Chapter XIV: Section VII (1)

_State of Dryden's Connections in Society after the Revolution--Juvenal and Persius--Smaller Pieces--Eleonora--Third Miscellany--Virgil--Ode to St. Cecilia--Dispute with Milbourne--With Blackmore--Fables--The Author's Death and Funeral--His private Character--Notices of his Family._

The evil consequences of the Revolution upon Dryden's character and fortunes began to abate sensibly within a year or two after that event. It is well known, that King William's popularity was as short-lived as it had been universal. All parties gradually drew off from the king, under their ancient standards. The clergy returned to their maxims of hereditary right, the Tories to their attachment to the house of Stuart, the Whigs to their jealousy of the royal authority. Dryden, we have already observed, so lately left in a small and detested party, was now among multitudes who, from whatever contradictory motives, were joined in opposition to the government and some of his kinsmen; particularly with John Driden of Chesterton, his first cousin; with whom, till his death, he lived upon terms of uninterrupted friendship. The influence of Clarendon and Rochester, the Queen's uncles, were, we have seen, often exerted in the poet's favour; and through them, he became connected with the powerful families with which they were allied. Dorset, by whom he had been deprived of his office, seems to have softened this harsh, though indispensable, exertion of authority, by a liberal present; and to his bounty Dryden had frequently recourse in cases of emergency.[1] Indeed, upon one occasion it is said to have been administered in a mode savouring more of ostentation than delicacy; for there is a tradition that Dryden and Tom Brown, being invited to dine with the lord chamberlain, found under their covers, the one a bank-note for £100, the other for £50. I have already noticed, that these pecuniary benefactions were not held so degrading in that age as at present; and, probably, many of Dryden's opulent and noble friends, took, like Dorset, occasional opportunities of supplying wants, which neither royal munificence, nor the favour of the public, now enabled the poet fully to provide for.

If Dryden's critical empire over literature was at any time interrupted by the mischances of his political party, it was in _abeyance_ for a very short period; since, soon after the Revolution, he appears to have regained, and maintained till his death, that sort of authority in Will's coffeehouse, to which we have frequently had occasion to allude. His supremacy, indeed, seems to have been so effectually established, that a "pinch out of Dryden's snuff-box"[2] was equal to taking a degree in that academy of wit. Among those by whom it was frequented, Southerne and Congreve were principally distinguished by Dryden's friendship. His intimacy with the former, though oddly commenced, seems soon to have ripened into such sincere friendship, that the aged poet selected Southerne to finish "Cleomenes," and addressed to him an epistle of condolence on the failure of "The Wives' Excuse," which, as he delicately expresses it, "was with a kind civility dismissed" from the scene. This was indeed an occasion in which even Dryden could tell, from experience, how much the sympathy of friends was necessary to soothe the injured feelings of an author. But Congreve seems to have gained yet further than Southerne upon Dryden's friendship. He was introduced to him by his first play, the celebrated "Old Bachelor," being put into the poet's hands to be revised. Dryden, after making a few alterations to fit it for the stage, returned it to the author with the high and just commendation that it was the best first play he had ever seen. In truth, it was impossible that Dryden could be insensible to the brilliancy of Congreve's comic dialogue, which has never been equalled by any English dramatist, unless by Mr. Sheridan. Less can be said for the tragedies of Southerne, and for "The Mourning Bride." Although these pieces contain many passages of great interest, and of beautiful poetry, I know not but they contributed more than even the subsequent homilies of Rowe, to chase natural and powerful expression of passion from the English stage, and to sink it into that maudlin, and affected, and pedantic style of tragedy, which haunted the stage till Shakespeare awakened at the call of Garrick. "The Fatal Marriage" of Southerne is an exception to this false taste; for no one who has seen Mrs. Siddons in Isabella, can deny Southerne the power of moving the passions, till amusement becomes bitter and almost insupportable distress. But these observations are here out of place. Addison paid an early tribute to Dryden's fame, by the verses addressed to him on his translations. Among Dryden's less distinguished intimates, we observe Sir Henry Shere, Dennis the critic, Moyle, Motteux, Walsh, who lived to distinguish the youthful merit of Pope, and other men of the second rank in literature. These, as his works testify, he frequently assisted with prefaces, occasional verses, or similar contributions. But among our author's followers and admirers, we must not reckon Swift, although related to him,[3] and now coming into notice. It is said, that Swift had subjected to his cousin's perusal, some of those performances, entitled _Odes_, which appear in the seventh volume of the last edition of his works. Even the eye of Dryden was unable to discover the wit and the satirist in the clouds of incomprehensible pindaric obscurity in which he was enveloped; and the aged bard pronounced the hasty, and never to be pardoned sentence,-- "Cousin Swift, you will never be a poet."[4] A doom which he, on whom it was passed, attempted to repay, by repeated, although impotent, attacks upon the fame of Dryden, everywhere scattered through his works. With the exception of Swift, no author of eminence, whose labours are still in request, has ventured to assail the poetical fame of Dryden.

Shortly after the Revolution, Dryden had translated several satires of Juvenal; and calling in the aid of his two sons, of Congreve, Creech, Tate, and others, he was enabled, in 1692, to give a complete version both of that satirist, and of Persius. In this undertaking he himself bore a large share, translating the whole of Persius, with the first, third, sixth, tenth, and sixteenth satires of Juvenal. To this version is prefixed the noted Essay on Satire, inscribed to the Earl of Dorset and Middlesex. In that treatise, our author exhibits a good deal of that sort of learning which was in fashion among the French critics; and, I suspect, was contented rather to borrow something from them, than put himself to the trouble of compiling more valuable materials. Such is the disquisition concerning the origin of the word _Satire_, which is chiefly extracted from Casaubon, Dacier, and Rigault. But the poet's own incidental remarks upon the comparative merits of Horace, Juvenal, and Persius, his declamation against the abuse of satire, his incidental notices respecting epic poetry, translation, and English literature in general, render this introduction highly valuable.

Without noticing the short prefaces to Walsh's "Essay upon Woman," a meagre and stiff composition, and to Sir Henry Shere's wretched translation of Polybius, published in 1691 and 1692, we hasten to the elegy on the Countess of Abingdon, entitled Eleonora. This lady died suddenly, 31st May 1691, in a ball-room in her own house, just then prepared for an entertainment. The disconsolate husband, who seems to have been a patron of the Muses,[5] not satisfied with the volunteer effusions of some minor poets, employed a mutual friend to engage Dryden to compose a more beautiful tribute to his consort's memory. The poet, it would seem, neither knew the lord nor the lady, but was doubtless propitiated upon the mournful occasion;[6] nor was the application and fee judged more extraordinary than that probably offered, on the same occasion, to the divine who was to preach the Countess's funeral sermon. The leading and most characteristic features of the lady's character were doubtless pointed out to our author as subjects for illustration; yet so difficult is it, even for the best poet, to feign a sorrow which he feels not, or to describe with appropriate and animated colouring a person whom he has never seen, that Dryden's poem resembles rather an abstract panegyric on an imaginary being, than an elegy on a real character. The elegy was published early in 1692.

In 1693, Tonson's Third Miscellany made its appearance, with a dedication to Lord Ratcliffe, eldest son of the Earl of Derwentwater, who was himself a pretender to poetry, though our author thought so slightly of his attempts in that way, that he does not even deign to make them enter into his panegyric, but contents himself with saying, "what you will be hereafter, may be more than guessed by what you are at present." It is probable that the rhyming peer was dissatisfied with Dryden's unusual economy of adulation; at least he disappointed some expectations which the poet and bookseller seem to have entertained of his liberality.[7] This dedication indicates, that a quarrel was commenced between our author and the critic Rymer. It appears from a passage in a letter to Tonson, that Rymer had spoken lightly of him in his last critique (probably in the short view of tragedy), and that the poet took this opportunity, as he himself expresses it, to snarl again. He therefore acquaints us roundly, that the corruption of a poet was the generation of a critic; exults a little over the memory of Rymer's "Edgar," a tragedy just reeking from damnation; and hints at the difference which the public is likely to experience between the present royal historiographer and him whose room he occupied. In his epistle to Congreve, alluding to the same circumstance of Rymer's succeeding to the office of historiographer, as Tate did to the laurel, on the death of Thomas Shadwell, in 1692, Dryden has these humorous lines:

"O that your brows my laurel had sustained!
Well had I been deposed, if you had reigned:
The father had descended for the son;
For only you are lineal to the throne.
Thus, when the state one Edward did depose,
A greater Edward in his room arose:
But now not I, but poetry, is cursed;
For Tom the second reigns like Tom the first.
But let them not mistake my patron's part,
Nor call his charity their own desert."

From the letter to Tonson above referred to, it would seem that the dedication of the Third Miscellany gave offence to Queen Mary, being understood to reflect upon her government, and that she had commanded Rymer to return to the charge, by a criticism on Dryden's plays. But the breach does not appear to have become wider; and Dryden has elsewhere mentioned Rymer with civility.

The Third Miscellany contained, of Dryden's poetry, a few songs, the first book, with part of the ninth and sixteenth books of the Metamorphoses, and the parting of Hector and Andromache, from the Iliad. It was also to have had the poem of Hero and Leander, from the Greek; but none such appeared, nor is it clear whether Dryden ever executed the version, or only had it in contemplation. The contribution, although ample, was not satisfactory to old Jacob Tonson, who wrote on the subject a most mercantile expostulatory letter[8] to Dryden, which is fortunately the minutiae of a literary bargain in the 17th century. Tonson, with reference to Dryden having offered a strange bookseller six hundred lines for twenty guineas, enters into a question in the rule of three, by which he discovers, and proves, that for fifty guineas he has only 1446 lines, which he seems to take more unkindly, as he had not _counted_ the lines until he had paid the money; from all which Jacob infers, that Dryden ought, out of generosity, at least to throw him in something to the bargain, especially as he had used him more kindly in Juvenal, which, saith the said Jacob, is not reckoned so easy to translate as Ovid. What weight was given to this supplication does not appear; probably very little, for the translations were not extended, and as to getting back any part of the copy-money, it is not probable Tonson's most sanguine expectation ever reached that point. Perhaps the songs were thrown in as a make-weight. There was a Fourth Miscellany published in 1694; but to this Dryden only gave a version of the third Georgic, and his Epistle to Sir Godfrey Kneller, the requital of a copy of the portrait of Shakespeare.[9]

In 1963, Dryden addressed the beautiful lines to Congreve, on the cold reception of his "Double Dealer." He was himself under a similar cloud, from the failure of "Love Triumphant," and therefore in a fit mood to administer consolation to his friend. The epistle contains, among other striking passages, the affecting charge of the care of his posthumous fame, which Congreve did not forget when Dryden was no more.

But, independently of occasional exertions, our author, now retired from the stage, had bent his thoughts upon one great literary task, the translation of Virgil. This weighty and important undertaking was probably suggested by the experience of Tonson, the success of whose "Miscellanies" had taught him the value placed by the public on Dryden's translations from the classics. From hints thrown out by contemporary scheme was meditated, even before 1964; but in that year the poet, in a letter to Dennis, speaks of it as under his immediate contemplation. The names of Virgil and Dryden were talismans powerful to arrest the eyes of all that were literary in England, upon the progress of the work. Mr. Malone has recorded the following particulars concerning it, with pious enthusiasm.

"Dr. Johnson has justly remarked, that the nation seemed to consider its honour interested in the event. Mr. Gilbert Dolben gave him the various editions of his author: Dr. Knightly Chetwood furnished him with the life of Virgil, and the Preface to the Pastorals; and Addison supplied the arguments of the several books, and an Essay on the Georgics. The first lines of this great poet which he translated, he wrote with a diamond on a pane of glass in one of the windows of Chesterton House, in Huntingdonshire, the residence of his kinsman and namesake, John Driden, Esq.[10] The version of the first Georgic, and a great part of the last Aeneid, was made at Denham Court, in Buckinghamshire, the seat of Sir William Bowyer, Baronet; and the seventh Æneid was translated at Burleigh, the noble mansion of the Earl of Exeter. These circumstances, which must be acknowledged to be of no great importance, I yet have thought it proper to record, because they will for ever endear those places to the votaries of the Muses, and add to them a kind of celebrity, which neither the beauties of nature, nor the exertions of art, can bestow."

Neither was the liberality of the nation entirely disproportioned to the general importance attached to the translation of Virgil, by so eminent a poet. The researches of Mr. Malone have ascertained, in some degree, the terms. There were two classes of subscribers, the first set of whom paid five guineas apiece to adorn the work with engravings; beneath each of which, in due and grateful remembrance, was blazoned the arms of a subscriber: this class amounted to one hundred and one persons, a list of whom appears in this edition, in vol. xiii., and presents an assemblage of noble names, few of whom are distinguished more to their credit than by the place they there occupy. The second subscribers were two hundred and fifty in number, at two guineas each. But from these sums was to be deducted the expense of the engravings, though these were only the plates used for Ogilby's Virgil, a little retouched. Besides the subscriptions, it would seem, that Dryden received from Tonson fifty pounds for each Book of the "Georgics" and "Æneid," and probably the same for the Pastorals collectively.[11] On the other hand, it is probable that Jacob charged a price for the copies delivered to the subscribers, which, with the expense of the plates, reduced Dryden's profit to about twelve or thirteen hundred pounds;--a trifling sum when compared to what Pope received for the "Iliad," which was certainly between £5,000 and £6,000; yet great in proportion to what the age of Dryden had ever afforded, as an encouragement to literature. It must indeed be confessed, that the Revolution had given a new impulse and superior importance to literary pursuits. The semi-barbarous age, which succeeded the great civil war, had been civilised by slow degrees. It is true, the king and courtiers, among their disorderly and dissolute pleasures, enumerated songs and plays, and, in the course of their political intrigues, held satires in request; but they had neither money nor time to spare for the encouragement or study of any of the higher and more elaborate departments of poetry. Meanwhile, the bulk of the nation neglected verse, as what they could not understand, or, with puritanical bigotry, detested as sinful the use, as well as the abuse, of poetical talent. But the lapse of thirty years made a material change in the manners of the English people. Instances began to occur of individuals, who, rising at first into notice for their proficience in the fine arts, were finally promoted for the active and penetrating talents, which necessarily accompany a turn towards them. An outward reformation of manners, at least the general abjuration of grosser profligacy, was also favourable to poetry,--

Still first to fly where
sensual joys invade.

This was wrought, partly by the religious manners of Mary; partly by the cold and unsocial temper of William, who shunned excess, not perhaps because it was criminal, but because it was derogatory; partly by the political fashion of the day, which was to disown the profligacy that marked the partisans of the Stuarts; but, most of all, by the general increase of good taste, and the improvement of education. All these contributed to the encouragement of Dryden's great undertaking, which promised to rescue Virgil from the degraded version of Ogilby, and present him in a becoming form to a public, now prepared to receive him with merited admiration.

While our author was labouring in this great work, and the public were waiting the issue with impatience and attention, a feud, of which it is now impossible to trace the cause, arose between the bard and his publisher. Their union before seems to have been of a nature more friendly than interest alone could have begotten; for Dryden, in one letter, talks with gratitude of Tonson's affording him his company down to Northamptonshire; and this friendly intimacy Jacob neglected not to cultivate, by those occasional compliments of fruit and wine, which are often acknowledged in the course of their correspondence. But a quarrel broke out between them, when the translation of Virgil had advanced so far as the completion of the seventh Aeneid; at which period Dryden charges Tonson bitterly, with an intention, from the very beginning, to deprive him of all profit by the second subscriptions; alluding, I presume, to the price which the bookseller charged him upon the volumes delivered to the subscribers. The bibliopolist seems to have bent before the storm, and pacified the incensed bard, by verbal submission, though probably without relaxing his exactions and drawbacks in any material degree. Another cause of this dissension appears to have been the Notes upon "Virgil," for which Tonson would allow no additional emolument to the author, although Dryden says, "that to make them good, would cost six months' labour at least," and elsewhere tells Tonson ironically, that, since not to be paid, they shall be short, "for the saving of the paper." I cannot think that we have sustained any great loss by Tonson's penurious economy on this occasion. In his prefaces and dedications, Dryden let his own ideas freely forth to the public; but in his Notes upon the Classics, witness those on "Juvenal" and "Persius," he neither indulged in critical dissertations on particular beauties and defects, nor in general remarks upon the kind of poetry before him; but contented himself with rendering into English the antiquarian dissertations of Dacier and other foreign commentators, with now and then an explanatory paraphrase of an obscure passage. The parodies of Martin Scriblerus had not yet consigned to ridicule the verbal criticism, and solemn trifling, with which the ancient schoolmen pretended to illustrate the classics. But beside the dispute about the notes in particular, and the various advantages which Dryden suspected Tonson of attempting in the course of the transaction, he seems to have been particularly affronted at a presumptuous plan of that publisher (a keen Whig, and secretary of the Kit-cat club) to drive him into inscribing the translation of Virgil to King William. With this view, Tonson had an especial care to make the engraver aggravate the nose of Aeneas in the plates into a sufficient resemblance of the hooked promontory of the Deliverer's countenance;[12] and, foreseeing Dryden's repugnance to this favourite plan, he had recourse, it would seem, to more unjustifiable means to further it; for the poet expresses himself as convinced that, through Tonson's means, his correspondence with his sons, then at Rome, was intercepted.[13] I suppose Jacob, having fairly laid siege to his author's conscience, had no scruple to intercept all foreign supplies, which might have confirmed him in his pertinacity. But Dryden, although thus closely beleaguered, held fast his integrity; and no prospect of personal advantage, or importunity on the part of Tonson, could induce him to take a step inconsistent with his religious and political sentiments. It was probably during the course of these bickerings with his publisher, that Dryden, incensed at some refusal of accommodation on the part of Tonson, sent him three well-known coarse and forcible satirical lines, descriptive of his personal appearance:

"With leering looks, bull-faced, and freckled fair,
With two left legs, and Judas-coloured hair,
And frowzy pores, that taint the ambient air."

"Tell the dog," said the poet to the messenger, "that he who wrote these can write more." But Tonson, perfectly satisfied with this single triplet, hastened to comply with the author's request, without requiring any further specimen of his poetical powers. It would seem, however, that when Dryden neglected his stipulated labour, Tonson possessed powers of animadversion, which, though exercised in plain prose, were not a little dreaded by the poet. Lord Bolingbroke, already a votary of the Muses, and admitted to visit their high priest, was wont to relate, that one day he heard another person enter the house. "This," said Dryden, "is Tonson: you will take care not to depart before he goes away: for I have not completed the sheet which I promised him; and if you leave me unprotected, I shall suffer all the rudeness to which his resentment can prompt his tongue."[14] But whatever occasional subjects of dissension arose between Dryden and his bookseller appears always to have brought them together, after the first ebullition of displeasure had subsided. There might, on such occasions, be room for acknowledging faults on both sides; for, if we admit that the bookseller was penurious and churlish, we cannot deny that Dryden seems often to have been abundantly captious, and irascible. Indeed, as the poet placed, and justly, more than a mercantile value upon what he sold, the trader, on his part, was necessarily cautious not to afford a price which his returns could not pay; so that while, in one point of view, the author sold at an inadequate price, the purchaser, in another, really got no more than value for his money. That literature is ill recompensed, is usually rather the fault of the public than the bookseller, whose trade can only exist by buying that which can be sold to advantage. The trader, who purchased the "Paradise Lost" for ten pounds, had probably no very good bargain.[15]

However fretted by these teasing and almost humiliating discussions, Dryden continued steadily advancing in his great labour; and about three years after it had been undertaken, the translation of Virgil, "the most noble and spirited," said Pope, "which I know in any language," was given to the public in July 1697. So eager was the general expectation, that the first edition was exhausted in a few months, and a second published early in the next year. "It satisfied," says Johnson, "his friends, and, for the most part, silenced his enemies." But, although this was generally the case, there wanted not some to exercise the invidious task of criticism, or rather of malevolent detraction. Among those, the highest name is that of Swift; the most distinguished for venomous and persevering malignity, that of Milbourne.

In his Epistle to Prince Posterity, prefixed to the "Tale of a Tub," Swift, in the character of the dedicator, declares, "upon the word of a sincere man, that there is now actually in being a certain poet called John Dryden, whose translation of Virgil was lately printed in a large folio, well-bound, and, if diligent search were made, for aught I know, is yet to be seen." In his "Battle of the Books," he tells us, "that Dryden, who encountered Virgil, soothed the good ancient by the endearing title of 'father,' and, by a large deduction of genealogies, made it appear, that they were nearly related, and humbly proposed an exchange of armour; as a mark of hospitality, Virgil consented, though his was of gold, and cost an hundred beeves, the other's but of rusty iron. However, this glittering armour became the modern still worse than his own. Then they agreed to exchange horses; but, when it came to the trial, Dryden was afraid, and utterly unable to mount." A yet more bitter reproach is levelled by the wit against the poet, for his triple dedication of the Pastorals, Georgics, and Aeneid, to three several patrons, Clifford, Chesterfield, and Mulgrave.[16] But, though the recollection of the contemned Odes, like the _spretae injuria formae_ of Juno, still continued to prompt these overflowings of Swift's satire, he had too much taste and perception of poetry to attempt, gravely, to undermine, by a formal criticism, the merits of Dryden's Virgil.

This was reserved for Luke Milbourne, a clergyman, who, by that assurance, has consigned his name to no very honourable immortality. This person appears to have had a living at Great Yarmouth,[17] which, Dryden hints, he forfeited by writing libels on his parishioners; and from another testimony, he seems to have been a person of no very strict morals.[18] Milbourne was once an admirer of our poet, as appears from his letter concerning "Amphitryon," vol. viii. But either poetical rivalry, for he had also thought of translating Virgil himself,[19] or political animosity, for he seems to have held revolution principles, or deep resentment for Dryden's sarcasms against the clergy, or, most probably, all these united, impelled Milbourne to publish a most furious criticism, entitled, "Notes on Dryden's Virgil, in a Letter to a Friend." "And here," said he, "in the first place, I must needs own Jacob Tonson's ingenuity to be greater than the translator's, who, in the inscription of his fine gay (title) in the front of the book, calls it very honestly Dryden's Virgil, to let the reader know, that this is not that Virgil so much admired in the Augustaean age, an author whom Mr. Dryden once thought untranslatable, but a Virgil of another stamp, of a coarser allay; a silly, impertinent, nonsensical writer, of a various and uncertain style, a mere Alexander Ross, or somebody inferior to him; who could never have been known again in the translation, if the name of Virgil had not been bestowed upon him in large characters in the frontispiece, and in the running title. Indeed, there is scarce the _magni nominis umbra_ to be met with in this translation, which being fairly intimated by Jacob, he needs add no more, but _si populus vult decipi, decipiatur._"

With an assurance which induced Pope to call him the fairest of critics, not content with criticising the production of Dryden, Milbourne was so ill advised as to produce, and place in opposition to it, a rickety translation of his own, probably the fragments of that which had been suppressed by Dryden's version. A short specimen, both of his criticism and poetry, will convince the reader, that the powers of the former were, as has been often the case, neutralised by the insipidity of the latter; for who can rely on the judgment of a critic so ill qualified to illustrate his own precepts? I take the remarks on the tenth Eclogue, as a specimen, at hazard. "This eclogue is translated in a strain too luscious and effeminate for Virgil, who might bemoan his friend, but does it in a noble and a manly style, which Mr. Ogilby answers better than Mr. D., whose paraphrase looks like one of Mrs. Behn's, when somebody had turned the original into English prose before.

"Where Virgil says,

_Lauri et myricae flevêre_,

the figure's beautiful; where Mr. D. says,

the laurel stands in tears,
And hung with humid pearls, the lowly shrub appears,

the figure is lost, and a foolish and impertinent representation comes in its place; an ordinary dewy morning might fill the laurels and shrubs with Mr. D.'s tears, though Gallus had not been concerned in it.

And yet the queen of beauty blest his bed--

"Here Mr. D. comes with his ugly patch upon a beautiful face: what had the queen of beauty to do here? Lycoris did not despise her lover for his meanness, but because she had a mind to be a Catholic whore. Gallus was of quality, but her spark a poor inferior fellow. And yet the queen of beauty, etc., would have followed there very well, but not where wanton Mr. D. has fixt her."

Flushed were his cheeks, and glowing were his eyes.

"This character is fitter for one that is drunk than one in an amazement, and is a thought unbecoming Virgil."

And for thy rival, tempts the raging sea,
The forms of horrid war, and heaven's inclemency.

"Lycoris, doubtless, was a jilting baggage, but why should Mr. D. belie her? Virgil talks nothing of her going to sea, and perhaps she had a mind to be only a camp laundress, which office she might be advanced to without going to sea: 'the forms of horrid war,' for _horrida castra_, is incomparable."

his brows, a country crown
Of fennel, and of nodding lilies drown,

"is a very odd figure: Sylvanus had swinging brows to drown such a crown as that, _i.e._ to make it invisible, to swallow it up; if it be a country crown, drown his brows, it is false English."

The meads are sooner drunk with morning dews.

"_Rivi_ signifies no such thing; but then, that bees should be drunk with flowery shrubs, or goats be drunk with brouze, for drunk's the verb, is a very quaint thought."

After much more to the same purpose, Milbourne thus introduces his own version of the first Eclogue, with a confidence worthy of a better cause:--"That Mr. Dryden might be satisfied that I'd offer no foul play, nor find faults in him, without giving him an opportunity of retaliation, I have subjoined another metaphrase or translation of the first and fourth pastoral, which I desire may be read with his by the original.

TITYRUS.

ECLOGUE I.

_Mel._ Beneath a spreading beech you, Tityrus, lie,
And country songs to humble reeds apply;
We our sweet fields, our native country fly,
We leave our country; you in shades may lie,
And Amaryllis fair and blythe proclaim,
And make the woods repeat her buxom name.

_Tit._ O Melibaeus! 'twas a bounteous God,
These peaceful play-days on our muse bestowed;
At least, he'st alway be a God to me;
My lambs shall oft his grateful offerings be.
Thou seest, he lets my herds securely stray,
And me at pleasure on my pipe to play.

_Mel._ Your peace I don't with looks of envy view,
But I admire your happy state, and you.
In all our farms severe distraction reigns,
No ancient owner there in peace remains.
Sick, I, with much ado, my goats can drive,
This Tityrus, I scarce can lead alive;
On the bare stones, among yon hazels past,
Just now, alas! her hopeful twins she cast.
Yet had not all on's dull and senseless been,
We'd long agon this coming stroke foreseen.
Oft did the blasted oaks our fate unfold,
And boding choughs from hollow trees foretold.
But say, good Tityrus! tell me who's the God,
Who peace, so lost to us, on you bestow'd?"

Some critics there were, though but few, who joined Milbourne in his abortive attempt to degrade our poet's translation. Oldmixon, celebrated for his share in the games of the Dunciad,[20] and Samuel Parker,[21] a yet more obscure name, have informed us of this, by volunteering in Dryden's defence. But Dryden needed not their assistance. The real excellencies of his version were before the public, and it was rather to clear himself from the malignant charges against his moral principles, which Melbourne had mingled with his criticism, than for any other purpose, that the poet deemed his antagonist worthy of the following animadversion:--"Milbourne, who is in orders, pretends amongst the rest this quarrel to me, that I have fallen foul on priesthood: if I have, I am only to ask pardon of good priests, and am afraid his part of the reparation will come to little. Let him be satisfied, that he shall not he able to force himself upon me for an adversary. I contemn him too much to enter into competition with him. His own translations of Virgil have answered his criticisms on mine. If (as they say he has declared in print) he prefers the version of Ogilby to mine, the world has made him the same compliment; for it is agreed on all hands, that he writes even below Ogilby. That, you will say, is not easily to be done; but what cannot Milbourne bring about? I am satisfied, however, that while he and I live together, I shall not be thought the worst poet of the age. It looks as if I had desired him underhand to write so ill against me; but upon my honest word, I have not bribed him to do me this service, and am wholly guiltless of his pamphlet. It is true, I should be glad if I could persuade him to continue his good offices, and write such another critique on anything of mine; for I find, by experience, he has a great stroke with the reader, when he condemns any of my poems, to make the world have a better opinion of them. He has taken some pains with my poetry; but nobody will be persuaded to take the same with his. If I had taken to the Church (as he affirms, but which was never in my thoughts), I should have had more sense, if not more grace, than to have turned myself out of my benefice by writing libels on my parishioners. But his account of my manners, and my principles, are of a piece with his cavils and his poetry; and so I have done with him for ever."[22]

While Dryden was engaged with his great translation, he found two months' leisure to execute a prose version of Fresnoy's "Art of Painting," to which he added an ingenious Preface, the work of twelve mornings, containing a parallel between that art and poetry; of which Mason has said, that though too superficial to stand the test of strict criticism, yet it will always give pleasure to readers of taste, even when it fails to convince their judgment. This version appeared in 1695. Mr. Malone conjectures that our author was engaged in this task by his friends Closterman, and Sir Godfrey Kneller, artists, who had been active in procuring subscriptions for his Virgil. He also wrote a "Life of Lucian," for a translation of his works, by Mr. Walter Moyle, Sir Henry Shere, and other gentlemen of pretension to learning. This version, although it did not appear till after his death, and although he executed no part of the translation, still retains the title of "Dryden's Lucian."

There was one event of political importance which occurred in December 1695, and which the public seem to have expected should have employed the pen of Dryden;--this was the death of Mary, wife of William the Third. It is difficult to conceive in what manner the poet laureate of the unfortunate James could have treated the memory of his daughter. Satire was dangerous, and had indeed been renounced by the poet; and panegyric was contrary to the principles for which he was suffering. Yet, among the swarm of rhymers who thrust themselves upon the nation on that mournful occasion, there are few who do not call, with friendly or unfriendly voice, upon our poet to break silence.[23] But the voice of praise and censure was heard in vain, and Dryden's only interference was, in character of the first judge of his time, to award the prize to the Duke of Devonshire, as author of the best poem composed on occasion of the Queen's death.[24]

Virgil was hardly finished, when our author distinguished himself by the immortal Ode to Saint Cecilia, commonly called "Alexander's Feast." There is some difference of evidence concerning the time occupied in this splendid task. He had been solicited to undertake it by the stewards of the Musical Meeting, which had for several years met to celebrate the feast of St. Cecilia, their patroness, and whom he had formerly gratified by a similar performance. In September 1697, Dryden writes to his son:--"In the meantime, I am writing a song for St. Cecilia's feast; who, you know, is the patroness of music. This is troublesome, and no way beneficial; but I could not deny the stewards, who came in a body to my house to desire that kindness, one of them being Mr. Bridgeman, whose parents are your mother's friends." This account seems to imply, that the Ode was a work of some time; which is countenanced by Dr. Birch's expression, that Dryden himself "observes, in an original letter of his, that he was employed for almost a fortnight in composing and correcting it."[25] On the other hand, the following anecdote is told upon very respectable authority. "Mr. St. John, afterwards Lord Bolingbroke, happening to pay a morning visit to Dryden, whom he always respected, found him in an unusual agitation of spirits, even to a trembling. On inquiring the cause, 'I have been up all night,' replied the old bard: 'my musical friends made me promise to write them an Ode for their feast of St. Cecilia: I have been so struck with the subject which occurred to me, that I could not leave it till I had _completed_ it; here it is, _finished_ at one sitting.' And immediately he showed him _this_ Ode, which places the British lyric poetry above that of any other nation."[26] These accounts are not, however, so contradictory as they may at first sight appear. It is possible that Dryden may have completed, at one sitting, the whole Ode, and yet have employed a fortnight, or much more, in correction. There is strong internal evidence to show that the poem was, speaking with reference to its general structure, wrought off at once. A halt or pause, even of a day, would perhaps have injured that continuous flow of poetical language and description which argues the whole scene to have arisen at once upon the author's imagination. It seems possible, more especially in lyrical poetry, to discover where the author has paused for any length of time; for the union of the parts is rarely so perfect as not to show a different strain of thought and feeling. There may be something fanciful, however, in this reasoning, which I therefore abandon to the reader's mercy; only begging him to observe, that we have no mode of estimating the exertions of a quality so capricious as a poetic imagination; so that it is very possible, that the Ode to St. Cecilia may have been the work of twenty-four hours, whilst correction and emendations, perhaps of no very great consequence, occupied the author as many days. Derrick, in his "Life of Dryden," tells us, upon the authority of Walter Moyle, that the society paid Dryden £40 for this sublime Ode, which, from the passage in his letter above quoted, seems to have been more than the bard expected at commencing his labour. The music for this celebrated poem was originally composed by Jeremiah Clarke,[27] one of the stewards of the festival, whose productions where more remarkable for deep pathos and delicacy than for fire and energy. It is probable that, with such a turn of mind and taste, he may have failed in setting the sublime, lofty, and daring flights of the Ode to St. Cecilia. Indeed his composition was not judged worthy of publication. The Ode, after some impertinent alterations, made by Hughes, at the request of Sir Richard Steele, was set to music by Clayton, who, with Steele, managed a public concert in 1711; but neither was this a successful essay to connect the poem with the art it celebrated. At length, in 1736, "Alexander's Feast" was set by Handel, and performed in the Theatre-Royal, Covent Garden, with the full success which the combined talents of the poet and the musician seemed to insure.[28] Indeed, although the music was at first less successful, the poetry received, even in the author's time, all the applause which its unrivalled excellence demanded. "I am glad to hear from all hands," says Dryden, in a letter to Tonson, "that my Ode is esteemed the best of all my poetry, by all the town. I thought so myself when I writ it; but, being old, I mistrusted my own judgment." Mr. Malone has preserved a tradition, that the father of Lord Chief-Justice Marlay, then a Templar, and frequenter of Will's coffeehouse, took an opportunity to pay his court to Dryden, on the publication of "Alexander's Feast;" and, happening to sit next him, congratulated him on having produced the finest and noblest Ode that had ever been written in any language. "You are right, young gentleman (replied Dryden), a nobler Ode never _was_ produced, nor ever _will_." This singularly strong expression cannot be placed to the score of vanity. It was an inward consciousness of merit, which burst forth, probably almost involuntarily, and I fear must be admitted as prophetic.

The preparation of a new edition of the Virgil, which appeared in 1698, occupied nine days only, after which Dryden began seriously to consider to what he should next address his pen. The state of his circumstances rendered constant literary labour indispensable to the support of his family, although the exertion, and particularly the confinement, occasioned by his studies, considerably impaired his health. His son Charles had met with an accident at Rome, which was attended with a train of consequences perilous to his health; and Dryden, anxious to recall him to Britain, was obliged to make extraordinary exertions to provide against this additional expense. "If it please God," he writes to Tonson, "that I must die of over-study, I cannot spend my life better than in preserving his." It is affecting to read such a passage in the life of such a man; yet the necessities of the poet, like the afflictions of the virtuous, smooth the road to immortality. While Milton and Dryden were favoured by the rulers of the day, they were involved in the religious and political controversies which raged around them; it is to hours of seclusion, neglect, and even penury, that we owe the Paradise Lost, the Virgil, and the Fables.

Among other projects, Dryden seems to have had thoughts of altering and revising a tragedy called the "Conquest of China by the Tartars," written by his ancient friend and brother-in-law, Sir Robert Howard. The unkindness which had arisen between them upon the subject of blank verse and rhyme, seems to have long since passed away; and we observe, with pleasure, that Dryden, in the course of the pecuniary transactions about Virgil, reckons upon the assistance of Sir Robert Howard, and consults his taste also in the revisal of the version.[29] But Dryden never altered the "Conquest of China," being first interrupted by the necessity of revising Virgil, and afterwards, perhaps, by a sort of quarrel which took place between him and the players, of whom he speaks most resentfully in his "Epistle to Granville," upon his tragedy of "Heroic Love," acted in the beginning of 1698.[30]

The success of Virgil encouraged Dryden about this time to turn his eyes upon Homer; and the general voice of the literary world called upon him to do the venerable Grecian the same service which the Roman had received from him. It was even believed that he had fixed upon the mode of translation, and that he was, as he elsewhere expresses it, to "fight unarmed, without his rhyme."[31] A dubious anecdote bears, that he even regretted he had not rendered Virgil into blank verse, and shows at the same time, if genuine, how far he must now have disapproved of his own attempt to turn into rhyme the Paradise Lost. The story is told by the elder Richardson, in his remarks on the tardy progress of Milton's great work in the public opinion.[32] When Dryden did translate the First Book of Homer, which he published with the Fables, he rendered it into rhyme; nor have we sufficient ground to believe that he ever seriously intended, in so large a work, to renounce the advantages which he possessed, by his unequalled command of versification. That in other respects the task was consonant to his temper, as well as talents, he has himself informed us. "My thoughts," he says, in a letter to Halifax, in 1699, "are at present fixed on Homer; and by my translation of the first Iliad, I find him a poet more according to my genius than Virgil, and consequently hope I may do him more justice, in his fiery way of writing; which, as it is liable to more faults, so it is capable of more beauties than the exactness and sobriety of Virgil. Since it is for my country's honour, as well as for my own, that I am willing to undertake this task, I despair not of being encouraged in it by your favour." But this task Dryden was not destined to accomplish, although he had it so much at heart as to speak of resuming it only three months before his death.[33]

In the meanwhile, our author had engaged himself in making those imitations of Boccacio and Chaucer, which have been since called the "Fables;" and in spring 1699, he was in such forwardness, as to put into Tonson's hands "seven thousand five hundred verses, more or less," as the contract bears, being a partial delivery to account of ten thousand verses, which by that deed he agreed to furnish, for the sum of two hundred and fifty guineas, to be made up three hundred pounds upon publication of the second edition. This second payment Dryden lived not to receive. With the contents of this miscellaneous volume we are to suppose him engaged, from the revisal of the Virgil, in 1697, to the publication of the Fables, in March 1699-1700. This was the last period of his labours, and of his life; and, like all the others, it did not pass undisturbed by acrimonious criticism, and controversy. The dispute with Milbourne we noticed, before dismissing the subject of Virgil; but there were two other persons who, in their zeal for morality and religion, chose to disturb the last years of the life of Dryden.

The indelicacy of the stage, being, in its earliest period, merely the coarse gross raillery of a barbarous age, was probably of no greater injury to the morals of the audience, than it is to those of the lower ranks of society, with whom similar language is everywhere admitted as wit and humour. During the reigns of James I. and Charles I. this licence was gradually disappearing. In the domination of the fanatics, which succeeded, matters were so much changed, that, far from permitting the use of indelicate or profane allusions, they wrapped up not only their most common temporal affairs, but even their very crimes and vices, in the language of their spiritual concerns. Luxury was _using the creature_; avarice was _seeking experiences_; insurrection was _putting the hand to the plough_; actual rebellion, _fighting the good fight_; and regicide, _doing the great work of the Lord._ This vocabulary became grievously unfashionable at the Reformation, and was at once swept away by the torrent of irreligion, blasphemy, and indecency, which were at that period deemed necessary to secure conversation against the imputation of disloyalty and fanaticism. The court of Cromwell, if lampoons can be believed, was not much less vicious than that of Charles II., but it was less scandalous; and, as Dryden himself expresses it,

"The sin was of our native growth, 'tis true;
The scandal of the sin was wholly new.
Misses there were, but modestly concealed,
Whitehall the naked Goddess first revealed;
Who standing, as at Cyprus, in her shrine,
The strumpet was adored with rites divine."

This torrent of licentiousness had begun in some degree to abate, even upon the accession of James II., whose manners did not encourage the same general licence as those of Charles. But after the Revolution, when an affectation of profligacy was no longer deemed a necessary attribute of loyalty, and when it began to be thought possible that a man might have some respect for religion without being a republican, or even a fanatic, the licence of the stage was generally esteemed a nuisance. It then happened, as is not uncommon, that those, most bustling and active to correct public abuses, were men whose intentions may, without doing them injury, be estimated more highly than their talents. Thus, Sir Richard Blackmore, a grave physician, residing and practising on the sober side of Temple-Bar, was the first who professed to reform the spreading pest of poetical licentiousness, and to correct such men as Dryden, Congreve, and Wycherly. This worthy person, compassionating the state to which poetry was reduced by his contemporaries, who used their wit "in opposition to religion, and to the destruction of virtue and good manners in the world," resolved to rescue the Muses from this unworthy thraldom, "to restore them to their sweet and chaste mansions, and to engage them in an employment suited to their dignity." With this laudable view he wrote "Prince Arthur, an Epic Poem," published in 1695. The preface contained a furious, though just, diatribe, against the licence of modern comedy, with some personal reflections aimed at Dry den directly.[34] This the poet felt more unkindly, as Sir Richard had, without acknowledgment, availed himself of the hints he had thrown out in the "Essay upon Satire," for the management of an epic poem on the subject of King Arthur. He bore, however, the attack, without resenting it, until he was again assailed by Sir Richard in his "Satire upon Wit," written expressly to correct the dissolute and immoral performances of the writers of his time. With a ponderous attempt at humour, the good knight proposes, that a _bank for wit_ should be established, and that all which had hitherto passed as current, should be called in, purified in the mint, re-coined, and issued forth anew, freed from alloy.

This satire was published in 1700, as the title-page bears; but Mr. Luttrell marks his copy 23rd November 1699.[35] It contains more than one attack upon our author. Thus, we are told (wit being previously described as a malady),

"Vanine, that looked on all the danger past,
Because he 'scaped so long, is seized at last;
By p----, by hunger, and by Dryden bit,
He grins and snarls, and, in his dogged fit,
Froths at the mouth, a certain sign of wit."

Elsewhere the poet complains, that the universities,

"debauched by Dryden and his crew,
Turn bawds to vice, and wicked aims pursue."

Again, p. 14--

"Dryden condemn, who taught men how to make,
Of dunces wits, an angel of a rake."

But the main offence lies in the following passage:--

"Set forth your edict; let it be enjoined,
That all defective species be recoined;
St. E--m--t and R--r both are fit
To oversee the coining of our wit.
Let these be made the masters of essay,
They'll every piece of metal touch and weigh,
And tell which is too light, which has too much allay.
'Tis true, that when the coarse and worthless dross
Is purged away, there will be mighty loss.
E'en Congreve, Southerne, manly Wycherly,
When thus refined, will grievous sufferers be.
Into the melting-pot when Dryden comes,
What horrid stench will rise, what noisome fumes!
How will he shrink, when all his lewd allay,
And wicked mixture, shall be purged away?
When once his boasted heaps are melted down,
A chest-full scarce will yield one sterling crown.
Those who will D--n--s melt, and think to find
A goodly mass of bullion left behind,
Do, as the Hibernian wit, who, as 'tis told,
Burnt his gilt feather, to collect the gold.
* * * * *
But what remains will be so pure, 'twill bear
The examination of the most severe;
'Twill S--r's scales, and Talbot's test abide,
And with their mark please all the world beside."

These repeated attacks at length called down the vengeance of Dryden. who thus retorted upon him in the preface to the Fables:--