John Dryden - Delphi Poets Series

by John Dryden

  Appeared as cool as virgin-innocence;

  And like that too (which chiefly I admired),

  Its ravished whiteness with a touch expired.

  At the approach of heat, this candid rain

  Dissolved to its first element again.

  Muly-H. Though showers of hail Morocco never see,

  Dull priest, what does all this portend to me?

  Ham. It does portend —

  Muly. What?

  Ham. That the fates design —

  Muly. To tire me with impertinence like thine.”

  Such were the strains once preferred to the magnificent verses of Dryden; whose very worst bombast is sublimity compared to them. To prove which, the reader need only peruse the Indian’s account of the Spanish fleet in the “Indian Emperor,” to which the above lines are a parallel; each being the description of an object familiar to the audience, but new to the describer. The poet felt the disgraceful preference more deeply than was altogether becoming; but he had levelled his powers, says Johnson, when he levelled his desires to those of Settle, and placed his happiness in the claps of multitudes. The moral may be carried yet further; for had not Dryden stooped to call to the aid of his poetry the auxiliaries of scenery, gilded truncheons, and verse of more noise than meaning, it is impossible his plays could have been drawn into comparison with those of Settle. But the meretricious ornaments which he himself had introduced were within the reach of the meanest capacity; and, having been among the first to debauch the taste of the public, it was retributive justice that he should experience their inconstancy. Indeed Dryden seems himself to admit, that the principal difference between his heroic plays and “The Empress of Morocco,” was, that the former were good sense, that looked like nonsense, and the latter nonsense, which yet looked very like sense. A nice distinction, and which argued some regret at having opened the way to such a rival.

  The feelings of contempt ought to have suppressed those of anger; but Dryden, who professedly lived to please his own age, had not temper to wait till time should do him justice. Angry he was; and unfortunately he determined to shew the world that he did well in being so. With this view, in conjunction with Shadwell and Crowne, two brother-dramatists, equally jealous of Settle’s success, he composed a pamphlet, entitled “Remarks upon the Empress of Morocco.” This piece is written in the same tone of boisterous and vulgar raillery with which Clifford and Leigh had assailed Dryden himself; and little resembles our poet’s general style of controversy. He seems to have exchanged his satirical scourge for the clumsy flail of Shadwell, when he stooped to use such raillery as the following description of Settle: “In short, he is an animal of a most deplored understanding, without reading and conversation: his being is in a twilight of sense, and some glimmering of thought, which he can never fashion either into wit or English. His style is boisterous and rough-hewn; his rhyme incorrigibly lewd, and his numbers perpetually harsh and ill-sounding.”

  Settle, nothing dismayed with this vehement attack, manfully retorted the abuse which had been thrown upon him, and answered the insulting clamour of his three antagonists with clamorous insult. It was obvious that the weaker poet must be the winner by this contest in abuse; and Dryden gained no more by his dispute with Settle, than a well-dressed man who should condescend to wrestle with a chimney-sweeper. The feud between them was carried no further, until, after the publication of “Absalom and Achitophel,” party animosity added spurs to literary rivalry.

  We must now return to Rochester, who, observing Settle’s rise to his unmerited elevation in the public opinion, became as anxious to lower his presumption as he had formerly been to diminish the reputation of Dryden. With this view, that tyrannical person of honour availed himself of his credit to recommend Crowne to write the masque of “Calisto,” which was acted by the lords and ladies of the court of Charles in 1675. Nothing could be more galling towards Dryden, a part of whose duty as poet-laureate was to compose the pieces designed for such occasions. Crowne, though he was a tolerable comic writer, had no turn whatever for tragedy, or indeed for poetry of any kind. But the splendour of the scenery and dresses, the quality of the performers, selected from the first nobility, and the favour of the sovereign, gave “Calisto” a run of nearly thirty nights. Dryden, though mortified, tendered his services in the shape of an epilogue, to be spoken by Lady Henrietta Maria Wentworth. But the influence of his enemy, Rochester, was still predominant, and the epilogue of the laureate was rejected.

  The author of “Calisto” also lost his credit with Rochester, so soon as he became generally popular; and shortly after the representation of that piece, its fickle patron seems to have recommended to the royal protection, a rival more formidable to Dryden than either Settle or “starch Johnny Crowne.” This was no other than Otway, whose “Don Carlos” appeared in 1676, and was hailed as one of the best heroic plays which had been written. The author avows in his preface the obligations he owed to Rochester, who had recommended him to the king and the duke, to whose favour he owed his good success, and on whose indulgence he reckoned as insuring that of his next attempt. These effusions of gratitude did not, as Mr. Malone observes, withhold Rochester, shortly after, from lampooning Otway, with circumstances of gross insult, in the “Session of the Poets.” In the same preface, Otway, in very intelligible language, bade defiance to Dryden whom he charges with having spoken slightly of his play. But although Dryden did not admire the general structure of Otway’s poetry, he is said, even at this time, to have borne witness to his power of moving the passions; an acknowledgment which he long afterwards solemnly repeated. Thus Otway, like many others, mistook the character of a pretended friend, and did injustice to that of a liberal rival. Dryden and he indeed never appear to have been personal friends, even when they both wrote in the Tory interest. It was probably about this time that Otway challenged Settle, whose courage appears to have failed him upon the occasion.

  Rochester was not content with exciting rivals against Dryden in the public opinion, but assailed him personally in an imitation of Horace, which he quaintly entitled, “An Allusion to the Tenth Satire.” It came out anonymously about 1678, but the town was at no loss to guess that Rochester was the patron or author. Much of the satire was bestowed on Dryden, whom Rochester for the first time distinguishes by a ridiculous nickname, which was afterwards echoed by imitating dunces in all their lampoons. The lines are more cutting, because mingled with as much praise as the writer probably thought necessary to gain the credit of a candid critic. Dryden, on his part, did not view with indifference these repeated direct and indirect attacks on his literary reputation by Rochester. In the preface to “All for Love,” published in 1678, he gives a severe rebuke to those men of rank, who, having acquired the credit of wit, either by virtue of their quality, or by common fame, and finding themselves possessed of some smattering of Latin, become ambitious to distinguish themselves by their poetry from the herd of gentlemen. “And is not this,” he exclaims, “a wretched affectation, not to be contented with what fortune has done for them, and sit down quietly with their estates, but they must call their wits in question, and needlessly expose their nakedness to public view? Not considering that they are not to expect the same approbation from sober men, which they have found from their flatterers after the third bottle. If a little glittering in discourse has passed them on us for witty men, where was the necessity of undeceiving the world? Would a man who has an ill title to an estate, but yet is in possession of it; would he bring it of his own accord to be tried at Westminster? We who write, if we want the talent, yet have the excuse, that we do it for a poor subsistence; but what can be urged in their defence, who, not having the vocation of poverty to scribble out of mere wantonness, take pains to make themselves ridiculous? Horace was certainly in the right, where he said, ‘That no man is satisfied with his own condition.’ A poet is not pleased, because he is not rich; and the rich are discontented, because the poets will not admit them of their number. Thus the case is ha
rd with writers: if they succeed not, they must starve; and if they do, some malicious satire is prepared to level them, for daring to please without their leave. But while they are so eager to destroy the fame of others, their ambition is manifest in their concernment; some poem of their own is to be produced, and the slaves are to be laid flat with their faces on the ground, that the monarch may appear in the greater majesty.” This general censure of the persons of wit and honour about town, is fixed on Rochester in particular not only by the marked allusion in the last sentence, to the despotic tyranny which he claimed over the authors of his time, but also by a direct attack upon such imitators of Horace, who make doggrel of his Latin, misapply his censures, and often contradict their own. It is remarkable, however, that he ascribes this imitation rather to some zany of the great, than to one of their number; and seems to have thought Rochester rather the patron than the author.

  At the expense of anticipating the order of events, and that we may bring Dryden’s dispute with Rochester to a conclusion, we must recall to the reader’s recollection our author’s friendship with Mulgrave. This appears to have been so intimate, that, in 1675, that nobleman intrusted him with the task of revising his “Essay upon Satire:” a poem which contained dishonourable mention of many courtiers of the time, and was particularly severe on Sir Car Scrope and Rochester. The last of these is taxed with cowardice, and a thousand odious and mean vices; upbraided with the grossness and scurrility of his writings, and with the infamous profligacy of his life. The versification of the poem is as flat and inharmonious, as the plan is careless and ill-arranged; and though the imputation was to cost Dryden dear, I cannot think that any part of the “Essay on Satire” received additions from his pen. Probably he might contribute a few hints for revision; but the author of “Absalom and Achitophel” could never completely disguise the powers which were shortly to produce that brilliant satire. Dryden’s verses must have shone among Mulgrave’s as gold beside copper. The whole Essay is a mere stagnant level, no one part of it so far rising above the rest as to bespeak the work of a superior hand. The thoughts, even when conceived with some spirit, are clumsily and unhappily brought out; a fault never to be traced in the beautiful language of Dryden, whose powers of expression were at least equal to his force of conception. Besides, as Mr. Malone has observed, he had now brought to the highest excellence his system of versification; and is it possible he could neglect it so far as to write the rugged lines in the note, where all manner of elliptical barbarisms are resorted to, for squeezing the words into a measure “lame and o’erburdened, and screaming its wretchedness”? The “Essay on Satire” was finally subjected by the noble author to the criticism of Pope, who, less scrupulous than Dryden, appears to have made large improvements; but after having undergone the revision of two of the first names in English poetry, it continues to be a very indifferent performance.

  In another point of view, it seems inconsistent with Dryden’s situation to suppose he had any active share in the “Essay on Satire.” The character of Charles is treated with great severity, as well as those of the Duchesses of Portsmouth and Cleveland, the royal mistresses. This was quite consistent with Mulgrave’s disposition, who was at this time discontented with the ministry; but certainly would not have beseemed Dryden, who held an office at court. Sedley also, with whom Dryden always seems to have lived on friendly terms, is harshly treated in the “Essay on Satire.” It may be owned, however, that these reasons were not held powerful at the time, since they must, in that case, have saved Dryden from the inconvenient suspicion which, we will presently see, attached to him. The public were accustomed to see the friendship of wits end in mutual satire; and the good-natured Charles was so generally the subject of the ridicule which he loved, that no one seems to have thought there was improbability in a libel being composed on him by his own laureate.

  The “Essay on Satire,” though written, as appears from the title-page of the last edition, in 1675, was not made public until 1679, when several copies were handed about in manuscript. Rochester sends one of these to his friend Henry Saville, on the 21st of November 1679, with this observation:— “I have sent you herewith a libel, in which my own share is not the least. The king, having perused it, is no way dissatisfied with his. The author is apparently Mr. Dr[yden], his patron, Lord M[ulgrave,] having a panegyric in the midst.” From hence it is evident, that Dryden obtained the reputation of being the author; in consequence of which, Rochester meditated the base and cowardly revenge which he afterwards executed; and he thus coolly expressed his intention in another of his letters:— “You write me word, that I’m out of favour with a certain poet, whom I have admired for the disproportion of him and his attributes. He is a rarity which I cannot but be fond of, as one would be of a hog that could fiddle, or a singing owl. If he falls on me at the blunt, which is his very good weapon in wit, I will forgive him if you please; and leave the repartee to black Will with a cudgel.”

  In pursuance of this infamous resolution, Dryden, upon the night of the 18th December 1679, was waylaid by hired ruffians, and severely beaten, as he passed through Rose-street, Covent-garden returning from Will’s Coffee-house to his own house in Gerrard-street. A reward of £50 was in vain offered, in the London Gazette and other newspapers, for the discovery of the perpetrators of this outrage. The town was, however, at no loss to pitch upon Rochester as the employer of the bravoes, with whom the public suspicion joined the Duchess of Portsmouth, equally concerned in the supposed affront thus avenged. In our time, were a nobleman to have recourse to hired bravoes to avenge his personal quarrel against any one, more especially a person holding the rank of a gentleman, he might lay his account with being hunted out of society. But in the age of Charles, the ancient high and chivalrous sense of honour was esteemed Quixotic, and the civil war had left traces of ferocity in the manners and sentiments of the people. Rencounters, where the assailants took all advantages of number and weapons, were as frequent, and held as honourable, as regular duels. Some of these approached closely to assassination; as in the famous case of Sir John Coventry, who was waylaid, and had his nose slit by some young men of high rank, for a reflection upon the king’s theatrical amours. This occasioned the famous statute against maiming and wounding, called the Coventry Act; an Act highly necessary, since so far did our ancestors’ ideas of manly forbearance differ from ours, that Killigrew introduces the hero of one of his comedies, a cavalier, and the fine gentleman of the piece, lying in wait for, and slashing the face of a poor courtezan, who had cheated him. It will certainly be admitted, that a man, surprised in the dark and beaten by ruffians, loses no honour by such a misfortune. But, if Dryden had received the same discipline from Rochester’s own hand without resenting it, his drubbing could not have been more frequently made a matter of reproach to him; — a sign surely of the penury of subjects for satire in his life and character, since an accident, which might have happened to the greatest hero who ever lived, was resorted to as an imputation on his honour. The Rose-alley ambuscade became almost proverbial; and even Mulgrave, the real author of the satire, and upon whose shoulders the blows ought in justice to have descended, mentions the circumstance in his “Art of Poetry;” with a cold and self-sufficient complacent sneer:

  ”Though praised and punished for another’s rhymes,

  His own deserve as great applause sometimes.”

  To which is added in a note, “A libel for which he was both applauded and wounded, though entirely ignorant of the whole matter.” This flat and conceited couplet, and note, the noble author judged it proper to omit in the corrected edition of his poem. Otway alone, no longer the friend of Rochester, and perhaps no longer the enemy of Dryden, has spoken of the author of this dastardly outrage with the contempt his cowardly malice deserved:

  ”Poets in honour of the truth should write,

  With the same spirit brave men for it fight;

  And though against him causeless hatreds rise,

  And daily where he goes,
of late, he spies

  The scowls of sullen and revengeful eyes;

  ’Tis what he knows with much contempt to bear,

  And serves a cause too good to let him fear:

  He fears no poison from incensed drab,

  No ruffian’s five-foot sword, nor rascal’s stab;

  Nor any other snares of mischief laid,

  Not a Rose-alley cudgel ambuscade;

  From any private cause where malice reigns,

  Or general pique all blockheads have to brains.”

  It does not appear that Dryden ever thought it worth his while to take revenge on Rochester; and the only allusion to him in his writings may be found in the Essay prefixed to the translation of Juvenal, where he is mentioned as a man of quality, whose ashes our author was unwilling to disturb, and who had paid Dorset, to whom that piece is inscribed, the highest compliment which his self-sufficiency could afford to any one. Perhaps Dryden remembered Rochester among others, when, in the same piece, he takes credit for resisting opportunities and temptation to take revenge, even upon those by whom he had been notoriously and wantonly provoked.

  The detail of these quarrels has interrupted our account of Dryden’s writings, which we are now to resume.

  “Aureng-Zebe” was his first performance after the failure of the “Assignation.” It was acted in 1675 with general applause. “Aureng-Zebe” is a heroic, or rhyming play, but not cast in a mould quite so romantic as the “Conquest of Granada.” There is a grave and moral turn in many of the speeches, which brings it nearer the style of a French tragedy. It is true, the character of Moral borders upon extravagance; but a certain licence has been always given to theatrical tyrants, and we excuse bombast in him more readily than in Almanzor. There is perhaps some reason for this indulgence. The possession of unlimited power, vested in active and mercurial characters, naturally drives them to an extravagant indulgence of passion, bordering upon insanity; and it follows, that their language must outstrip the modesty of nature. Propriety of diction in the drama is relative, and to be referred more to individual character than to general rules: to make a tyrant sober-minded is to make a madman rational. But this discretion must be used with great caution by the writer, lest he should confound the terrible with the burlesque. Two great actors, Kynaston and Booth, differed in their style of playing Morat.