"When the grim captain, with a surly tone,
Cries out, Pack up, ye rascals, and be gone!
Kicked out, we set the best face on't we could," etc.
In translating the most indelicate passage of Lucretius, Dryden has rather enhanced than veiled its indecency. The story of Iphis in the Metamorphoses is much more bluntly told by the English poet than by Ovid. In short, where there was a latitude given for coarseness of description and expression, Dryden has always too readily laid hold of it. The very specimen which he has given us of a version of Homer, contains many passages in which the antique Grecian simplicity is vulgarly and inelegantly rendered. The Thunderer terms Juno
"My household curse, my lawful plague, the spy
Of Jove's designs, his other squinting eye."
The ambrosial feast of Olympus concludes like a tavern revel:—
"Drunken at last, and drowsy, they depart
Each to his house, adored with laboured art
Of the lame architect. The thundering God,
Even he, withdrew to rest, and had his load;
His swimming head to needful sleep applied,
And Juno lay unheeded by his side."
There is reason indeed to think, that, after the Revolution, Dryden's taste was improved in this, as in some other respects. In his translation of Juvenal, for example, the satire against women, coarse as it is, is considerably refined and softened from the grossness of the Latin poet; who has, however, been lately favoured by a still more elegant, and (excepting perhaps one or two passages) an equally spirited translation, by Mr. Gifford of London. Yet, admitting this apology for Dryden as fully as we dare, from the numerous specimens of indelicacy even in his later translations, we are induced to judge it fortunate that Homer was reserved for a poet who had not known the age of Charles II.; and whose inaccuracies and injudicious decorations may be pardoned, even by the scholar, when he considers the probability, that Dryden might have slipped into the opposite extreme, by converting rude simplicity into indecency or vulgarity. The Æneid, on the other hand, if it restrained Dryden's poetry to a correct, steady, and even flight, if it damped his energy by its regularity, and fettered his excursive imagination by the sobriety of its decorum, had the corresponding advantage of holding forth to the translator no temptation to licence, and no apology for negligence. Where the fervency of genius is required, Dryden has usually equalled his original; where peculiar elegance and exact propriety is demanded, his version may be sometimes found flat and inaccurate, but the mastering spirit of Virgil prevails, and it is never disgusting or indelicate. Of all the classical translations we can boast, none is so acceptable to the class of readers, to whom the learned languages are a clasped book and a sealed fountain. And surely it is no moderate praise to say, that a work is universally pleasing to those for whose use it is principally intended, and to whom only it is absolutely indispensable.
The prose of Dryden may rank with the best in the English language. It is no less of his own formation than his versification, is equally spirited, and equally harmonious. Without the lengthened and pedantic sentences of Clarendon, it is dignified where dignity is becoming, and is lively without the accumulation of strained and absurd allusions and metaphors, which were unfortunately mistaken for wit by many of the author's contemporaries. Dryden has been accused of unnecessarily larding his style with Gallicisms. It must be owned that, to comply probably with the humour of Charles, or from an affectation of the fashionable court dialect, the poet-laureate employed such words as fougue, fraicheur, etc., instead of the corresponding expressions in English; an affectation which does not appear in our author's later writings. But even the learned and excellent Sir David Dalrymple was led to carry this idea greatly too far. "Nothing," says that admirable antiquary, "distinguishes the genius of the English language so much as its general naturalisation of foreigners. Dryden in the reign of Charles II., printed the following words as pure French newly imported: amour, billet-doux, caprice, chagrin, conversation, double-entendre, embarrassed, fatigue, figure, foible, gallant, good graces, grimace, incendiary, levée, maltreated, rallied, repartée, ridicule, tender, tour; with several others which are now considered as natives.— 'Marriage à la Mode.'"[23] But of these words many had been long naturalised in England, and, with the adjectives derived from them, are used by Shakespeare and the dramatists of his age.[24] By their being printed in italics in the play of "Marriage à la Mode," Dryden only meant to mark, that Melantha, the affected coquette in whose mouth they are placed, was to use the French, not the vernacular pronunciation. It will admit of question, whether any single French word has been naturalised upon the sole authority of Dryden.
Although Dryden's style has nothing obsolete, we can occasionally trace a reluctance to abandon an old word or idiom; the consequence, doubtless of his latter studies in ancient poetry. In other respects, nothing can be more elegant than the diction of the praises heaped upon his patrons, for which he might himself plead the apology he uses for Maimbourg, "who, having enemies, made himself friends by panegyrics." Of these lively critical prefaces, which, when we commence, we can never lay aside till we have finished, Dr. Johnson has said with equal force and beauty,—"They have not the formality of a settled style, in which the first half of the sentence betrays the other. The clauses are never balanced, nor the periods modelled; every word seems to drop by chance, though it falls into its proper place. Nothing is cold or languid; the whole is airy, animated, and vigorous; what is little is gay, what is great is splendid. He may be thought to mention himself too frequently; but while he forces himself upon our esteem, we cannot refuse him to stand high in his own. Everything is excused by the play of images and the sprightliness of expression. Though all is easy, nothing is feeble; though all seems careless, there is nothing harsh; and though, since his earlier works, more than a century has passed, they have nothing yet uncouth or obsolete."
"He, who writes much, will not easily escape a manner, such a recurrence of particular modes as may be easily noted. Dryden is always another and the same. He does not exhibit a second time the same elegancies in the same form, nor appears to have any art other than that of expressing with clearness what he thinks with vigour. His style could not easily be imitated, either seriously or ludicrously; for, being always equable and always varied, it has no prominent or discriminative characters. The beauty, who is totally free from disproportion of parts and features, cannot be ridiculed by an overcharged resemblance."
The last paragraph is not to be understood too literally; for although Dryden never so far copied himself as to fall into what has been quaintly called mannerism; yet accurate observation may trace, in his works, the repetition of some sentiments and illustrations from prose to verse, and back again to prose.[24] In his preface to the Æneid, he has enlarged on the difficulty of varying phrases, when the same sense returned on the author; and surely we must allow full praise to his fluency and command of language, when, during so long a literary career, and in the course of such a variety of miscellaneous productions, we can detect in his style so few instances of repetition, or self-imitation.