John Dryden - Delphi Poets Series

by John Dryden

  Evelyn’s Sylva, 1664.

  As has been remarked, the latter half of the seventeenth century was in England pre-eminently a scientific age. The ideas of Bacon were generally acted upon, and it was universally recognized that the only safe path to physical knowledge was through experiment. Newton and Hooke, in natural philosophy; Mayow, in chemistry; Sydenham, in medicine; Grew, in vegetable anatomy; Ray, in the classification of plants and animals, carried the fame of their country to greater heights than even Bacon’s ‘eagle-spirit’ could have soared to imagine. But these illustrious men did little or nothing for literature, for such was not their design. The art of blending scientific research with elegant disquisition remained to be invented. Many of their works were composed in Latin; none were intended for a miscellaneous public. Science, in consequence, was far from exerting that influence upon creed and conduct which she exercises in our day, and an age of scientific discovery till then unexampled passed away without enriching literature by a single classic. Two books alone, neither of which can strictly be termed scientific, but both of which touch outlying provinces of natural history, added — one very considerably — to the literary wealth of the age. They are Evelyn’s Sylva and Walton’s Complete Angler — both by authors of whom we have previously had occasion to speak. If any reader of Evelyn’s Diary should feel prejudiced by the carping criticisms of De Quincey, he may be safely referred to his Sylva (originally published in 1664, much augmented in later editions). The writer here displays himself in a character most alien of all others to that of a time-server or a prig, that of an English country gentleman. His work is further inspired by a genuine love of nature, whose formality is justified by the stateliness of the theme, and tempered by the almost personal affection of the author for the trees he has known from a boy, or himself called into being. The scholar is everywhere apparent. ‘I did not,’ he says, ‘altogether compile this work for the sake of our ordinary rustics, mere foresters and woodmen, but for the benefit and diversion of gentlemen and persons of quality, who often refresh themselves in the agreeable toils of planting and gardening.’ It may be that Evelyn thought too much of the requisites of this class of readers, but, had he limited himself to a mere technical manual, he would not now be read. We do not know how his precepts are rated by the foresters and landscape gardeners of the present age; but even if he has not always shown the way, he has powerfully stimulated the wish to become a miniature creator by embellishing the countenance of Nature. His prose, more elaborate here than in his Diary, entitles him to rank among the refiners of the language.

  The literature of England has this among other points in common with ancient literature, that it reckons books on fishing among its classics. Oppian, who sang of the sea and its inhabitants to Caracalla, is far from the worst among the Greek poets, and has in particular expressed the successful angler’s exultation with a truth and terseness which no successor will surpass:

  πολλὴ γὰρ βλεφάροισι καὶ ἐν φρεσὶ τέρψις ιδέσθαι παλλομενον και ἐλισσομενον πεπεδημενον ἰχθυν.

  Half a century later Nemesian gained equal fame among the Latins by a poem on the same theme, which has not come down to us. The piscatorial eclogues of Sanazzaro are an ornament of Italian literature, and were imitated by Milton in his Lycidas; but the first and best modern poem on the technicalities of angling (The Secrets of Angling, by John Dennys, 1630) is English, and is one of the most pleasing didactic poems in the language. The subject was next to have been taken up by a better known writer, Sir Henry Wotton, but his intended work was never completed, and it remained for Izaak Walton, whom we have already met as an ecclesiastical biographer, to render it equally interesting to the professional fisherman and charming to the lover of idyllic pastoral.

  The first edition (1653) is wellnigh the most prized of all rare old English books. It had four more editions in the author’s lifetime, all with additions and amendments, and it is needless to observe that it has retained its popularity to our day as completely as Paradise Lost or Pilgrim’s Progress. The technical details are no doubt sound, except for the author’s defective acquaintance with fly-fishing; but the preservative against time has not been the didactic skill which others might rival or surpass, but the accompaniment of natural description and song and pictures of country life, conveyed in a style whose quaint simplicity, at once transparent and formal, is a survival from the old Elizabethan days, to which, with their pastorals and poetry, he himself looks back with so much affection:

  ‘Look, under the broad beech-tree, I sat down, when I was last this way a-fishing, and the birds in the adjoining grove seemed to have a friendly contention with an echo, whose dead voice seemed to live in a hollow tree, near to the brow of that primrose-hill; there I sat viewing the silver streams glide silently towards their centre, the tempestuous sea; yet sometimes opposed by rugged roots and pebble-stones, which broke their waves, and turned them into foam: and sometimes I beguiled time by viewing the harmless lambs, some leaping securely in the cool shade, whilst others sported themselves in the cheerful sun; and saw others craving comfort from the swollen udders of their bleating dams. As I sat there, these and other sights had so fully possessed my soul with content, that I thought, as the poet has happily exprest it,

  “I was for that time lifted above earth; And possessed joys not promis’d in my birth.”

  As I left this place and entered into the next field, a second pleasure entertained me; ’twas a handsome milk-maid, that had not yet attained so much age and wisdom as to load her mind with any fears of many things that will never be, as too many men too often do; but she cast away all care, and sung like a nightingale; her voice was good, and the ditty fitted for it: ’twas that smooth song, which was made by Kit Marlow, now at least fifty years ago: and the milk-maid’s mother sung an answer to it, which was made by Sir Walter Raleigh in his younger days.

  ‘They were old-fashioned poetry, but choicely good, I think much better than the strong lines that are now in fashion in this critical age.’

  Passages like these create for the middle-aged man the joy and charm of Walton’s Angler, which the boy devours as a manual of the piscatorial art. To the more advanced reader the chief use of the fish is as a vehicle for the pastoral; nevertheless, the great success of Walton’s treatise is a proof that he was by no means inefficient from a more utilitarian point of view. Londoners have usually made good anglers, except, from want of opportunity, as fly-fishermen. Here it has been necessary to supplement Walton very largely; and indeed he himself confesses to having relied for such information as he does afford upon another angler. Elsewhere he approves himself master of his profession, and no doubt had trained many a pupil, perhaps made many a convert like the Venator who puts himself so readily under his tuition. Everyone knows the proem of his book, instinct with the freshness of the bright May morning, the otter hunt, a holy war in the eyes of the injured fisherman (O blissful days, when otters were yet to be found in the Lea!), and the earnest rhetoric of Auceps, Venator, and Piscator, contending for the pre-eminence of their favourite sports. It is characteristic of Walton’s simplicity and candour that he should have placed the most beautiful passage of his book in the mouth of one of his opponents.

  ‘These I will pass by, but not those little nimble musicians of the air, that warble forth their curious ditties, with which nature hath furnished them to the shame of art.

  ‘As first the lark, when she means to rejoice: to cheer herself and those that hear her, she then quits the earth, and sings as she ascends higher into the air, and having ended her heavenly employment, grows then mute and sad to think she must descend to the dull earth, which she would not touch but for necessity.

  ‘How do the blackbird and thrassel with their melodious voices bid welcome to the cheerful spring, and in their fixed months warble forth such ditties as no art or instrument can reach to?

  ‘Nay, the smaller birds also do the like in the
ir particular seasons, as namely the leverock, the tit-lark, the little linnet, and the honest robin, that loves mankind both alive and dead.

  ‘But the nightingale, another of my airy creatures, breathes such sweet loud music out of her little instrumental throat, that it might make mankind to think miracles are not ceased. He that at midnight, when the very labourer sleeps securely, should hear, as I have very often, the clear airs, the sweet descants, the natural rising and falling, the doubling and redoubling of her voice, might well be lifted above earth, and say Lord, what music hast thou provided for the saints in heaven, when thou affordest bad men such music on earth!’

  It has been remarked that it was necessary to supplement Walton’s imperfect knowledge of fly-fishing. This task, a delicate one in his lifetime, was piously and successfully performed by a scholar, Charles Cotton, of Beresford, Derbyshire (1630-1687), whose appendix of dialogues appeared in the fifth edition of Walton’s own treatise (1676) with some graceful introductory lines from Izaak himself, then in his eighty-third year. ‘I have been so obedient to your desires,’ he says, ‘as to endure all the praises you have ventured to fix upon me.’ Cotton, a country gentleman of good family, whose fishing cottage on the Dove stands to this day, obtained some reputation as a man of letters by a translation of Scarron’s burlesque poem, and other versions from the French. He was also an authority upon cards, which possibly accounts for the pecuniary embarrassments which clouded the latter part of his life. His piscatorial teaching is no doubt quite sound; but his book, although a lively dialogue, is no idyll like his master’s, and would be forgotten but for its association with the latter. The best passages are those depicting the horror of the London visitor at the steepness of the Derbyshire hills and the narrowness of the Derbyshire bridges. ‘I would not ride over it for a thousand pounds, nor fall off it for two; and yet I think I dare venture on foot, though if you were not by to laugh at me, I should do it on all four.’

  CHAPTER XVI. TRAVELLERS.

  Travel was well represented in the literature of the period, as could hardly be otherwise in an age distinguished by the awakening of a spirit of curiosity and intelligent inquiry. The time for systematic scientific exploration had not arrived; no Englishman devoted himself to travel as a profession with the steadiness of the Italian Della Valle, or described a foreign land with such thoroughness as in the Indian monograph of the French jeweller, Tavernier. But if no such monumental work was produced, there was no lack of standard ones. The two which have come nearest to attaining the rank of literary classics, however, were not the production of men of high attainments, but the work, or reputed work, of writers of imperfect education, whose chief claim to attention was the surpassing interest of their narratives.

  Robert Knox (1640?-1720).

  Robert Knox belongs to the especially interesting class of travellers whose experience of foreign countries has been gained in captivity. Driven by a storm on to the coast of Ceylon in 1659, he was made prisoner and carried into the interior, then almost unknown to Europeans. Here he supported himself for nearly twenty years by knitting caps and hawking goods, resisting all inducements to enter the service of the native sovereign, whose caprice and cruelty he dreaded with good reason. At length he escaped to a Dutch settlement, and returned safely to England, where he entered the service of the East India Company. After several more voyages to the East he retired, and died in good circumstances in 1720. His letters to his cousin, Strype, preserved in the University Library, Cambridge, show him, it is said, ‘to have been a man of morose temper, rough manners, and a woman-hater.’ The ‘manuscripts of my own life,’ bequeathed by him to his nephew, Knox Ward, have unfortunately gone astray. His account of his captivity was published in 1681, with a preface by the illustrious natural philosopher, Robert Hooke, who no doubt gave Knox much literary assistance, but happily abstained from tampering with the simplicity of his narrative. As a classic of travel this ranks with the similar works of Drury and Mariner, which also received literary form from intelligent collaborators, and it may have served in some measure as an example to Defoe.

  William Dampier (1652-1715).

  William Dampier fills a more important place than Knox in the history of travel, his experiences having been much more diversified, and his works being of much greater compass. Having gone in 1679 to the West Indies on a commercial adventure, he was persuaded to join a buccaneering expedition, many of the piratical incidents of which, judiciously passed over in his own narrative, are recorded in the manuscripts of his companions. It involved him in a series of adventures which took him all round the world, and from which he returned in 1691 with no other property than an ‘amiable savage, curiously tattooed.’ His voyage was published in 1697-99, and obtained such success that the government, overlooking or ill-informed of his piracies, employed him on a voyage of discovery to Australia. He was subsequently engaged in two privateering expeditions, in the first as commander, in the second only as pilot. Alexander Selkirk was put on shore on Juan Fernandez in the first of these, and taken off in the second. Dampier’s temper seems to have disqualified him for supreme authority, and he lost much of the reputation which he had formerly acquired. He died in 1715 in good circumstances, with a large amount of prize-money still owing to him. As a traveller he takes high rank from the interest of the occurrences he narrates, the clearness and simplicity of his style, his powers of description, and his practical knowledge. ‘His Discourse of the Winds,’ says Professor Laughton, ‘may even now be regarded, so far as it goes, as a text-book of that branch of physical geography.’ His literary merit, however, partly belongs to some unnamed coadjutor. ‘I have,’ says Charles Hatton, in the Hatton correspondence edited by Sir Edward Thompson, ‘discoursed with Dampier. He is a blunt fellow, but of better understanding than would be expected from one of his education. He is a very good navigator, kept his journal exactly, and set down every day what he thought of, but, you must imagine, had assistance in dressing up his history, in which are many mistakes in naming of places.’

  Burnet and Molesworth.

  The times were not ripe for archæological exploration, or for profound investigation of the manners and institutions of foreign nations; and the most gifted travellers of the age wrote with one eye upon things abroad and the other upon affairs at home. Among such itinerant politicians the first place must be given to Burnet, rather, however, for his celebrity in other fields than for the special merit of his travels. He recorded, nevertheless, a number of intelligent observations upon Switzerland, Italy, and Germany. Burnet is always lively and sagacious, and much more impartial than could have been expected in one so deeply concerned in political and theological controversies. His account of Venice is especially interesting. The book, written during his exile, was published in Holland, and was for some time prohibited in England. The somewhat similar work of Lord Molesworth (1656-1725) owes its existence to accident. Molesworth, a theoretical republican of Algernon Sidney’s school, was English envoy at Copenhagen from 1690 to 1692, and was obliged to quit the country in consequence, as was asserted, of an insult offered by him to the king; considering, however, the favourable character he gives of the monarch, this appears hardly probable. Whatever the reason, he threw up his embassy, and avenged himself by a severe indictment of the system of absolute government established in Denmark by the memorable revolution of 1660, which he declared to have entirely impoverished the country. Himself a patrician, he finds the principal cause of this in the abasement of his own class; and he probably wrote rather from regard to the affairs of England than those of Denmark. He is a forcible, but, at the same time, a candid writer, admitting frankly that ‘In Denmark there are no seditions, mutinies, or libels against the government; but all the people either are, or appear to be lovers of their king, notwithstanding their ill treatment, and the hardships they groan under. There are no clippers or coiners, no robbers upon the highway, nor housebreakers; which conveniency of arbitrary government, among the multitude of mischiefs a
ttending it, I have likewise observed in France.’ He is greatly impressed with the merits of the Danish laws, apart from their administration. ‘For justice, brevity, and perspicuity, they exceed all that I know in the world. They are grounded upon equity, and are all contained in one quarto volume, written in the language of the country.’ Such passages are conclusive as to his impartiality, and the violent attacks which his book provoked were probably mainly due to its exceedingly plain speaking about individuals. Of the Danes in general he says: ‘I never knew any country where the minds of the people were more of one calibre and pitch than here; you shall meet with none of extraordinary parts or qualifications, or excellent in particular studies and trades; you see no enthusiasts, madmen, natural fools, or fanciful folks; but a certain equality of understanding reigns among them. Every one keeps the ordinary beaten road of sense, which in this country is neither the fairest nor the foulest, without deviating to the right or left.’ Molesworth was a man of parts and independent character, who afterwards rendered his country considerable services in Ireland, where Swift dedicated one of the Drapier’s letters to him as a patriot.