John Dryden - Delphi Poets Series

by John Dryden

  If we are to judge of Dryden’s sincerity in his new faith, by the determined firmness with which report retained it through good report and bad report we must allow him to have been a martyr, or at least a confessor, in the Catholic cause. If after the Revolution, like many greater men, he had changed his principles with the times, he was not a person of such mark as to be selected from all the nation, and punished for former tenets. Supported by the friendship of Rochester, and most of the Tory nobles who were active in the Revolution, of Leicester, and many Whigs, and especially of the Lord-Chamberlain Dorset, there would probably have been little difficulty in his remaining poet-laureate, if he had recanted the errors of Popery. But the Catholic religion, and the consequent disqualifications, was an insurmountable obstacle to his holding that or any other office under government; and Dryden’s adherence to it, with all the poverty, reproach, and even persecution which followed the profession, argued a deep and substantial conviction of the truth of the doctrines it inculcated. So late as 1699, when an union, in opposition to King William, had led the Tories and Whigs to look on each other with some kindness, Dryden thus expresses himself in a letter to his cousin, Mrs. Steward: “The court rather speaks kindly of me, than does anything for me, though they promise largely; and perhaps they think I will advance as they go backward, in which they will be much deceived: for I can never go an inch beyond my conscience and my honour. If they will consider me as a man who has done my best to improve the language, and especially the poetry, and will be content with my acquiescence under the present government, and forbearing satire on it, that I can promise, because I can perform it: but I can neither take the oaths, nor forsake my religion; because I know not what Church to go to, if I leave the Catholic: they are all so divided amongst themselves in matters of faith, necessary to salvation, and yet all assuming the name of Protestants. May God be pleased to open your eyes, as he has opened mine! Truth is but one, and they who have once heard of it, can plead no excuse if they do not embrace it. But these are things too serious for a trifling letter.” If, therefore, adherence to the communion of a falling sect, loaded too at the time with heavy disqualifications, and liable to yet more dangerous suspicions, can be allowed as a proof of sincerity, we can hardly question that Dryden was, from the date of his conviction, a serious and sincere Roman Catholic.

  The conversion of Dryden did not long remain unrewarded, nor was his pen suffered to be idle in the cause which he had adopted. On the 4th of March 1685-6, an hundred pounds a year, payable quarterly, was added to his pension: and probably he found himself more at ease under the regular and economical government of James, than when his support depended on the exhausted exchequer of Charles. Soon after the granting of this boon, he was employed to defend the reasons of conversion to the Catholic faith, alleged by Anne Hyde, Duchess of York, which, together with two papers on a similar subject, said to be found in Charles II.’s strong box. James had with great rashness given to the public. Stillingfleet, now at the head of the champions of the Protestant faith, published some sharp remarks on these papers. Another hand, probably that of a Jesuit, was employed to vindicate against him the royal grounds of conversion; while to Dryden was committed the charge of defending those alleged by the Duchess. The tone of Dryden’s apology was, to say the least, highly injudicious, and adapted to irritate the feelings of the clergy of the established church, already sufficiently exasperated to see the sacrifices which they had made to the royal cause utterly forgotten, the moment that they paused in the extremity of their devotion towards the monarch. The name of “Legion,” which the apologist bestows on his adversaries, intimates the committee of the clergy by whom the Protestant cause was then defended; and the tone of his arguments is harsh, contemptuous, and insulting. A raker up of the ashes of princes, an hypocrite, a juggler, a latitudinarian, are the best terms which he affords the advocate of the Church of England, in defence of which he had so lately been himself a distinguished champion. Stillingfleet returned to the charge; and when he came to the part of the Defence written by Dryden, he did not spare the personal invective, to which the acrimonious style of the poet-laureate had indeed given an opening, “Zeal,” says Stillingfleet, “in a new convert, is a terrible thing, for it not only burns, but rages like the eruptions of Mount Etna; it fills the air with noise and smoke, and throws out such a torrent of living fire, that there is no standing before it.” In another passage, Stillingfleet talks of the “temptation of changing religion for bread;” in another, our author’s words, that

  “Priests of all religions are the same,”

  are quoted to infer, that he who has no religion may declare for any. Dryden took his revenge both on Stillingfleet the author, and on Burnet, whom he seems to have regarded as the reviser of this answer, in his polemical poem of “The Hind and the Panther.”

  If we can believe an ancient tradition, this poem was chiefly composed in a country retirement at Rushton, near his birth-place in Huntingdon [Northamptonshire]. There was an embowered walk at this place, which, from the pleasure which the poet took in it, retained the name of Dryden’s Walk; and here was erected, about the middle of last century, an urn, with the following inscription: “In memory of Dryden, who frequented these shades, and is here said to have composed his poem of ‘The Hind and the Panther.’”

  “The Hind and the Panther” was written with a view to obviate the objections of the English clergy and people to the power of dispensing with the test laws, usurped by James II. A change of political measures, which took place while the poem was composing, has greatly injured its unity and consistence. In the earlier part of his reign, James endeavoured to gain the Church of England, by fair means and flattery, to submit to the remission which he claimed the liberty of granting to the Catholics. The first part of Dryden’s poem is written upon this soothing plan; the Panther, or Church of England, is

  ”sure the noblest next the Hind,

  And fairest offspring of the spotted kind.

  Oh could her inborn stains be washed away,

  She were too good to be a beast of prey.”

  The sects, on the other hand, are characterised, wolves, bears, boars, foxes, — all that is odious and horrible in the brute creation. But ere the poem was published, the king had assumed a different tone with the established church. Relying upon the popularity which the suspension of the penal laws was calculated to procure among the Dissenters, he endeavoured to strengthen his party by making common cause between them and the Catholics, and bidding open defiance to the Church of England. For a short time, and with the most ignorant of the sectaries, this plan seemed to succeed; the pleasure of a triumph over their ancient enemies rendering them blind to the danger of the common Protestant cause. During this interval the poem was concluded; and the last book seems to consider the cause of the Hind and Panther as gone to a final issue, and incapable of any amicable adjustment. The Panther is fairly resigned to her fate:

  “Her hour of grace was passed,”

  and the downfall of the English hierarchy is foretold in that of the Doves, who, in a subaltern allegory, represent the clergy of the established church:

  ”Tis said, the Doves repented, though too late,

  Become the smiths of their own foolish fate:

  Nor did their owner hasten their ill hour,

  But, sunk in credit, they decreased in power;

  Like snows in warmth that mildly pass away,

  Dissolving in the silence of decay.”

  In the preface, as well as in the course of the poem, Dryden frequently alludes to his dispute with Stillingfleet; and perhaps none of his poems contain finer lines than those in which he takes credit for the painful exertion of Christian forbearance when called by injured feeling to resent personal accusation: —

  ”If joys hereafter must be purchased here

  With loss of all that mortals hold so dear,

  Then welcome infamy and public shame,

  And last, a long farewell to worldly fame!
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  ’Tis said with ease; but, oh, how hardly tried

  By haughty souls to human honour tied!

  O sharp convulsive pangs of agonising pride!

  Down then, rebel, never more to rise!

  And what thou didst, and dost, so dearly prize,

  That fame, that darling fame, make that thy sacrifice.

  ’Tis nothing thou hast given; then add thy tears

  For a long race of unrepenting years:

  ’Tis nothing yet, yet all thou hast to give;

  Then add those may-be years thou hast to live:

  Yet nothing still: then poor and naked come,

  Thy father will receive his unthrift home,

  And thy blest Saviour’s blood discharge the mighty sum.”

  Stillingfleet is, however, left personally undistinguished, but Burnet, afterwards Bishop of Salisbury, receives chastisement in his stead. The character of this prelate, however unjustly exaggerated, preserves many striking and curious traits of resemblance to the original; and, as was natural, gave deep offence to the party for whom it was drawn. For not only did Burnet at the time express himself with great asperity of Dryden, but long afterwards, when writing his history, he pronounced a severe censure on the immorality of his plays, so inaccurately expressed as to be applicable, by common construction to the author’s private character. From this coarse and inexplicit accusation, the memory of Dryden was indignantly vindicated by his friend Lord Lansdowne.

  It is also worth remarking, that in the allegory of the swallows, introduced in the Third Part of “The Hind and the Panther,” the author seems to have had in his eye the proposal made at a grand consult of the Catholics, that they should retire from the general and increasing hatred of all ranks, and either remain quiet at home, or settle abroad. This plan, which originated in their despair of James’s being able to do anything effectual in their favour, was set aside by the fiery opposition of Father Petre, the martin of the fable told by the Panther to the Hind.

  The appearance of “The Hind and the Panther” excited a clamour against the author far more general than the publication of “Absalom and Achitophel.” Upon that occasion the offence was given only to a party, but this open and avowed defence of James’s strides towards arbitrary power, with the unpopular circumstance of its coming from a new convert to the royal faith, involved our poet in the general suspicion with which the nation at large now viewed the slightest motions of their infatuated monarch. The most noted amongst those who appeared to oppose the triumphant advocate of the Hind, were Montague and Prior, young men now rising into eminence. They joined to produce a parody entitled the “Town and Country Mouse;” part of which Mr. Bayes is supposed to gratify his old friends, Smith and Johnson, by repeating to them. The piece is, therefore, founded upon the twice-told jest of the “Rehearsal.” Of the parody itself, we have given ample specimen in its proper place. There is nothing new or original in the idea, which chiefly turns upon the ridiculing the poem of Dryden, where religious controversy is made the subject of dispute and adjustment between a Hind and a Panther, who vary between their typical character of animals and their real character as the Catholic and English Church. In this piece, Prior, though the younger man, seems to have had by far the larger share. Lord Peterborough, on being asked whether the satire was not written by Montague in conjunction with Prior, answered, “Yes; as if I, seated in Mr. Cheselden’s chaise drawn by his fine horse, should say, Lord! how finely we draw this chaise!” Indeed, although the parody was trite and obvious, the satirists had the public upon their side; and it now seems astonishing with what acclamations this attack upon the most able champion of James’s faith was hailed by his discontented subjects. Dryden was considered as totally overcome by his assailants; they deemed themselves, and were deemed by others, as worthy of very distinguished and weighty recompence; and what was yet a more decisive mark, that their bolt had attained its mark, the aged poet is said to have lamented, even with tears, the usage he had received from two young men, to whom he had been always civil. This last circumstance is probably exaggerated. Montague and Prior had doubtless been frequenters of Will’s coffee-house, where Dryden held the supreme rule in criticism, and had thus, among other rising wits, been distinguished by him. That he should have felt their satire is natural, for the arrow flew with the wind, and popularity amply supplied its deficiency in real vigour; but the reader may probably conclude with Johnson, that Dryden was too much hackneyed in political warfare to suffer so deeply from the parody, as Dr. Lockier’s anecdote would lead us to believe. “If we can suppose him vexed,” says that accurate judge of human nature, “we can hardly deny him sense to conceal his uneasiness.”

  Although Prior and Montague were first in place and popularity, there wanted not the usual crowd of inferior satirists and poetasters to follow them to the charge. “The Hind and the Panther” was assailed by a variety of pamphlets, by Tom Brown and others, of which an account, with specimens perhaps more than sufficient, is annexed to the notes on the poem in this edition. It is worth mentioning, that on this, as on a former occasion, an adversary of Dryden chose to select one of his own poems as a contrast to his latter opinions. The “Religio Laici” was reprinted, and carefully opponed to the various passages of “The Hind and the Panther,” which appeared most contradictory to its tenets. But while the Grub-street editor exulted in successfully pointing out the inconsistency between Dryden’s earlier and later religious opinions, he was incapable of observing, that the change was adopted in consequence of the same unbroken train of reasoning, and that Dryden, when he wrote the “Religio Laici” was under the impulse of the same conviction, which, further prosecuted, led him to acquiesce in the faith of Rome.

  The king appears to have been hardly less anxious to promote the dispersion of “The Hind I and the Panther,” than the Protestant party to ridicule the piece and its author. It was printed about the same time at London and in Edinburgh, where a printing-press was maintained in Holyrood House, for the dispersion of tracts favouring the Catholic religion. The poem went rapidly through two or three editions; a circumstance rather to be imputed to the celebrity of the author, and to the anxiety which foes, as well as friends, entertained to learn his sentiments, than to any disposition to acquiesce in his arguments.

  But Dryden’s efforts in favour of the Catholic cause were not limited to this controversial poem. He is said to have been at first employed by the court, in translating Varillas’s “History of Heresies,” a work held in considerable estimation by the Catholic divines. Accordingly, an entry to that purpose was made by Tonson in the Stationers’ books, of such a translation made by Dryden at his Majesty’s command. This circumstance is also mentioned by Burnet, who adds, in very coarse and abusive terms, that the success of his own remarks having destroyed the character of Varillas as an historian, the disappointed translator revenged himself by the severe character of the Buzzard, under which the future Bishop of Sarum is depicted in “The Hind and the Panther.” The credulity of Burnet, especially where his vanity was concerned was unbounded; and there seems room to trace Dryden’s attack upon him, rather to some real or supposed concern in the controversy about the Duchess of York’s papers, so often alluded to in the poem, than to the commentary on Varillas, which is not once mentioned. Yet it seems certain that Dryden entertained thoughts of translating “The History of Heresies;” and, for whatever reason, laid the task aside. He soon after was engaged in a task, of a kind as unpromising as remote from his poetical studies, and connected, in the same close degree, with the religious views of the unfortunate James II. This was no other than the translation of “The Life of St. Francis Xavier,” one of the last adopted saints of the Catholic Church, at least whose merits and supposed miracles were those of a missionary. Xavier is perhaps among the latest also, whose renown for sanctity, and the powers attending it, appears to have been extensive even while he was yet alive. Above all, he was of the order of Jesuits, and the very saint to whom Mary of Este had add
ressed her vows, in hopes to secure a Catholic successor to the throne of England. It was, therefore, natural enough, that Dryden should have employed himself in translating the life of a saint, whose virtues must at that time have appeared so peculiarly meritorious; whose praises were so acceptable to his patroness; and whose miracles were wrought for the credit of the Catholic Church, within so late a period, besides, the work had been composed by Bartoli, in Portuguese; and by Bouhours, in French. With the merits of the latter we are well acquainted; of the former, Dryden speaks highly in the dedication. It may perhaps be more surprising, that the present editor should have retained this translation, than that Dryden should have undertaken it. But surely the only work of this very particular and enthusiastic nature, which the modern English language has to exhibit, was worthy of preservation, were it but as a curiosity. The creed and the character of Catholic faith are now so much forgotten among us (popularly speaking), that, in reading the “Life of Xavier,” the Protestant finds himself in a new and enchanted land. The motives, and the incidents and the doctrines, are alike new to him, and, indeed, occasionally form a strange contrast among themselves. There are few who can read, without a sentiment of admiration, the heroic devotion with which, from the highest principle of duty, Xavier exposes himself to hardship, to danger, to death itself, that he may win souls to the Christian faith. The most rigid Protestant, and the most indifferent philosopher, cannot deny to him the courage and patience of a martyr, with the good sense, resolution, ready wit, and address of the best negotiator, that ever went upon a temporal embassy. It is well that our admiration is qualified by narrations so monstrous, as his actually restoring the dead to life; so profane, as the inference concerning the sweating crucifix; so trivial and absurd, as a crab’s fishing up the saint’s cross, which had fallen into the sea; and, to conclude, so shocking to humanity, as the account of the saint passing by the house of his ancestors, the abode of his aged mother, on his road to leave Europe for ever, and conceiving he did God good service in denying himself the melancholy consolation of a last farewell. Altogether, it forms a curious picture of the human mind, strung to a pitch of enthusiasm, which we can only learn from such narratives: and those to whom this affords no amusement, may glean some curious particulars from the “Life of Xavier,” concerning the state of India and Japan, at the time of his mission, as well as of the internal regulations and singular policy adopted by the society, of which the saint was a member. Besides the “Life of Xavier,” Dryden is said to have translated Bossuet’s “Exposition of the Catholic Doctrine;” but for this we have but slight authority.