DRYDEN'S ESSAY UPON SATIRE.
(Vol. ii., pp. 422. 462.)
The Query proposed by your correspondent, as to the authorship of the Essay on Satire, is a very interesting one, and I am rather surprised that it has not yet been replied to. In favour of your correspondent's view, and I think it is perhaps the strongest argument which can be alleged, is Dean Lockier's remark:—
"Could anything be more impudent than his (Sheffield's) publishing that satire, for writing which Dryden was beaten in Rose Alley (and which was so remarkably known by the name of the 'Rose Alley Satire') as his own? Indeed he made a few alterations in it, but these were only verbal, and generally for the worse."—Spence's Anecdotes, edit. Singer, p. 64.
Dean Lockier, it must be observed, was well acquainted with Dryden from 1685 to the time of his death; and appears to speak so positively that he would seem to have acquired his knowledge from Dryden's own information. His first introduction to that great poet arose from an observation made in Dryden's hearing about his Mac Fleckno; and it is therefore the more likely that he would be correctly informed as to the author's other satires. Dean Lockier was, it may be added, a good critic; and his opinions on literary subjects are so just, that it is to be regretted we have only very few of them.
I confess I do not attach much weight to the argument arising from the lines on the Earl of Mulgrave himself contained in the poem. To transfer suspicion from himself, in so general a satire, it was necessary to include his own name amongst the rest; but, though the lines are somewhat obscure, it is, after all, as respects him, compared with the other persons mentioned, a very gentle flagellation, and something like what children call a make-believe. Indeed Rochester, in a letter to his friend Henry Saville (21st Nov. 1679), speaks of it as a panegyric.
On the other hand, Mulgrave expressly denied Dryden's being the author, in the lines in his Essay on Poetry,—
"Tho' praised and punished for another's rhymes."
and by inference claimed the poem, or at least the lines on Rochester, as his own. Dryden, in the Preface to his Virgil, praises the Essay on Poetry in the highest terms; but says not a word to dispute Mulgrave's statement, though he might then have safely claimed the Essay on Satire, if his own; and though he must have been aware that, by his silence, he was virtually resigning his sole claim to its authorship. It was subsequently included in Mulgrave's works, and has ever since gone under the joint names of himself and Dryden.
On the question of internal evidence critics differ. Your correspondent can see in it no hand but Dryden's; while Malone will scarcely allow that Dryden made even a few verbal alterations in it (Life, p. 130.); and Sir Walter Scott is not inclined to admit any further participation on the part of the great poet than "a few hints for revision," and denies its merit altogether—a position in which I think very few, who carefully peruse it, will agree with him.
I am disposed to take a middle course between your correspondent and Dryden's two biographers, and submit that there is quite sufficient internal evidence of joint ownership. I cannot think such lines as—
"I, who so wise and humble seem to be,
Now my own vanity and pride can't see;"
or,—
"I, who have all this while been finding fault,
E'en with my master who first satire taught,
And did by that describe the task so hard,
It seems stupendious, and above reward."
or,—
"To tell men freely of their foulest faults,
To laugh at their vain deeds and vainer thoughts:"
would proceed from Dryden, while it is to be noticed that the inharmonious rhymes "faults" and "thoughts" were favourites of Mulgrave, and occur twice in his Essay on Poetry.
Neither can I doubt that the verses on Shaftesbury,—the four "will any dog;" the four "For words and wit did anciently agree," the four "Mean in each action;" the two "Each pleasure has its price"—are Dryden's additions, with many others, which a careful reader will instantly appropriate.
I can find no sufficient authority for the statement of Malone and Sir W. Scott, that Pope revised the Essay on Satire. It is well known he corrected that on Poetry.
Jas. Crossley.
Manchester, Feb. 10. 1851.