions degraded and defiled their powers; nay, perhaps he should be
ranked even lower than the noble bard, whose obscenities are not so
gross, and who had, besides, to account for them the double palliations
of passion and of despair.
In these remarks we refer principally to Dryden's plays; for his poems,
as we remarked in the Life, are (with the exception of a few of the
Prologues, which we print under protest) in a great measure free from
impurity. We pass gladly to consider him in his genius and his poetical
works. The most obvious, and among the most remarkable characteristics
of his poetic style, are its wondrous elasticity and ease of movement.
There is never for an instant any real or apparent effort, any
straining for effect, any of that "double, double, toil and trouble," by
which many even of the weird cauldrons in which Genius forms her
creations are disturbed and bedimmed. That power of doing everything
with perfect and _conscious_ ease, which Dugald Stewart has ascribed to
Barrow and to Horsley in prose, distinguished Dryden in poetry. Whether
he discusses the deep questions of fate and foreknowledge in "Religio
Laici," or lashes Shaftesbury in the "Medal," or pours a torrent of
contempt on Shadwell in "MacFlecknoe," or describes the fire of London
in the "Annus Mirabilis," or soars into lyric enthusiasm in his "Ode on
the Death of Mrs Killigrew," and "Alexander's Feast," or paints a
tournament in "Palamon and Arcite," or a fairy dance in the "Flower and
the Leaf,"--he is always at home, and always aware that he is. His
consciousness of his own powers amounts to exultation. He is like the
steed who glories in that tremendous gallop which affects the spectator
with fear. Indeed, we never can separate our conception of Dryden's
vigorous and vaulting style from the image of a noble horse, devouring
the dust of the field, clearing obstacles at a bound, taking up long
leagues as a little thing, and the very strength and speed of whose
motion give it at a distance the appearance of smoothness. Pope speaks
of his
"Long resounding march, and energy divine."
Perhaps "_ease_ divine" had been words more characteristic of that
almost superhuman power of language by which he makes the most obstinate
materials pliant, melts down difficulties as if by the touch of magic,
and, to resume the former figure, comes into the goal without a hair
turned on his mane, or a single sweat-drop confessing effort or
extraordinary exertion. We know no poet since Homer who can be compared
to Dryden in this respect, except Scott, who occasionally, in "Marmion,"
and the "Lay of the Last Minstrel," exhibits the same impetuous ease and
fiery fluent movement. Scott does not, however, in general, carry the
same weight as the other; and the species of verse he uses, in
comparison to the heroic rhyme of Dryden, gives you often the impression
of a hard trot, rather than of a "long-resounding" and magnificent
gallop. Scott exhibits in his poetry the soul of a warrior; but it is of
a warrior of the Border--somewhat savage and coarse. Dryden can, for the
nonce at least, assume the appearance, and display the spirit, of a
knight of ancient chivalry--gallant, accomplished, elegant, and gay.
Next to this poet's astonishing ease, spirit, and elastic vigour, may be
ranked his clear, sharp intellect. He may be called more a logician than
a poet. He reasons often, and always acutely, and his rhyme, instead of
shackling, strengthens the movement of his argumentation. Parts of his
"Religio Laici" and the "Hind and Panther" resemble portions of Duns
Scotus or Aquinas set on fire. Indeed, keen, strong intellect, inflamed
with passion, and inspirited by that "ardour and impetuosity of mind"
which Wordsworth is compelled to allow to him, rather than creative or
original genius, is the differentia of Dryden. We have compared him to a
courser, but he was not one of those coursers of Achilles, who fed on no
earthly food, but on the golden barley of heaven, having sprung from the
gods--
[Greek: Xanthon kai Balion, to ama pnoiaesi, petesthaen.
Tous eteke Zephuro anemo Arpua Podargae.]
Dryden resembled rather the mortal steed which was yoked with these
immortal twain, the brood of Zephyr and the Harpy Podarga; only we can
hardly say of the poet what Homer says of Pedasus--
[Greek: Os kai thnaetos eon, epeth ippois athanatoisi.]
He was _not_, although a mortal, able to keep up
