the reader is at least seldom left with the slightest doubt as to the poet's meaning. This remarkable clearness of diction and of construction Dryden owed primarily to his passion for logic and to his familiarity with French literature and criticism. He left it as a precious legacy to the writers who followed him, down to the rise of the romantic school. It would be wrong to say that Dryden alone made clearness the distinguishing virtue — frequently, to be sure, at the expense of higher qualities of all English poetry in the eighteenth century; but certainly he, as the teacher of Pope, deserves that praise more than any other one man. Clearness Dryden could teach to his successors; he could not impart to them his vigor and his rapidity. The former is seen at its best in Absalom and Achitophel and The Medal, where each phrase is like the stroke of a hammer; the latter is the greatest excellence of his translations from Ovid, Virgil, and Chaucer, and reaches its highest point in Alexander's Feast. At first, in the heroic plays, this resonant declamation and this animated narrative were apt to degenerate into bombast; later they became the unaffected, apparently simple utterance of Dryden in verse, just as his graceful, conversational style was in prose. Here, though we cannot point to any one poet as his model, Dryden showed himself a follower of the great Elizabethans, rather than the founder of the Augustan school. He was himself fully conscious of his power: "I pretend to po dictatorship among my fellow poets," he writes in his Dedication of the Æneis, “since, if I should instruct some of them to make well-running verses, they want genius to give them strength as well as sweetness" (page 512). Pope, by emphasizing the pause at the close of each line, and still more that at the close of the couplet, made his verse more fit for a succession of epigrams than for the full-mouthed invective and impetuous narrative of which Dryden was the master. Pope's poems are like a string of beads and Dryden's like a firm, well-twisted cord. Finally, Dryden's verse at its best, as in the opening lines of The Hind and the Panther, or the translation of the Eneis, has a rare musical quality. Accustomed to the elaborately varied verse forms of nineteenth-century poets, and to the incessantly changing harmonies of blank verse, modern readers do not always appreciate Dryden's consummate mastery of his own versification. Within the apparently narrow limits of the heroic couplet, he could subtly vary his style to suit his subject; he could, as he boasted, be "unpolished" and "rugged " in Religio Laici and majestic in some portions of The Hind and the Panther; he could be "sweet" in translating Ovid, and reach severity in the nobler portions of Virgil. In a celebrated passage, Matthew Arnold has termed Dryden "the puissant and glorious founder" of an age of prose and reason, an age whose writers are marked, above all else, by "regularity, uniformity, precision, balance." If we make certain reservations, doubtless present in Arnold's own mind, the verdict is eminently just and penetrating. Dryden lacked the higher qualities of imagination and insight, but he was regular and uniform only in his hatred of eccentricity and bad taste; he was precise in his aversion to vagueness, and to the substitution of mere harmonious sound for solid sense; he showed balance in his continual dependence on his critical judgment, in his reverent attitude - much like Arnold's own-towards the poets of former times, and towards the critical good sense of his own period. His puissance and his glory are, that despite his lack of creative originality, he made his verse so fit an image of his own active and receptive mind. EARLY POEMS UPON THE DEATH OF THE LORD HASTINGS [The following poem, Dryden's first published work, is one of a number of pieces composing a small volume entitled, Lachrymæ Musarum, the Tears of the Muses, exprest in Elegies, written by divers persons of Nobility and Worth, upon the death of the most hopefull Henry, Lord Hastings, onely sonn of the Right Honourable Ferdinando, Earl of Huntingdon, Heirgenerall of the high-born Prince George, Duke of Clarence, brother to King Edward the Fourth, collected and set forth by R. B. London, 1649. (A second issue of the book, differing very slightly from the first, is dated 1650.) The young nobleman, who seems to have been worthy of the praises heaped upon him, was born, according to Collins's Peerage of England, on January 16, 1630, and died of the smallpox on June 24, 1649. Among the contributors to Lachrymæ Musarum were Denham, Marvell, Herrick, and Richard Brome, the last of whom is thought to have been the editor of the collection. Dryden's boyish elegy was written under the direct influence of Cowley, whom he later styles" the darling of my youth" (see p. 320, below); it is signed Johannes Dryden, Schola Westm. Alumnus. It was first reprinted in 1702, in the third edition of Miscellany Poems, the First Part.] MUST noble Hastings immaturely die, With him expiring, feel mortality? Is death, sin's wages, grace's now ? shall which shone More bright i' th' morn, then others' beam at noon, He'd take his astrolabe, and seek out here What new star 't was did gild our hemi sphere. Replenish'd then with such rare gifts as these, Where was room left for such a foul disease? The nation's sin hath drawn that veil, which shrouds Our dayspring in so sad benighting clouds. Heaven would no longer trust its pledge; but thus Recall'd it; rapt its Ganymede from us. Like rose-buds, stuek i' th' lily skin about. To wail the fault its rising did commit: 60 Who, rebel-like, with their own lord at strife, Thus made an insurrection 'gainst his life. Who should, by one rich draught, become TO HIS FRIEND JOHN HODDESDON, ON HIS DIVINE EPIGRAMS [This complimentary poem was prefixed to a little volume entitled, Sion and Parnassus, or Epigrams on severall texts of the Old and New Testament; to which are added a Poem on the Passion, a Hymn on the Resurrection, Ascention, and Feast of Pentecost, by John Hoddesdon, London, 1650; it is signed J. Dryden of Trin. C. and headed To his friend the Authour, on his divine Epigrams. A portrait of Hoddesdon as a youth of about Dryden's years forms the frontispiece to the volume. Dryden's verses distinctly show the influence of the Puritan atmosphere in which he was brought up.] THOU hast inspir'd me with thy soul, and I [This letter was written by Dryden, while a student at Cambridge, to his cousin Honor Dryden, who was then about eighteen years old. She never married, and in her later years is said to have lived with her brother, John Driden of Chesterton, to whom our author, in 1699, addressed one of his best poetical epistles. See p. 784, below. The letter was first printed by Malone, from the original manuscript, now lost. The transcript below follows strictly Malone's text, which very properly preserves Dryden's vagaries of spelling.] IF you have received the lines I sent by the reverend Levite, I doubt not but they have exceedingly wrought upon you; for beeing so longe in a clergy-man's pocket, assuredly they have acquired more sanctity than theire authour meant them. Alasse, Madame! for ought I know, they may become a sermon ere they could arrive at you; and believe it, haveing you for the text, it could scarcely proove bad, if it light upon one that could handle it indifferently. But I am so miserable a preacher, that though I have so sweet and copious a subject, I still fall short in my expressions; and instead of an use of thanksgiving, I am allways makeing one of comfort, that I may one day againe have the happiness to kiss your faire hand; but that is a message I would not so willingly do by letter, as by word of mouth. This is a point, I must confesse, I could willingly dwell longer on; and in this case what ever I say you may confidently take for gospell. But I must hasten. And indeed, Madame, (beloved I had almost sayd,) hee had need hasten who treats of you; for to speake fully to every part of your excellencyes, requires a longer houre then most persons have allotted them. But, in a word, your selfe hath been the best expositor upon the text of your own worth, in that admirable comment you wrote upon it; I meane your incomparable letter. By all that's good, (and you, Madame, are a great part of my oath,) it hath put mee so farre besides my selfe, that I have scarce patience to write prose, and my pen is stealing into verse every time I kisse your letter. I am sure the poor paper smarts for my idolatry; which by wearing it continually neere my brest, will at last be burnt and martyrd in those flames of adoration which it hath kindled in mee. But I forgett, Madame, what rarityes your letter came fraught with, besides words. You are such a deity that commands worship by provideing the sacrifice. You are pleasd, Madame, to force me to write by sending me materialls, and compell me to my greatest happinesse. Yet, though I highly value your magnificent presente, pardon mee, if I must tell the world they are imperfect emblems of your beauty; for the white and red of waxe and paper are but shaddowes of that vermillion and snow in your lips and forehead; and the silver of the inkehorne, if it presume to vye whitenesse with your purer skinne, must confesse it selfe blacker then the liquor it containes. What then do I more then retrieve your own guifts, and present you with that paper, adulterated with blotts, which you gave spotlesse? For, since 't was mine, the white hath lost its hiew, To show 't was n'ere it selfe, but whilst in you: The virgin waxe hath blusht it selfe to red, Since it with mee hath lost its may denhead. You, fairest nymph, are waxe: oh! may you bee HEROIC STANZAS CONSECRATED TO THE GLORIOUS MEMORY OF HIS MOST SERENE AND RENOWN'D HIGHNESS OLIVER, LATE LORD PROTECTOR OF THIS COMMONWEALTH, &C. WRITTEN AFTER THE CELEBRATION OF HIS FUNERAL [Cromwell died on September 3, 1658, and was buried with great pomp on November 23. Dryden therefore wrote the following poem, his first important work, at the close of 1658, when he was already in his twenty-eighth year. By his choice of stanza, and by his comparatively simple style, he shows that he is now influenced by Davenant quite as much as by Cowley. This poem was published twice in 1659: separately, with a title-page reading, A Poem upon the Death of his Late Highness Oliver, Lord Protector of England, Scotland, & Ireland, written by Mr. Dryden. London, Printed for William Wilson; and, with poems by Waller and Sprat, in a volume entitled, Three Poems upon the Death of his late Highnesse Oliver, Lord Protector of England, Scotland, and Ireland, printed by the same publisher. General probability, confirmed by one significant variation in text (see note on line 56), points to the separate edition as the original one; the poem would be likely to appear first by itself rather than together with work by other authors. In 1682 some enemies of Dryden reprinted the Three Poems volume, with a title-page reading, Three Poems upon the Death of the Late Usurper Oliver Cromwel. The above heading is taken from the original Three Poems volume, the text of which was probably revised by Dryden from the earlier edition.] |