His family, both on the father's and the mother's side, was in full sympathy with the party opposed to the court. The son was educated at Westminster, then under the mastership of Richard Busby, whose relentless use of the rod has made his name famous in that long line of flagellants who have been at the head of the great English public schools. From Westminster he went to Trinity College, Cambridge. There he received the degree of A. B. in January 1654. Later in that same decade—the precise date is not known—he took up his residence in London; and in London the rest of his life was almost entirely spent.
Dryden's first published literary effort appeared in a little volume made up of thirty-three elegies, by various authors, on the death of a youth of great promise who had been educated at Westminster. This was Lord Hastings, the eldest son of the Earl of Huntingdon. He had died of the small-pox. Dryden's contribution was written in 1649, and consisted of but little over a hundred lines. No one expects great verse from a boy of eighteen; but the most extravagant anticipations of sorry performance will fail to come up to the reality of the wretchedness which was here attained. It was in words like these that the future laureate bewailed the death of the young nobleman and depicted the disease of which he died:—
"Was there no milder way but the small-pox,
The very filthiness of Pandora's box?
So many spots, like naeves, our Venus soil?
One jewel set off with so many a foil?
Blisters with pride swelled, which through his flesh did sprout
Like rosebuds, stuck in the lily-skin about.
Each little pimple had a tear in it,
To wail the fault its rising did commit;
Which, rebel-like, with its own lord at strife,
Thus made an insurrection 'gainst his life.
Or were these gems sent to adorn his skin,
The cabinet of a richer soul within?
No comet need foretell his change drew on,
Whose corps might seem a constellation."
Criticism cannot be rendered sufficiently vituperative to characterize properly such a passage. It is fuller of conceits than ever Cowley crowded into the same space; and lines more crabbed and inharmonious Donne never succeeded in perpetrating. Its production upsets all principles of prophecy. The wretchedest of poetasters can take courage, when he contemplates the profundity of the depth out of which uprose the greatest poet of his time.
JOHN DRYDEN.
Dryden is, in fact, an example of that somewhat rare class of writers who steadily improve with advancing years. Most poets write their best verse before middle life. Many of them after that time go through a period of decline, and sometimes of rapid decline; and if they live to reach old age, they add to the quantity of their production without sensibly increasing its value. This general truth is conspicuously untrue of Dryden. His first work gave no promise of his future excellence, and it was by very slow degrees that he attained to the mastery of his art. But the older he grew, the better he wrote; and the volume published a few months before his death, and largely composed almost under its shadow, so far from showing the slightest sign of failing power, contains a great deal of the best poetry he ever produced.
As Dryden's relatives were Puritans, and some of them held place under the government, it was natural that upon coming to London he should attach himself to that party. Accordingly it is no surprise to find him duly mourning the death of the great Protector in certain 'Heroic Stanzas Consecrated to the Memory of Oliver Cromwell.' The first edition bears the date of 1659, and so far as we know, the production was Dryden's second venture in poetry. It was written in the measure of Davenant's 'Gondibert,' and is by no means a poor piece of work, though it has been sometimes so styled. It certainly pays not simply a high but a discerning tribute to the genius of Cromwell. Before two years had gone by, we find its author greeting the return of Charles with effusive loyalty, and with predictions of prosperity and honor to attend his reign, which events were soon woefully to belie. The poet has been severely censured for this change of attitude. It is a censure which might be bestowed with as much propriety upon the whole population of England. The joyful expectations to which he gave utterance were almost universal; and no other charge can well be brought against him than that he had the ability and took the occasion to express sentiments which were felt by nearly the entire nation.
From this time on, Dryden appears more and more in the public eye, and slowly but steadily forged his way to the front as the representative man of letters of his time. In 1670 he was appointed to the two distinct offices of poet laureate and historiographer royal. Thenceforward his relations with the court became close, and so they did not cease to be until the expulsion of James II. In 1683 he received a further mark of royal favor, in being made collector of customs of the port of London. In the political controversies which subsequently arose, Dryden's writings faithfully represented the sentiments of the side he had chosen, and expressed their prejudices and aversions not merely with force but also with virulence. His first literary activity, however, was on neutral ground. After eighteen years of compulsory closing, the Restoration opened wide once more the doors of the theatre. Dryden, like every one else possessed of literary ability, began to write for the stage. His first play, a comedy entitled 'The Wild Gallant,' was brought out in February 1663; and for the eighteen years following, it was compositions of such nature that occupied the main portion of his literary life. During that time he produced wholly or in part twenty-two comedies and tragedies. His pieces must from the outset have met with a fair degree of success, otherwise the King's Company would not have entered into a contract with him, as it did in 1667, to furnish for them each year a fixed number of plays, in consideration of his receiving a certain share of the profits of the theatre.