And with this Te Deum, on the part of Ravenscroft ended a petty controversy, which gives him his only title to be named in the life of an English classic.
From what has been detailed of these disputes we may learn that, even at this period, the laureate's wreath was not unmingled with thorns; and that if Dryden still maintained his due ascendancy over the common band of authors, it was not without being occasionally under the necessity of descending into the arena against very inferior antagonists.
In the course of these controversies, Dryden was not idle, though he cannot be said to have been worthily or fortunately employed; his muse being lent to the court, who were at this time anxious to awake the popular indignation against the Dutch. It is a characteristic of the English nation, that their habitual dislike against their neighbours is soon and easily blown into animosity. But, although Dryden chose for his theme the horrid massacre of Amboyna, and fell to the task with such zeal that he accomplished it in a month, his play was probably of little service to the cause in which it was written. The story is too disgusting to produce the legitimate feelings of pity and terror which tragedy should excite: the black-hole of Calcutta would be as pleasing a subject. The character of the Hollanders is too grossly vicious and detestable to give the least pleasure. They are neither men, nor even devils; but a sort of lubber fiends, compounded of cruelty, avarice, and brutal debauchery, like Dutch swabbers possessed by demons. But of this play the author has himself admitted, that the subject is barren, the persons low, and the writing not heightened by any laboured scenes: and, without attempting to contradict this modest description, we may dismiss the tragedy of "Amboyna." It was dedicated to Lord Clifford of Chudleigh, an active member of the Cabal administration of Charles II.; but who, as a Catholic, on the test act being passed, resigned his post of lord high treasurer, and died shortly afterwards. There is great reason to think that this nobleman had essentially favoured Dryden's views in life. On a former occasion, he had termed Lord Clifford a better Maecenas than that of Horace;[27] and, in the present dedication, he mentions the numerous favours received through so many years as forming one continued act of his patron's generosity and goodness; so that the excess of his gratitude had led the poet to receive those benefits, as the Jews received their law, with mute wonder, rather than with outward and ceremonious acclamation. These sentiments of obligation he continued, long after Lord Clifford's death, to express in terms equally glowing;[28] so that we may safely do this statesman's memory the justice to record him as an active and discerning patron of Dryden's genius.
In the course of 1673 our author's pen was engaged in a task, which may be safely condemned as presumptuous, though that pen was Dryden's. It was no other than that of new-modelling the "Paradise Lost" of Milton into a dramatic poem, called the "State of Innocence, or the Fall of Man." The coldness with which Milton's mighty epic was received upon the first publication is almost proverbial. The character of the author, obnoxious for his share in the usurped government; the turn of the language, so different from that of the age; the seriousness of a subject so discordant with its lively frivolities—gave to the author's renown the slowness of growth with the permanency of the oak. Milton's merit, however, had not escaped the eye of Dryden.[29] He was acquainted with the author, perhaps even before the Restoration; and who can doubt Dryden's power of feeling the sublimity of the "Paradise Lost," even had he himself not assured us, in the prefatory essay to his own piece, that he accounts it, "undoubtedly, one of the greatest, most noble, and most sublime poems, which either this age or nation has produced"? We are, therefore, to seek for the motive which could have induced him, holding this opinion, "to gild pure gold, and set a perfume on the violet." Dennis has left a curious record upon this subject:—"Dryden," he observes, "in his Preface before the 'State of Innocence,' appears to have been the first, those gentlemen excepted whose verses are before Milton's poem, who discovered in so public a manner an extraordinary opinion of Milton's extraordinary merit. And yet Mr. Dryden at that time knew not half the extent of his excellence, as more than twenty years afterwards he confessed to me, and is pretty plain from his writing the 'State of Innocence.'" Had he known the full extent of Milton's excellence, Dennis thought he would not have ventured on this undertaking, unless he designed to be a foil to him: "but they," he adds, "who knew Mr. Dryden, know very well, that he was not of a temper to design to be a foil to any one."[30] We are therefore to conclude, that it was only the hope of excelling his original, admirable as he allowed it to be, which impelled Dryden upon this unprofitable and abortive labour; and we are to examine the improvements which Dryden seemed to meditate, or, in other words, the differences between his taste and that of Milton.
And first we may observe, that the difference in their situations affected their habits of thinking upon poetical subjects. Milton had retired into solitude, if not into obscurity, relieved from everything like external agency either influencing his choice of a subject, or his mode of treating it; and in consequence, instead of looking abroad to consult the opinion of his age, he appealed only to the judge which heaven had implanted within him, when he was endowed with severity of judgment, and profusion of genius. But the taste of Dryden was not so independent. Placed by his very office at the head of what was fashionable in literature, he had to write for those around him, rather than for posterity; was to support a brilliant reputation in the eye of the world; and is frequently found boasting of his intimacy with those who led the taste of the age, and frequently quoting the
"tamen me
Cum magnis vixisse, invita falebitur usque
Invidia."
It followed, that Dryden could not struggle against the tide into which he was launched, and that, although it might be expected from his talents that he should ameliorate the reigning taste, or at least carry those compositions which it approved to their utmost pitch of perfection, it could not be hoped that he should altogether escape being perverted by it, or should soar so superior to all its prejudices as at once to admit the super-eminent excellence of a poem which ran counter to these in so many particulars. The versification of Milton, according to the taste of the times, was ignoble, from its supposed facility. Dryden was, we have seen, so much possessed with this prejudice, as to pronounce blank verse unfit even for a fugitive paper of verses. Even in his later and riper judgment he affirms, that, whatever pretext Milton might allege for the use of blank verse, "his own particular reason is plainly this,—that rhyme was not his talent; he had neither the ease of doing it, nor the graces of it: which is manifest in his 'Juvenilia,' or verses written in his youth, where his rhyme is always constrained and forced, and comes hardly from him, at an age when the soul is most pliant, and the passion of love makes almost every man a rhymer, though not a poet."
The want of the dignity of rhyme was therefore, according to his idea, an essential deficiency in the "Paradise Lost." According to Aubrey, Dryden communicated to Milton his intention of adding this grace to his poem; to which the venerable bard gave a contemptuous consent, in these words: "Ay, you may tag my verses if you will." Perhaps few have read so far into the "State of Innocence" as to discover that Dryden did not use this licence to the uttermost and that several of the scenes are not tagg'd with rhyme.
Dryden at this period engaged in a research recommended to him by "a noble wit of Scotland," as he terms Sir George Mackenzie, the issue of which, in his apprehension, pointed out further room for improving upon the epic of Milton. This was an inquiry into the "turn of words and thoughts" requisite in heroic poetry. These "turns," according to the definition and examples which Dryden has given us, differ from the points of wit, and quirks of epigram, common in the metaphysical poets, and consist in a happy, and at the same time a natural, recurrence of the same form of expression, melodiously varied. Having failed in his search after these beauties in Cowley, the darling of his youth, "I consulted," says Dryden, "a greater genius (without offence to the manes of that noble author), I mean—Milton; but as he endeavours everywhere to express Homer, whose age had not arrived to that fineness, I found in him a true sublimity, lofty thoughts, which were clothed with admirable Grecisms, and ancient words, which he had been digging from the mines of Chaucer and Spenser, and which, with all their rusticity, had somewhat of venerable in them. But I found not there neither that for which I looked." This judgment Addison has proved to be erroneous, by quoting from Milton the most beautiful example of a turn of words which can be found in English poetry.[31] But Dryden, holding it for just, conceived, doubtless, that in his "State of Innocence" he might exert his skill successfully, by supplying the supposed deficiency, and for relieving those "flats of thought" which he complains of, where Milton, for a hundred lines together, runs on in a "track of scripture;" but which Dennis more justly ascribes to the humble nature of his subject in those passages. The graces, also, which Dryden ventured to interweave with the lofty theme of Milton, were rather those of Ovid than of Virgil, rather turns of verbal expression than of thought. Such is that conceit which met with censure at the time:
"Seraph and cherub, careless of their charge,
And wanton, in full ease now live at large;
Unguarded leave the passes of the sky,
And all dissolved in hallelujahs lie."