The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Volume 2 / With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes

by John Dryden

CRITICAL ESTIMATE

OF THE

GENIUS AND POETICAL WORKS OF JOHN DRYDEN.

In our Life of Dryden we promised to say something about the question, how far is a poet, particularly in the moral tendency and taste of his writings, to be tried—and either condemned or justified—by the character and spirit of his age? To a rapid consideration of this question we now proceed, before examining the constituent elements or the varied fruits of the poet's genius.

And here, unquestionably, there are extremes, which every critic should avoid. Some imagine that a writer of a former century should be tried, either by the standard which prevails in the cultured and civilised nineteenth, or by the exposition of moral principles and practice which is to be found in the Scriptures. Now, it is obviously, so far as taste is concerned, as unjust to judge a book written in the style and manner of one age by the merely arbitrary and conventional rules established in another, as to judge the dress of our ancestors by the fashions of the present day. And in respect of morality, it is as unfair to visit with the same measure of condemnation offences against decorum or decency, committed by writers living before or living after the promulgation of the Christian code, as it would be to class the Satyrs, Priapi, and Bacchantes of an antique sculptor, with their imitations, by inferior and coarser artists, in later times. There must be a certain measure of allowance made for the errors of Genius when it was working as the galley-slave of its tradition and period, and when it had not yet received the Divine Light which, shining into the world from above, has supplied men with higher æsthetic as well as spiritual models of principles, and revealed man's body to be the temple of the Holy Ghost. To look for our modern philanthropy in that "Greek Gazette," the Iliad of Homer—to expect that reverence for the Supreme Being which the Bible has taught us in the Metamorphoses of Ovid—or to seek that refinement of manners and language which has only of late prevailed amongst us, in the plays of Aristophanes and Plautus—were very foolish and very vain. In ages not so ancient, and which have revolved since the dawn of Christianity, a certain coarseness of thought and language has been prevalent; and for it still larger allowance should be made, because it has been applied to simplicity rather than to sensuality—to rustic barbarism, not to civilised corruption—and carries along with it a rough raciness, and a reference to the sturdy aboriginal beast—just as acorns in the trough suggest the immemorial forests where they grew, and the rich greenswards on which they fell.

In two cases, it thus appears, should the severest censor be prepared to modify his condemnation of the bad taste or the impurity to be found in writers of genius—first, in that of a civilization, perfect in its kind, but destitute of the refining and sublimating element which a revelation only can supply; and, secondly, in that of those ages in which the lights of knowledge and religion are contending with the gloom of barbarian rudeness. Perhaps there are still two other cases capable of palliation—that of a mind so constituted as to be nothing, if not a mirror of its age, and faithfully and irresistibly reflecting even its vices and pollutions; or that of a mind morbidly in love with the morbidities and the vile passages of human nature. But suppose the case of a writer, sitting under the full blaze of Gospel truth, professedly a believer in the Gospel, and intimately acquainted with its oracles, living in a late and dissipated, not a rude and simple age—possessed of varied and splendid talents, which qualified him to make as well as to mirror, and with a taste naturally sound and manly, who should yet seek to shock the feelings of the pious, to gratify the low tendencies, and fire to frenzy the evil passions of his period—he is not to be shielded by the apology that he has only conformed to the bad age on which he was so unfortunate as to fall. Prejudice may, indeed, put in such a plea in his defence; but the inevitable eye of common sense, distinguishing between necessity and choice, between coarseness and corruption, between a man's passively yielding to and actively inviting and encouraging the currents of false taste and immorality which he must encounter, will find that plea nugatory, and bring in against the author a verdict of guilty.

Now this, we fear, is exactly the case of Dryden. He was neither a "barbarian" nor a "Scythian." He was a conscious artist, not a high though helpless reflector of his age. He had not, we think, like his relative, Swift, originally any diseased delight in filth for its own sake; was not—shall we say?—a natural, but an artificial Yahoo. He wielded a power over the public mind, approaching the absolute, and which he could have turned to virtuous, instead of vicious account—at first, it might have been amidst considerable resistance and obloquy, but ultimately with triumphant success. This, however, he never attempted, and must therefore be classed, in this respect, with such writers as Byron, whose powers gilded their pollutions, less than their pollutions degraded and defiled their powers; nay, perhaps he should be ranked even lower than the noble bard, whose obscenities are not so gross, and who had, besides, to account for them the double palliations of passion and of despair.

In these remarks we refer principally to Dryden's plays; for his poems, as we remarked in the Life, are (with the exception of a few of the Prologues, which we print under protest) in a great measure free from impurity. We pass gladly to consider him in his genius and his poetical works. The most obvious, and among the most remarkable characteristics of his poetic style, are its wondrous elasticity and ease of movement. There is never for an instant any real or apparent effort, any straining for effect, any of that "double, double, toil and trouble," by which many even of the weird cauldrons in which Genius forms her creations are disturbed and bedimmed. That power of doing everything with perfect and conscious ease, which Dugald Stewart has ascribed to Barrow and to Horsley in prose, distinguished Dryden in poetry. Whether he discusses the deep questions of fate and foreknowledge in "Religio Laici," or lashes Shaftesbury in the "Medal," or pours a torrent of contempt on Shadwell in "MacFlecknoe," or describes the fire of London in the "Annus Mirabilis," or soars into lyric enthusiasm in his "Ode on the Death of Mrs Killigrew," and "Alexander's Feast," or paints a tournament in "Palamon and Arcite," or a fairy dance in the "Flower and the Leaf,"—he is always at home, and always aware that he is. His consciousness of his own powers amounts to exultation. He is like the steed who glories in that tremendous gallop which affects the spectator with fear. Indeed, we never can separate our conception of Dryden's vigorous and vaulting style from the image of a noble horse, devouring the dust of the field, clearing obstacles at a bound, taking up long leagues as a little thing, and the very strength and speed of whose motion give it at a distance the appearance of smoothness. Pope speaks of his

"Long resounding march, and energy divine."

Perhaps "ease divine" had been words more characteristic of that almost superhuman power of language by which he makes the most obstinate materials pliant, melts down difficulties as if by the touch of magic, and, to resume the former figure, comes into the goal without a hair turned on his mane, or a single sweat-drop confessing effort or extraordinary exertion. We know no poet since Homer who can be compared to Dryden in this respect, except Scott, who occasionally, in "Marmion," and the "Lay of the Last Minstrel," exhibits the same impetuous ease and fiery fluent movement. Scott does not, however, in general, carry the same weight as the other; and the species of verse he uses, in comparison to the heroic rhyme of Dryden, gives you often the impression of a hard trot, rather than of a "long-resounding" and magnificent gallop. Scott exhibits in his poetry the soul of a warrior; but it is of a warrior of the Border—somewhat savage and coarse. Dryden can, for the nonce at least, assume the appearance, and display the spirit, of a knight of ancient chivalry—gallant, accomplished, elegant, and gay.