[31]
"With thee conversing, I forget all time,
All seasons, and their change; all please alike:
Sweet is the breath of morn, her rising sweet,
With charm of earliest birds: pleasant the sun,
When first on this delightful land he spreads
His orient beams, on herb, tree, fruit, and flower,
Glist'ning with dew: fragrant the fertile earth
After soft showers, and sweet the coming on
Of grateful evening mild: then, silent night,
With this her solemn bird, and this fair moon,
And these the gems of heaven, her starry train:
But neither breath of morn, when she ascends
With charm of earliest birds; nor rising sun
On this delightful land; nor herb, fruit, flower,
Glist'ning with dew; nor fragrance after showers;
Nor grateful evening mild; nor silent night,
With this her solemn bird; nor walk by moon;
Or glittering star-light, without thee is sweet."
"The variety of images in this passage is infinitely pleasing, and the recapitulation of each particular image, with a little varying of the expression, makes one of the finest turns of words that I have ever seen; which I rather mention, because Mr. Dryden has said, in his Preface to Juvenal, that he could meet with no turn of words in Milton."—Tatler, No. 114.
[32] See this Epistle. It was prefixed to "Alexander the Great;" a play, the merits and faults of which are both in extreme.
SECTION IV.
Dryden's Controversy with Settle—with Rochester—He is assaulted in Rose-street—Aureng-Zebe—Dryden meditates an Epic Poem—All for Love— Limberham—Oedipus—Troilus and Cressida—The Spanish Friar—Dryden supposed to be in opposition to the Court.
"The State of Innocence" was published in 1674, and "Aureng-Zebe," Dryden's next tragedy, appeared in 1675. In the interval, he informs us, his ardour for rhyming plays had considerably abated. The course of study which he imposed on himself doubtless led him to this conclusion. But it is also possible, that he found the peculiar facilities of that drama had excited the emulation of very inferior poets, who, by dint of show, rant, and clamorous hexameters, were likely to divide with him the public favour. Before proceeding, therefore, to state the gradual alteration in Dryden's own taste, we must perform the task of detailing the literary quarrels in which he was at this period engaged. The chief of his rivals was Elkanah Settle, a person afterwards utterly contemptible; but who, first by the strength of a party at court, and afterwards by a faction in the state, was, for a time, buoyed up in opposition to Dryden. It is impossible to detail the progress of the contest for public favour between these two ill-matched rivals, without noticing at the same time Dryden's quarrel with Rochester, who appears to have played off Settle in opposition to him, as absolutely, and nearly as successfully, as Settle ever played off the literary [literal?] puppets, for which, in the ebb of his fortune, he wrote dramas.
In the year 1673, Dryden and Rochester were on such friendly terms, that our poet inscribed to his lordship his favourite play of "Marriage à la Mode;" not without acknowledgment of the deepest gratitude for favours done to his fortune and reputation. The dedication, we have seen, was so favourably accepted by Rochester, that the reception called forth a second tribute of thanks from the poet to the patron. But at this point, the interchange of kindness and of civility received a sudden and irrecoverable check. This was partly owing to Rochester's fickle and jealous temper, which induced him alternately to raise and depress the men of parts whom he loved to patronise; so that no one should ever become independent of his favour, or so rooted in the public opinion as to be beyond the reach of his satire; but it may also in part be attributed to Dryden's attachment to Sheffield, Earl of Mulgrave, afterwards Duke of Buckingham, then Rochester's rival in wit and court-favour, and from whom he had sustained a deadly affront, on an occasion, which, as the remote cause of a curious incident in Dryden's life, I have elsewhere detailed in the words of Sheffield himself. Rochester, who was branded as a coward in consequence of this transaction, must be reasonably supposed to entertain a sincere hatred against Mulgrave; with whom he had once lived on such friendly terms as to inscribe to him an Epistle on their mutual poems. But, as his nerves had proved unequal to a personal conflict with his brother peer, his malice prompted the discharge of his spleen upon those men of literature whom his antagonist cherished and patronised. Among these Dryden held a distinguished situation; for about 1675 he was, as we shall presently see, sufficiently in Sheffield's confidence to correct and revise that nobleman's poetry;[1] and in 1676 dedicated to him the tragedy of "Aureng-Zebe," as one who enjoyed not only his favour, but his love and conversation. Thus Dryden was obnoxious to Rochester, both as holding a station among the authors of the period, grievous to the vanity of one who aimed, by a levelling and dividing system, to be the tyrant, or at least the dictator, of wit; and also as the friend, and even the confidant, of Mulgrave, by whom the witty profligate had been baffled and humiliated. Dryden was therefore to be lowered in the public opinion; and for this purpose, Rochester made use of Elkanah Settle, whom, though he gratified his malice by placing him in opposition to Dryden, he must, in his heart, have thoroughly despised.[2]
This playwright, whom the jealous spleen of a favourite courtier, and the misjudging taste of a promiscuous audience, placed for some time in so high a station, came into notice in 1671, on the representation of his first play, "Cambyses, King of Persia," which was played six nights successively. This run of public favour gave Rochester some pretence to bring Settle to the notice of the king; and, through the efforts of this mischievous wit, joined to the natural disposition of the people to be carried by show, rant, and tumult, Settle's second play, "The Empress of Morocco," was acted with unanimous and overpowering applause for a month together. To add to Dryden's mortification, Rochester had interest enough to have this tragedy of one whom he had elevated into the rank of his rival, first acted at Whitehall by the lords and ladies of the court; an honour which had never been paid to any of Dryden's compositions, however more justly entitled to it, both from intrinsic merit, and by the author's situation as poet-laureate. Rochester contributed a prologue upon this brilliant occasion to add still more grace to Settle's triumph; but what seems yet more extraordinary, and has, I think, been unnoticed in all accounts of the controversy, Mulgrave,[3] Rochester's rival and the friend of Dryden, did the same homage to "The Empress of Morocco." From the king's private theatre, "The Empress of Morocco" was transferred, in all its honours, to the public stage in Dorset Gardens, and received with applause corresponding to the expectation excited by its favour at Whitehall. While the court and city were thus worshipping the idol which Rochester had set up, it could hardly be expected of poor Settle, that he should be first to discern his own want of desert. On the contrary, he grew presumptuous on success; and when he printed his performance, the dedication to the Earl of Norwich was directly levelled against the poet-laureate who termed it the "most arrogant, calumniatory, ill-mannered, and senseless preface he ever saw."[4] And, to add gall to bitterness, the bookseller thought "The Empress of Morocco" worthy of being decorated with engravings, and sold at the advanced price of two shillings; being the first drama advanced to such honourable distinction.[5] Moreover, the play is ostentatiously stated in the title to be written by Elkanah Settle, Servant to His Majesty;[6] an addition which the laureate had assumed with greater propriety.
If we are asked the merit of a performance which made such an impression at the time, we may borrow an expression applied to a certain orator,[7] and say, that "The Empress of Morocco" must have acted to the tune of a good heroic play. It had all the outward and visible requisites of splendid scenery, prisons, palaces, fleets, combats of desperate duration and uncertain issue,[8] assassinations, a dancing tree, a rainbow, a shower of hail, a criminal executed,[9] and hell itself opening upon the stage. The rhyming dialogue too, in which the play was written, had an imperative and tyrannical sound; and to a foreigner, ignorant of the language, might have appeared as magnificent as that of Dryden. But it must raise our admiration, that the witty court of Charles could patiently listen to a "tale told by an idiot, full of noise and fury, signifying nothing," and give it a preference over the poetry of Dryden. The following description of a hail-storm will vindicate our wonder:
"This morning, as our eyes we upward cast,
The desert regions of the air lay waste.
But straight, as if it had some penance bore,
A mourning garb of thick black clouds it wore.
But on the sudden,
Some aery demon changed its form, and now
That which looked black above looked white below;
The clouds dishevelled from their crusted locks,
Something like gems coined out of crystal rocks.
The ground was with this strange bright issue spread,
As if heaven in affront to nature had
Designed some new-found tillage of its own,
And on the earth these unknown seeds had sown.
Of these I reached a grain, which to my sense
Appeared as cool as virgin-innocence;
And like that too (which chiefly I admired),
Its ravished whiteness with a touch expired.
At the approach of heat, this candid rain
Dissolved to its first element again.