His Odes—Alexander’s Feast. 45. Dryden’s fame as a lyric poet depends a very little on his Ode on Mrs. Killigrew’s death, but almost entirely on that song for St. Cecilia’s Day, commonly called Alexander’s Feast. The former, which is much praised by Johnson, has a few fine lines, mingled with a far greater number ill conceived and ill expressed; the whole composition has that spirit which Dryden hardly ever wanted, but it is too faulty for high praise. The latter used to pass for the best work of Dryden and the best ode in the language. Many would now agree with me that it is neither one nor the other and that it was rather over-rated during a period when criticism was not at a high point. Its excellence indeed is undeniable; it has the raciness, the rapidity, the mastery of language which belong to Dryden; the transitions are animated, the contrasts effective. But few lines are highly poetical, and some sink to the level of a common drinking song. It has the defects, as well as the merits of that poetry which is written for musical accompaniment.
His translation of Virgil. 46. Of Dryden as a translator it is needless to say much. In some instances, as in an ode of Horace, he has done extremely well; but his Virgil is, in my apprehension, the least successful of his chief works. Lines of consummate excellence are frequently shot, like threads of gold, through the web; but the general texture is of an ordinary material. Dryden was little fitted for a translator of Virgil; his mind was more rapid and vehement than that of his original, but by far less elegant and judicious. This translation seems to have been made in haste; it is more negligent than any of his own poetry, and the style is often almost studiously, and as it were spitefully, vulgar.
Decline of poetry from the Restoration. 47. The supremacy of Dryden from the death of Milton in 1674 to his own in 1700 was not only unapproached by any English poet, but he held almost a complete monopoly of English poetry. This latter period of the seventeenth century, setting aside these two great names, is one remarkably sterile in poetical genius. Under the first Stuarts, men of warm imagination and sensibility, though with deficient taste and little command of language, had done some honour to our literature; though once neglected, they have come forward again in public esteem, and if not very extensively read, have been valued by men of kindred minds full as much as they deserve. The versifiers of Charles II. and William’s days have experienced the opposite fate; popular for a time, and long so far known at least by name as to have entered rather largely into collections of poetry, they are now held in no regard, nor do they claim much favour from just criticism. Their object in general was to write like men of the world; with ease, wit, sense, and spirit, but dreading any soaring of fancy, any ardour of moral emotion, as the probable source of ridicule in their readers. Nothing quenches the flame of poetry more than this fear of the prosaic multitude, unless it is the community of habits with this very multitude; a life such as these poets generally led, of taverns and brothels, or, what came much to the same, of the court. We cannot say of Dryden, that “he bears no traces of those sable streams;” they sully too much the plumage of that stately swan, but his indomitable genius carries him upwards to a purer empyrean. The rest are just distinguishable from one another, not by any high gifts of the muse, but by degrees of spirit, of ease, of poignancy, of skill and harmony in versification, of good sense and acuteness. |Some minor poets enumerated.| They may easily be disposed of. Cleveland is sometimes humorous, but succeeds only in the lightest kinds of poetry. Marvell wrote sometimes with more taste and feeling than was usual, but his satires are gross and stupid. Oldham, far superior in this respect, ranks perhaps next to Dryden; he is spirited and pointed, but his versification is too negligent, and his subjects temporary. Roscommon, one of the best for harmony and correctness of language, has little vigour, but he never offends, and Pope has justly praised his “unspotted bays.” Mulgrave affects ease and spirit, but his Essay on Satire belies the supposition that Dryden had any share in it. Rochester, with more considerable and varied genius, might have raised himself to a higher place than he holds. Of Otway, Duke, and several more, it is not worth while to give any character, The Revolution did nothing for poetry; William’s reign, always excepting Dryden, is our nadir in works of imagination. Then came Blackmore with his epic poems of Prince Arthur and King Arthur, and Pomfret with his Choice, both popular in their own age, and both intolerable by their frigid and tame monotony in the next. The lighter poetry, meantime, of song and epigram did not sink along with the serious; the state of society was much less adverse to it. Rochester, Dorset, and some more whose names are unknown, or not easily traced, do credit to the Caroline period.
48. In the year 1699, a poem was published, Garth’s Dispensary, which deserves attention, not so much for its own merit, though it comes nearest to Dryden, at whatever interval, as from its indicating a transitional state in our versification. The general structure of the couplet through the seventeenth century may be called abnormous; the sense is not only often carried beyond the second line, which the French avoid, but the second line of one couplet and the first of the next are not seldom united in a single sentence or a portion of one, so that the two, though not rhyming, must be read as a couplet. The former, when as dexterously managed as it was by Dryden, adds much to the beauty of the general versification; but the latter, a sort of adultery of the lines already wedded to other companions at rhyme’s altar, can scarcely ever be pleasing, unless it be in narrative poetry, where it may bring the sound nearer to prose. A tendency, however, to the French rule of constantly terminating the sense with the couplet, will be perceived to have increased from the Restoration. Roscommon seldom deviates from it, and in long passages of Dryden himself there will hardly be found an exception. But, perhaps, it had not been so uniform in any former production as in the Dispensary. The versification of this once famous mock-heroic poem is smooth and regular, but not forcible; the language clear and neat; the parodies and allusions happy. Many lines are excellent in the way of pointed application, and some are remembered and quoted, where few call to mind the author. It has been remarked that Garth enlarged and altered the Dispensary in almost every edition, and what is more uncommon, that every alteration was for the better. This poem may be called an imitation of the Lutrin, inasmuch as but for the Lutrin, it might probably not have been written, and there are even particular resemblances. The subject, which is a quarrel between the physicians and apothecaries of London, may vie with that of Boileau in want of general interest; yet it seems to afford more diversity to the satirical poet. Garth, as has been intimated, is a link of transition between the style and turn of poetry under Charles and William, and that we find in Addison, Prior, Tickell, and Pope, in the reign of Anne.
Sect. IV.
ON LATIN POETRY.
Latin poets of Italy. 49. The Jesuits were not unmindful of the credit their Latin verses had done them in periods more favourable to that exercise of taste than the present. |Ceva.| Even in Italy, which had ceased to be a very genial soil, one of their number, Ceva, may deserve mention. His Jesus Puer is a long poem, not inelegantly written, but rather singular in some of its descriptions, where the poet has been more solicitous to adorn his subject than attentive to its proper character; and the same objection might be made to some of its episodes. Ceva wrote also a philosophical poem, extolled by Corniani, but which has not fallen into my hands.[990] Averani, a Florentine of various erudition, Cappellari, Strozzi, author of a poem on chocolate, and several others, both within the order of Loyola and without it, cultivated Latin poetry with some success.[991] |Sergardi.| But, though some might be superior as poets, none were more remarkable or famous than Sergardi, best known by some biting satires under the name of Q. Sectanus, which he levelled at his personal enemy Gravina. The reputation, indeed, of Gravina with posterity has not been affected by such libels; but they are not wanting either in poignancy and spirit, or in a command of Latin phrase.[992]
[990] Corniani, viii., 214. Salfi, xiv., 257.
[991] Bibl. Choisie, vol. xxii. Salfi, xiv., 238, et post.
[992] Salfi, xiv., 299. Corniani, viii., 280.