In prose and verse, was own’d, without dispute,
Through all the realms of nonsense, absolute.
Although these lines be written of Flecknoe, Shadwell is the hero of the piece, introduced as if selected by Flecknoe to succeed him on the throne of dulness. Richard Flecknoe was an Irish priest, well known about the court; but notwithstanding Cibber’s assertion in his Lives of the Poets, he was never poet laureat. The above is the story told by all the biographers; but if Mr. Malone’s laborious and minute researches have been pursued with his usual accuracy, they have been mistaken in the date of the publication, which he fixes in October, 1682. If this be correct, the satire must have been a sportive anticipation of an event, which its author little expected to come to pass; and not the ebullition of revenge for the loss of an honourable and lucrative employment. Taking the earlier as the true date, we might suspect that the prophecy was fulfilled in the person of Shadwell, as a vindictive aggravation of the deposed laureat’s fall. Yet it is difficult to reconcile it to probability that Dryden should have dishonoured an office which he had been holding for the last twelve years, and must then have calculated on holding for his life, by a fictitious successive inauguration of two blockheads, who “never deviated into sense.”
Pope’s Dunciad, though more extended in its plan, and more diversified in its incidents, was professedly written in imitation of this poem. The leisure and pains bestowed on his performance gave the imitator the superiority in point of elaborate execution; but there are bursts of pleasantry in MacFlecknoe, and sallies of wit and humour, equal if not superior to any thing in Pope or Boileau, or perhaps in any poet excepting Horace. Dr. Joseph Warton says of it, that “in point of satire, both oblique and direct, contempt and indignation, clear diction, and melodious versification, this poem is perhaps the best of its kind in any language.”
Dr. Johnson doubts whether Dryden was the translator of the Life of Francis Xavier, by Father Bouhours, to which his name is affixed. The borrowing of popular names for title-pages was very prevalent in those days, and the loan probably not without profit to the lenders.
In 1693 a translation of Juvenal and Persius appeared. The first, third, sixth, tenth, and sixteenth satires of Juvenal, and the whole of Persius, are Dryden’s: also the Dedication to Lord Dorset, a long and ingenious discourse, in which the writer gives an account of a design, which he never carried into effect, of writing an epic poem either on Arthur or the Black Prince. Lord Dorset well deserved the compliment of so masterly a dedication; for he continued to patronise the poet in the reverse of his fortunes, and allowed him an annuity equal to the salary which he had lost.
In 1694 Dryden published a prose translation of Du Fresnoy’s Art of Painting, with a Preface, exhibiting a parallel between painting and poetry. Pope addressed a copy of verses to Jervas, the painter, in praise of this work.
The most laborious of Dryden’s works, the translation of Virgil, was given to the world in 1697. The Pastorals were dedicated to Lord Clifford, the Georgics to Lord Chesterfield, and the Æneid to Lord Mulgrave: an economical and lucrative combination of flattery which the wits suffered not to pass unnoticed. The translation had an extensive sale, and has since passed through many editions. Like most of Dryden’s longer productions, it has many careless passages, which do not well accord with an original so remarkable for finish and correctness; but it still stands its ground, and is a stock-book in the face of the more careful and perhaps more scholarlike performances of Warton, Sotheby, and Pitt.
Besides the original pieces and translations already mentioned, Dryden wrote many others, the most important of which were published in six volumes of Miscellanies, to which he was the principal contributor. They consist of translations from the Greek and Latin poets; epistles, prologues, and epilogues; odes, elegies, epitaphs, and songs. Alexander’s Feast, an ode for Saint Cecilia’s Day, displays one of the highest flights within the compass of lyric poetry. Dryden, although no lover of labour, is said to have devoted a fortnight to this masterpiece. Yet the poetic fervour is so supported throughout, that it reads as if struck off at a heat; so much so, that the few negligences which escaped the enthusiasm of the writer are scarcely ever noticed. Dr. Johnson, seldom carried beyond the wariness of criticism by the inspiration of his author, did not discover that some of the lines are without correspondent rhymes, till after an acquaintance with it of many years. The splendour of this poem eclipsed that of his first ode for Saint Cecilia’s Day, which would have fixed the fame of any other poet. In Alexander’s Feast the versification is brilliantly worked up, and abruptly varied, according to the rapid transitions of the subject; the language is natural though elevated, and the sentiments are suited to the age and occasion. Had Dryden never written another line, his name would yet be as undying as the tongue in which he wrote. His Fables in English verse from Homer, Ovid, Boccaccio, and Chaucer, were his last work; they were published in 1698. The preface gives a critical account of the authors from whom the Fables are translated. In this work he furnished us with the first example of the revival of ancient English writers by modernizing their language. Yet those readers who can master Chaucer’s phraseology, and have an ear so practised as to catch the tune of his verse, will like him better in the simplicity of his native garb, than in the elaborate splendour of his borrowed costume.
Dryden was a voluminous writer in prose as well as in verse, and quite as great a master of the English language in the former as in the latter. His performances in prose consist of Dedications, Prefaces, and controversial pieces; the Lives of Plutarch and Lucian, prefixed to the translation of those authors by several hands; the Life of Polybius, prefixed to the translation of that historian by Sir Henry Shears; and the Preface to Walsh’s Dialogue concerning Women.