John Dryden - Delphi Poets Series

by John Dryden

  Oldham’s principal celebrity, however, is derived from his satires. He had the knack of stinging invective, and has been not unjustly compared to Churchill. His Satires on the Jesuits exactly suited the time of the Popish Plot, at present they repel by their one-sidedness. All satire, except that inspired by fancy, is apt to become repulsive by its natural tendency to dwell upon the meanest and lowest aspects of human nature; and this is pre-eminently the case with Oldham, who is always ridiculing or denouncing, always drawing his illustrations from the base and offensive, and seldom diversifies his low matter with an ennobling thought. Yet he evinces so much manly sense, and his style is so nervous, that it is impossible not to admire his vigour, and wish him a more inviting subject. His metre and rhyme frequently stand in need of Dryden’s generous apology:

  ‘O early ripe! to thy abundant store What could advancing age have added more? It might, what Nature never gives the young, Have taught the smoothness of thy native tongue. But satire needs not these, and wit will shine Through the harsh cadence of a rugged line.’

  All this notwithstanding, Oldham had the root of the matter in him, and has described, as only a poet could, the ambition, the toil, and the triumph of a poet:

  ‘’Tis endless, Sir, to tell the many ways Wherein my poor deluded self I please: How, when the fancy lab’ring for a birth, With unfelt throes, brings its rude issue forth: How, after, when imperfect, shapeless thought Is, by the judgment, into fashion wrought: When at first search, I traverse o’er my mind, None, but a dark and empty void I find: Some little hints, at length, like sparks break thence, And glimm’ring thoughts, just dawning into sense: Confus’d, awhile, the mixt ideas lie With nought of mark to be discover’d by; Like colours undistinguish’d in the night, Till the dusk images mov’d to the light, Teach the discerning faculty to choose, Which it had best adopt, and which refuse. Here rougher strokes, touch’d with a careless dash, Resemble the first setting of a face: There finish’d draughts in form more full appear, And in their justness ask no further care, Meanwhile, with inward joy, I proud am grown, To see the work successfully go on; And prize myself in a creating-power, That could make something, what was nought before. Sometimes a stiff unwieldy thought I meet, Which to my laws, will scarce be made submit: But when, after expense of pains and time, ’Tis manag’d well, and taught to yoke in rhime, In triumph, more than joyful warriors would, Had they some stout and hardy foe subdu’d: And idly think, less goes to their command, That makes arm’d troops in well-placed order stand, Than to the conduct of my words, when they March in due ranks, are set in just array.

  Sometimes on wings of thought I seem on high,

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  As men in sleep, tho’ motionless they lie,

  Hedg’d by a dream, believe they mount and fly:

  So witches some inchanted wand bestride,

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  And think they thro’ the airy regions ride,

  Where fancy is both trav’ller, way and guide:

  Then straight I grow a strange exalted thing, And equal in conceit at least a king: As the poor drunkard, when wine stums his brains, Anointed with that liquor, thinks he reigns; Bewitch’d by these delusions, ’tis I write, (The tricks some pleasant devil plays in spite) And when I’m in the freakish trance, which I, Fond silly wretch, mistake for ecstacy, I find all former resolutions vain, And thus recant them, and make new again. “What was’t I rashly vow’d? shall ever I Quit my beloved mistress, Poetry? Thou sweet beguiler of my lonely hours, Which thus glide unperceiv’d, with silent course: Thou gentle spell, which undisturb’d dost keep My breast, and charm intruding care asleep: They say thou’rt poor, and un-endow’d, what tho’? For thee, I this vain, worthless world forego: Let wealth and honour be for fortune’s slaves, The alms of fools, and prize of crafty knaves: To me thou art, whate’er th’ambitious crave, And all that greedy misers want or have. In youth or age, in travel or at home; Here, or in town, at London, or at Rome; Rich, or a beggar, free, or in the Fleet, What’er my fate is, ’tis my fate to write.”’

  Oldham’s talent, depending upon masculine sense and vigour of expression rather than upon the more ethereal graces of poetry, was of the kind to expand and mellow by age and practice. Had he lived longer he would undoubtedly have left a name conspicuous in English literature. As it is, he can only be regarded as a bright satellite revolving at a respectful distance around the all-illumining orb of Dryden. Before passing to Marvell and Butler, the only two really original poets after Dryden besides the veterans Cowley and Waller, who belong to the preceding period, it will be convenient to despatch a group of minor bards, whose inclusion in the standard collections of poetry, involving memoirs by a master of biography, has given them more celebrity than they in most instances deserve.

  Lord Rochester (1647-1680).

  John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester (1647-1680), is principally known to posterity by his vices and his repentance. The latter has helped to preserve the memory of the former, which have also left abiding traces in a number of poems not included in his works, and some of which, it may be hoped, are wrongly attributed to him. For a number of years Rochester obtained notoriety as, after Buckingham, the most dissolute character of a dissolute age; but at the same time a critic and a wit, potent to make or mar the fortunes of men of letters. ‘Sure,’ says Mr. Saintsbury, ‘to play some monkey trick or other on those who were unfortunate enough to be his intimates.’ Many a literary cabal was instigated by him, many a libel and lampoon flowed from his pen, among others, The Session of the Poets, correctly characterized by Johnson as ‘merciless insolence.’ Worn out by a life of excess, he died at thirty-three, and his penitence, largely due to the arguments and exhortations of Burnet, afforded the latter material for a narrative which Johnson, entirely opposed as he was to the author’s political and ecclesiastical principles, declares that ‘the critic ought to read for its elegance, the philosopher for its arguments, and the saint for its piety.’

  Rochester’s acknowledged poems fall into two divisions of unequal merit. The lyrical and amatory are in general very insipid. The more serious pieces, especially when expressing the discomfort of a sated votary of pleasure, frequently want neither force nor weight. Four particularly fine lines, quoted without indication of authorship in Goethe’s Wahrheit und Dichtung, have frequently occasioned speculation as to their origin. They come from Rochester’s Satyr against Mankind, and read:

  ‘Then Old Age and Experience, hand in hand, Lead him to Death, and make him understand, After a search so painful and so long, That all his life he has been in the wrong.’

  Goldsmith’s ‘best-natured man, with the worst-natured muse,’ is purloined from Rochester, who is also the propounder of the paradox, ‘All men would be cowards if they durst.’ Some of his songs are not devoid of merit. After all, however, nothing of his is so well known as the anticipatory epitaph on Charles II., ascribed sometimes to him, sometimes to Buckingham, and very likely due to neither:

  ‘Here lies our mutton-eating king, Whose word no man relies on; Who never said a foolish thing, And never did a wise one.’

  Wentworth Dillon, Earl of Roscommon (1633?-1684), was a very different character, both as a man and as a poet. He is accused of no fault but a love of gaming, and the purity of his Muse merited the well-known eulogium:

  ‘In all Charles’s days Roscommon only boasts unsullied bays.’

  But he has nothing of the salt and savour of Rochester’s more serious poetry, and is at best an elegant versifier, who, in his only considerable original poem, the Essay on Translated Verse, thinks justly, reasons clearly, and expresses himself with considerable spirit when the subject requires. The most original feature of his literary character is his preference in a rhyming age for blank verse, which he enforces in theory, but is far from recommending by his practice. In his rhymed pieces he is a better versifier than poet, and in his blank verse the contrary. Milton’s eyes were just closed; Shakespeare and Fletcher were still acted; but the secret of beautiful versific
ation, apart from rhyme, seems to have been entirely lost.

  John Sheffield, Duke of Buckinghamshire (1649-1721).

  Poetry afforded a subject for verse to another noble writer, John Sheffield, successively Earl of Mulgrave, Marquis of Normanby, and Duke of Buckinghamshire (1649-1721), who achieved real if moderate distinction as soldier, statesman, and scholar. As a poet his reputation rests entirely upon his Essay on Poetry, which contains many just thoughts expressed in pleasing numbers, although the author’s deference to the conventional dicta of criticism leads him into idolatry, not only of Homer and Virgil, but of Bossu. To have fostered the genius of Pope by judicious praise is the highest distinction of ‘Granville the polite and knowing Walsh.’ Congreve, to be treated more fully as a dramatist, stands somewhat higher than these as an inditer of heroic couplets; but a severer criticism must be passed, if any criticism is needed, upon Pomfret, Duke, Stepney, and the other versifiers of the day who have burrowed their way into the stock collections of poetry.

  Andrew Marvell (1621-1678).

  Andrew Marvell was a virtuous man whose good qualities contrast so forcibly with the characteristic failings of his age, that he appears by contrast even more virtuous than he actually was. His integrity made him the hero of legend, for, although the Court would no doubt have been glad to gain him, it is hardly credible that the prime minister should by the king’s order have personally waited upon him ‘up two pair of stairs in a little court in the Strand.’ But the apocryphal anecdote attests the real veneration inspired by his independence in a venal age. Born in the neighbourhood of Hull on March 31st, 1621, he studied at Cambridge, travelled for some years on the Continent, and settled down about 1650 as tutor to the daughter of Lord Fairfax. At this period he wrote his exquisite poem, The Garden, and other pieces of a similar character. He also wrote in 1650 the poem on Cromwell’s return from Ireland, which may have gained for him in 1653 the appointment of tutor to Cromwell’s ward, William Dutton. Other pieces of a like description followed, and in 1657 Marvell became joint Latin secretary with Milton, an office for which Milton had recommended him four years previously. His poem on the Protector’s death in the following year is justly declared by Mr. Firth to be ‘the only one distinguished by an accent of sincerity and personal affection.’ He was elected for Hull to Richard Cromwell’s Parliament, and continued to sit for the remainder of his life. He was the last Member of Parliament who received a salary from his constituents, to whose interests he in return attended so diligently that upwards of three hundred letters from him upon their concerns and general politics are extant in the Hull archives.

  Marvell could scarcely be called a republican. He had been devoted to the Protectorate, and would probably have been easily reconciled to the Restoration if the government had been ably and honestly conducted. In wrath at the general maladministration he betook himself to satires, which circulated in manuscript. At first he attacked Clarendon, but eventually concluded that the only remedy would be the final expulsion of the house of Stuart. In 1672 and 1673 he appeared in print as a prose controversialist with The Rehearsal Transprosed, a witty attack on a work by Parker, Bishop of Oxford, wherein, in the author’s own words, ‘the mischiefs and inconveniences of toleration were represented, and all pretences pleaded in behalf of liberty of conscience fully answered.’ He silenced his opponent, and escaped being himself silenced through the interposition of Charles II., whose native good sense and easiness of temper inclined him to toleration, and who promoted the freedom of Nonconformists as a means of obtaining liberty for the Church of Rome. Marvell, however, was not to be reconciled, and in 1677 put forth an anonymous pamphlet to prove, what was but too true, that a design had long been on foot to establish absolute monarchy and subvert the Protestant religion. His sudden death on August 18th, 1678, was attributed to poison, but, according to a physician who wrote some years afterwards, was occasioned by that prejudice of the faculty against Peruvian bark which is recorded by Temple and Evelyn.

  As a writer of prose, Marvell is both powerful and humorous, but is not a Junius or a Pascal to impart permanent interest to transitory themes, and make the topics of the day topics for all time. As a poet he ranks with those who have been said to be stars alike of evening and of morning. His earliest and most truly poetical compositions belong in spirit to the period of Charles I., when the strains of the Elizabethan lyric were yet lingering. After passing through a transition stage of manly verse still breathing a truly poetical spirit, but mainly concerned with public affairs, he settles down as a satirist endowed with all the vigour, but, at the same time, with all the prosaic hardness of the Restoration. His most inspired poem, Thoughts in a Garden, written under the Commonwealth, and originally composed in Latin, nevertheless rings like a voice from beyond the Civil Wars. Here are the three loveliest of nine lovely stanzas:

  ‘What wondrous life is this I lead! Ripe apples drop about my head; The luscious clusters of the vine Upon my mouth do crush their wine; The nectarine and curious peach Into my hands themselves do reach; Stumbling on melons as I pass, Ensnared with flowers, I fall on grass.

  ‘Meanwhile the mind, from pleasure less, Withdraws into its happiness; The mind, that ocean where each kind Does straight its own resemblance find; Yet it creates, transcending these, Far other worlds, and other seas; Annihilating all that’s made To a green thought in a green shade.

  ‘Here at the fountain’s sliding foot, Or at some fruit-tree’s mossy root, Casting the body’s vest aside My soul into the boughs does glide: There, like a bird, it sits and sings, There whets and claps its silver wings, And, till prepared for longer flight, Waves in its plumes the various light.’

  ‘These wonderful verses,’ says Mr. Palgrave of the entire poem, ‘may be regarded as a test of any reader’s insight into the most poetical aspects of poetry.’

  As a satirist it is Marvell’s error to confound satire with lampoon. He has the saeva indignatio which makes the avenger, but spends too much of it upon individuals. Occasionally some fine personification gives promise of better things, but the poet soon relapses into mere personalities. This may be attributed in great measure to the circumstances under which these compositions appeared. They could only be circulated clandestinely, and the writer may be excused if he did not labour to exalt what he himself regarded as mere fugitive poetry. The most celebrated of these pieces are the series of Advices to a Painter, in which the persons and events of the day are described to an imaginary artist for delineation in fitting, and therefore by no means flattering, colours. It is to Marvell’s honour that he succeeds best with a fine subject. When, in his poems on the events of the Commonwealth, he escapes from mere sarcasm and negation, and speaks nobly upon really noble themes, he soars far above the Marvell of the Restoration, though even here his verse is marred by lapses into the commonplace, and by his besetting infirmity of an inability to finish with effect, leaving off like a speaker who sits down rather from the failure of his voice than the exhaustion of his theme. The panegyric on Cromwell’s anniversary, and the poem on his death, abound nevertheless with fine, though faulty passages, of which the following may serve as an example:

  ‘O human glory vain! O Death! O wings! O worthless world! O transitory things! Yet dwelt that greatness in his shape decayed, That still, though dead, greater than death he laid, And in his altered face you something feign That threatens Death he yet will live again. Not much unlike the sacred oak which shoots To heaven its branches, and through earth its roots, Whose spacious boughs are hung with trophies round, And honoured wreaths have oft the victor crowned, When angry Jove darts lightning through the air At mortal sins, nor his own plant will spare, It groans and bruises all below, that stood So many years the shelter of the wood. The tree, erewhile foreshortened to our view, When fallen shows taller yet than as it grew; So shall his praise to after times increase, When truth shall be allowed, and faction cease; And his own shadows with him fall; the eye Detracts from objects than itself more high; But when Dea
th takes from them that envied state, Seeing how little, we confess how great.’

  Marvell’s position as the satirist of his era from the Puritan and Republican point of view, was filled upon the Cavalier side by Samuel Butler, who, if general reputation and excellence in his own walk of verse are to be allowed as criterions, may claim to be the third poet of the age after Milton and Dryden. It is true that Butler, though endowed with abundance of fancy, was, strictly speaking, no poet; that he is entirely destitute of the dignity and tenderness which Marvell can display with a congenial theme; and that he possesses nothing of Dryden’s power of exalting unpromising subjects into poetry. But he infinitely surpasses Marvell when they meet on the common ground of satire; and though he cannot be said to surpass Dryden, their methods are so different that no proper comparison can be drawn. When writing in Dryden’s manner Butler is respectable, but he has the field of burlesque epic entirely to himself. Supremacy in a low style of composition is a surer passport to fame than moderate merit in a high one. With all the defects of Restoration literature, it had a faculty for producing masterpieces, and it must be admitted that Butler’s Hudibras stands as decidedly at the head of its class as Paradise Lost, or Absalom and Achitophel, or Pilgrim’s Progress, or Pepys’s Diary at the head of theirs.

  Samuel Butler (1612-1680).

  Samuel Butler was born near Worcester in 1612. His father, a small farmer, procured him a good education at the Worcester Grammar School. His first employment was that of clerk to a country justice named Jefferys. He afterwards entered the household of Elizabeth, Countess of Kent, at Wrest, in Bedfordshire, and subsequently acted as clerk to various justices of the peace, one of whom, Sir Samuel Luke, of Cople Hoo, near Bedford, served as the original of Hudibras. It is curious to reflect that John Bunyan was at the same time going through his spiritual conflicts in the same county. He seems to have also travelled in France and Holland. He published nothing until 1659, when an anonymous tract in favour of the restoration of the monarchy, entitled Mola Asinaria, appeared from his pen. The service was recompensed by the appointment of secretary to the Earl of Carbury, Lord President of Wales, who made him steward of Ludlow Castle, where Comus had been performed nearly thirty years before. He resigned this charge upon contracting what seemed a wealthy marriage, but the lady’s money was lost, and, notwithstanding the great literary success Hudibras, the remainder of the author’s life was spent in poverty. The first part of Hudibras, stated in the title to have been written during the Civil War, and if so at least fifteen years old, was published in 1663. Its success was instantaneous, though neither the Puritans nor Mr. Pepys could quite see the joke. The merit of the performance, however, was fully apparent to a better and more influential judge, the king, who encouraged the author by giving numerous copies away, though history does not say at whose expense. But this was all he gave, and the poet who had rendered such essential service to the royalist cause by his writings was as completely neglected by the Court as if he had been John Milton. It is indeed said that he was in receipt of a pension of £100 at his death; but this seems contradicted by the letter, already quoted, of Dryden to the Lord High Treasurer within two years after Butler’s death, where he says: ‘’Tis enough for one age to have neglected Mr. Cowley and starved Mr. Butler.’ Oldham’s lines, written at the same time, are still more emphatic: