The Dramatic Works of John Dryden, Volume 1 / With a Life of the Author

by Walter Scott

From these lines it may be safely inferred, that Dryden's sincere acquiescence in the more abstruse points of Christianity did not long precede his adoption of the Roman faith. In some preceding verses it appears, how eagerly he received the conviction of the Church's infallibility as affording that guide, the want of whom he had in some degree lamented in the "Religio Laici:"

"What weight of ancient witness can prevail,
If private reason hold the public scale?
But, gracious God, how well dost thou provide
For erring judgments an unerring guide!
Thy throne is darkness in the abyss of light,
A blaze of glory that forbids the sight.
O teach me to believe thee, thus concealed,
And search no farther than thyself revealed;
But her alone for my director take,
Whom thou hast promised never to forsake!"

We find, therefore, that Dryden's conversion was not of that sordid kind which is the consequence of a strong temporal interest; for he had expressed intelligibly the imagined desiderata which the Church of Rome alone pretends to supply, long before that temporal interest had an existence. Neither have we to reproach him, that, grounded and rooted in a pure Protestant creed, he was foolish enough to abandon it for the more corrupted doctrines of Rome. He did not unloose from the secure haven to moor in the perilous road; but, being tossed on the billows of uncertainty, he dropped his anchor in the first moorings to which the winds, waves, and perhaps an artful pilot, chanced to convey his bark. We may indeed regret, that, having to choose between two religions, he should have adopted that which our education, reason, and even prepossessions, combine to point out as foully corrupted from the primitive simplicity of the Christian Church. But neither the Protestant Christian, nor the sceptic philosopher, can claim a right to despise the sophistry which bewildered the judgment of Chillingworth, or the toils which enveloped the active and suspicious minds of Bayle and of Gibbon. The latter, in his account of his own conversion to the Catholic faith, fixes upon the very arguments pleaded by Dryden, as those which appeared to him irresistible. The early traditions of the Church, the express words of the text, are referred to by both as the grounds of their conversion; and the works of Bossuet, so frequently referred to by the poet, were the means of influencing the determination of the philosopher.[5] The victorious argument to which Chillingworth himself yielded, was, "that there must be somewhere an infallible judge, and the Church of Rome is the only Christian society, which either does or can pretend to that character."

It is also to be observed, that towards the end of Charles II.'s reign, the High Churchmen and the Catholics regarded themselves as on the same side in political questions, and not greatly divided in their temporal interests. Both were sufferers in the Plot, both were enemies of the sectaries, both were adherents of the Stuarts.

Alternate conversion had been common between them, so early as since Milton made a reproach to the English universities of the converts to the Roman faith daily made within their colleges; of those sheep,

"Whom the grim wolf with privy paw
Daily devours apace and nothing said."

In approaching Dryden, therefore, a Catholic priest had to combat few of those personal prejudices which, in other cases, have been impediments to their making converts. The poet had, besides, before him the example of many persons both of rank and talent, who had adopted the Catholic religion.

Such being the disposition of Dryden's mind, and such the peculiar facilities of the Roman Churchmen in making proselytes, it is by no means to be denied, that circumstances in the poet's family and situation strongly forwarded his taking such a step. His Wife, Lady Elizabeth, had for some time been a Catholic; and though she may be acquitted of any share in influencing his determination, yet her new faith necessarily brought into his family persons both able and disposed to do so. His eldest and best beloved son, Charles, is also said, though upon uncertain authority, to have been a Catholic before his father, and to have contributed to his change.[6] Above all, James his master, to whose fortunes he had so closely attached himself, had now become as parsimonious of his favour as his Church is of salvation, and restricted it to those of his own sect. It is more than probable, though only a conjecture, that Dryden might be made the subject of those private exhortations, which in that reign were called closeting; and, predisposed as he was, he could hardly be supposed capable of resisting the royal eloquence. For, while pointing out circumstances of proof, that Dryden's conversion was not made by manner of bargain and sale, but proceeded upon a sincere though erroneous conviction, it cannot be denied, that his situation as poet-laureate, and his expectations from the king, must have conduced to his taking his final resolution. All I mean to infer from the above statement is, that his interest and internal conviction led him to the same conclusion.

If we are to judge of Dryden's sincerity in his new faith, by the determined firmness with which report retained it through good report and bad report we must allow him to have been a martyr, or at least a confessor, in the Catholic cause. If after the Revolution, like many greater men, he had changed his principles with the times, he was not a person of such mark as to be selected from all the nation, and punished for former tenets. Supported by the friendship of Rochester, and most of the Tory nobles who were active in the Revolution, of Leicester, and many Whigs, and especially of the Lord-Chamberlain Dorset, there would probably have been little difficulty in his remaining poet-laureate, if he had recanted the errors of Popery. But the Catholic religion, and the consequent disqualifications, was an insurmountable obstacle to his holding that or any other office under government; and Dryden's adherence to it, with all the poverty, reproach, and even persecution which followed the profession, argued a deep and substantial conviction of the truth of the doctrines it inculcated. So late as 1699, when an union, in opposition to King William, had led the Tories and Whigs to look on each other with some kindness, Dryden thus expresses himself in a letter to his cousin, Mrs. Steward: "The court rather speaks kindly of me, than does anything for me, though they promise largely; and perhaps they think I will advance as they go backward, in which they will be much deceived: for I can never go an inch beyond my conscience and my honour. If they will consider me as a man who has done my best to improve the language, and especially the poetry, and will be content with my acquiescence under the present government, and forbearing satire on it, that I can promise, because I can perform it: but I can neither take the oaths, nor forsake my religion; because I know not what Church to go to, if I leave the Catholic: they are all so divided amongst themselves in matters of faith, necessary to salvation, and yet all assuming the name of Protestants. May God be pleased to open your eyes, as he has opened mine! Truth is but one, and they who have once heard of it, can plead no excuse if they do not embrace it. But these are things too serious for a trifling letter."[7] If, therefore, adherence to the communion of a falling sect, loaded too at the time with heavy disqualifications, and liable to yet more dangerous suspicions, can be allowed as a proof of sincerity, we can hardly question that Dryden was, from the date of his conviction, a serious and sincere Roman Catholic.

The conversion of Dryden did not long remain unrewarded,[8] nor was his pen suffered to be idle in the cause which he had adopted. On the 4th of March 1685-6, an hundred pounds a year, payable quarterly, was added to his pension:[9] and probably he found himself more at ease under the regular and economical government of James, than when his support depended on the exhausted exchequer of Charles. Soon after the granting of this boon, he was employed to defend the reasons of conversion to the Catholic faith, alleged by Anne Hyde, Duchess of York, which, together with two papers on a similar subject, said to be found in Charles II.'s strong box. James had with great rashness given to the public. Stillingfleet, now at the head of the champions of the Protestant faith, published some sharp remarks on these papers. Another hand, probably that of a Jesuit, was employed to vindicate against him the royal grounds of conversion; while to Dryden was committed the charge of defending those alleged by the Duchess. The tone of Dryden's apology was, to say the least, highly injudicious, and adapted to irritate the feelings of the clergy of the established church, already sufficiently exasperated to see the sacrifices which they had made to the royal cause utterly forgotten, the moment that they paused in the extremity of their devotion towards the monarch. The name of "Legion," which the apologist bestows on his adversaries, intimates the committee of the clergy by whom the Protestant cause was then defended; and the tone of his arguments is harsh, contemptuous, and insulting. A raker up of the ashes of princes, an hypocrite, a juggler, a latitudinarian, are the best terms which he affords the advocate of the Church of England, in defence of which he had so lately been himself a distinguished champion. Stillingfleet returned to the charge; and when he came to the part of the Defence written by Dryden, he did not spare the personal invective, to which the acrimonious style of the poet-laureate had indeed given an opening, "Zeal," says Stillingfleet, "in a new convert, is a terrible thing, for it not only burns, but rages like the eruptions of Mount Etna; it fills the air with noise and smoke, and throws out such a torrent of living fire, that there is no standing before it." In another passage, Stillingfleet talks of the "temptation of changing religion for bread;" in another, our author's words, that