Chapter XVI: Section VII (3)

[19] This, Mr. Malone has proved by the following extract from Motteux's "Gentleman's Journal." "That best of poets (says Motteux) having so long continued a stranger to tolerable English, Mr. Milbourne pitied his hard fate; and seeing that several great men had undertaken some episodes of his Aeneis, without any design of Englishing the whole, he gave us the first book of it some years ago, with a design to go through the poem. It was the misfortune of that first attempt to appear just about the time of the late Revolution, when few had leisure to mind such books; yet, though by reason of his absence, it was printed with a world of faults, those that are sufficient judges have done it the justice to esteem it a very successful attempt, and cannot but wish that he would complete the entire translation."--_Gent. Journ._ for August 1692.

[20] See the Preface to "A Funeral Idyll, sacred to the glorious Memory of King William III.," by Mr. Oldmixon.

"In the Idyll on the peace, I made the first essay to throw off rhymes, and the kind reception that poem met with, has encouraged me to attempt it again. I have not been persuaded by my friends to change the Idyll into Idyllium; for having an English word set me by Mr. Dryden, which he uses indifferently with the Greek, I thought it might be as proper in an English poem. I shall not be solicitous to justify myself to those who except against his authority, till they produce me a better: I have heard him blamed for his innovations and coining of words, even by persons who have already been sufficiently guilty of the fault they lay to his charge; and shown us what we are to expect from them, were their names as well settled as his. If I had qualifications enough to do it successfully, I should advise them to write more naturally, delicately, and reasonably themselves, before they attack Mr. Dryden's reputation; and to think there is something more necessary to make a man write well, than the favour of the great, or the success of a faction. We have every year seen how fickle Fortune has been to her declared favourites; and men of merit, as well as he who has none, have suffered by her inconstancy, as much as they got by her smiles. This should alarm such as are eminently indebted to her, and may be of use to them in their future reflections on others' productions, not to assume too much to themselves from her partiality to them, lest, when they are left like their predecessor, it should only serve to render them the more ridiculous."

[21] "Homer in a Nutshell," (16th Feb.) 1700-9, by Samuel Parker, Gent.

"_Preface_.--Ever since I caught some termagant ones in a club, undervaluing our new translation of Virgil, I've known both what opinion I ought to harbour, and what use to make of them; and since the opportunity of a digression so luckily presents itself, I shall make bold to ask the gentlemen their sentiments of two or three lines (to pass over a thousand other instances) which they may meet with in that work. The fourth Aeneid says of Dido, after certain effects of her taking shelter with Aeneas in the cave appear,

_Conjuijium vocat, hoc proetexit lomine culpam,_ V. 172,

which Mr. Dryden renders thus:

She called it marriage, by that specious name
To veil the crime, and sanctify the shame.

Nor had he before less happily rendered the 39th verse of the second Aeneid:

_Scinditur in certum studia in contraria vulgus._

The giddy vulgar, as their fancies guide,
With noise, say nothing, and in parts divide.

"If these are the lines which they call flat and spiritless, I wish mine could be flat and spiritless too! And, therefore, to make short work, I shall only beg Mr. Dryden's leave to congratulate him upon his admirable flatness, and dulness, in a rapture of poetical indignation:

Then dares the poring critic snarl? And dare
The[21a] puny brats of Momus threaten war?
And can't the proud perverse Arachne's fate
Deter the[21a] mongrels e'er it prove too late?
In vain, alas! we warn the[21a] hardened brood;
In vain expect they'll ever come to good.
No: they'd conceive more venom if they could.
But let each[21a] viper at his peril bite,
While you defy the most ingenious spite.
So Parian columns, raised with costly care,
[21a] Vile snails and worms may daub, yet not impair,
While the tough titles, and obdurate rhyme,
Fatigue the busy grinders of old Time.
Not but your Maro justly may complain,
Since your translation ends his ancient reign,
And but by your officious muse outvied,
That vast immortal name had never died.

"[21a] I desire these appellations may not seem to affect the parties concerned, any otherwise than as to their character of critics."

[22] Preface to the Fables, vol. xi.

[23] See several extracts from these poems in the Appendix, vol. xviii., which I have thrown together to show how much Dryden was considered as sovereign among the poets of the time.

[24] This I learn from _Honori Sacellum_, a Funeral Poem, to the Memory of William, Duke of Devonshire, 1707:

"'Twas so, when the destroyer's dreadful dart
Once pierced through ours, to fair Maria's heart.
From his state-helm then some short hours he stole,
T'indulge his melting eyes, and bleeding soul:
Whilst his bent knees, to those remains divine,
Paid their last offering to that royal shrine."

On which lines occurs this explanatory note:--"An Ode, composed by His Grace, on the death of the late Queen Mary, justly adjudged by the ingenious Mr. Dryden to have exceeded all that had been written on that occasion."

[25] Dr. Birch refers to the authority of Richard Graham, junior; but no such letter has been recovered.

[26] The authority, however respectable, has a very long chain of links. Warton heard it from A, who heard it from B, who heard it from Pope, who heard it from Bolingbroke.--Ed.

[27] This discovery was made by the researches of Mr. Malone. Dr. Burney describes Clarke as excelling in the tender and plaintive, to which he was prompted by a temperament of natural melancholy. In the agonies which arose from an unfortunate attachment, he committed suicide in July 1707. See a full account of the catastrophe in Malone's "Life of Dryden," p. 299.

[28] It was first performed on February 19, 1735-6, at opera prices. "The public expectations and the effects of this representation (says Dr. Burney) seem to have been correspondent, for the next day we are told in the public papers [London Daily Post, and General Advertiser, Feb. 20,] that 'there never was, upon the like occasion, so numerous and splendid an audience at any theatre in London, there being at least thirteen hundred persons present; and it is judged that the receipts of the house could not amount to less than £450. It met with general applause, though attended with the inconvenience of having the performers placed at too great a distance from the audience, which we hear will be rectified the next time of performance."--_Hist. of Music_, iv. 391.

[29] See vol. xviii.

[30] "Thine be the laurel, then; thy blooming age
Can best, if any can, support the stage,
Which to declines, that shortly we may see
Players and plays reduced to second infancy.
Sharp to the world, but thoughtless of renown,
They plot not on the stage, but on the town;
And in despair their empty pit to fill,
Set up some foreign monster in a bill:
Thus they jog on, still tricking, never thriving,
And murth'ring plays, which they miscall--reviving.
Our sense is nonsense, through their pipes conveyed;
Scarce can a poet know the play he made,
'Tis so disguised in death; nor thinks 'tis he
That suffers in the mangled tragedy:
Thus Itys first was killed, and after dressed
For his own sire, the chief invited guest."

This gave great offence to the players; one of whom (Powell) made a petulant retort, which the reader will find in a note upon the Epistle itself, vol. xi.

[31] Milbourne, in a note on that passage in the dedication to the Aeneid--"_He who can write well in rhyme, may write better in blank verse_," says,--"We shall know that, when we see how much better Dryden's Homer will be than his Virgil."

[32] "Much the same character he gave of it (_i.e._ Paradise Lost) to a north-country gentleman, to whom I mentioned the book, he being a great reader, but not in a right train, coming to town seldom, and keeping little company. Dryden amazed him with speaking so loftily of it. 'Why, Mr. Dryden, says he (Sir W.L. told me the thing himself), 'tis not in rhyme.' 'No, [replied Dryden;] _nor would I have done_ Virgil _in rhyme, if I was to begin it again._'"--This conversation is supposed by Mr. Malone to have been held with Sir Wilfrid Lawson, of Isell in Cumberland.

[33] See a letter to Mrs. Thomas, vol. xviii.

[34] "Some of these poets, to excuse their guilt, allege for themselves, that the degeneracy of the age makes their lewd way of writing necessary: they pretend the auditors will not be pleased, unless they are thus entertained from the stage; and to please, they say, is the chief business of the poet. But this is by no means a just apology: it is not true, as was said before, that the poet's chief business is to please. His chief business is to instruct, to make mankind wiser and better; and in order to this, his care should be to please and entertain the audience with all the wit and art he is master of. Aristotle and Horace, and all their critics and commentators all men of wit and sense agree, that this is the end of poetry. But they say, it is their profession to write for the stage; and that poets must starve, if they will not in this way humour the audience: the theatre will be as unfrequented as the churches, and the poet and the parson equally neglected. Let the poet then abandon his profession, and take up some honest lawful calling, where, joining industry to his great wit, he may soon get above the complaints of poverty, so common among these ingenious men, and lie under no necessity of prostituting his wit to any such vile purposes as are here censured. This will-be a course of life more profitable and honourable to himself, and more useful to others. And there are among these writers _some, who think they might have risen to the highest dignities in other professions, had they employed their wit in those ways._ It is a mighty dishonour and reproach to any man that is capable of being useful to the world in any _liberal and virtuous_ profession, _to lavish out his life and wit in propagating vice and corruption of manners_, and in battering from the stage the strongest entrenchments and best works of religion and virtue. Whoever makes this his choice, when the other was in his power, may he go off the stage unpitied, _complaining of neglect and poverty, the just punishments of his irreligion and folly!_"

[35] Mr. Malone conceives, that the Fables were published before the "Satire upon Wit;" but he had not this evidence of the contrary before him. It is therefore clear, that Dryden endured a second attack from Blackmore, before making any reply.

[36] Since Scott wrote, the Collier-Congreve controversy has been the subject of well-known essays by Lamb, Hazlitt, Leigh Hunt, and Macaulay. Very recently a fresh and excellent account of Collier's book has appeared in M.A. Beljame's _Le Public et les Hommes de Lettres en Angleterre au xviiième siecle_ (Paris: Hachette, 1881), a remarkable volume, to which, and to its author, I owe much.--Ed.

[37] In his apology for "The Tale of a Tub," he points out to the resentment of the clergy, "those heavy illiterate scribblers, prostitute in their reputations, vicious in their lives, and ruined in their fortunes, who, to the shame of good sense, as well as piety, are greedily read, merely upon the strength of bold, false, impious assertions, mixed with unmannerly reflections on the priesthood." And, after no great interval, he mentions the passage quoted, p. 375 "in which Dryden, L'Estrange, and some others I shall not name, are levelled at; who, having spent their lives in faction, and apostasies, and all manner of vice, pretended to be sufferers for loyalty and religion. So Dryden tells us, in one of his prefaces, of his merits and sufferings, and thanks God that he possesses his soul in patience. In other places he talks at the same rate."

[38] Vol. xviii.

[39] Thus in a lampoon already quoted (footnote 29, Section VI)

"Quitting my duller hopes, the poor renown
Of Eton College, or a Dublin gown."

Tom Brown makes the charge more directly. "But, prithee, why so severe always on the priesthood, Mr. Bayes? What have they merited to pull down your indignation? I thought the ridiculing men of that character upon the stage, was by this time a topic as much worn out with you, as love and honour in the play, or good fulsome flattery in the dedication. But you, I find, still continue your old humour, to date from the year of Hegira, the loss of Eton, or since orders were refused you. Whatever hangs out, either black or green colours is presently your prize: and you would, by your good will, be as mortifying a vexation to the whole tribe, as an unbegetting year, a concatenation of briefs, or a voracious visitor; so that I am of opinion, you had much better have written in your title-page,

Manet alta mente repostum
Judicium _Cleri_, spretaeque injuria _Musoe_."

The same reproach is urged by Settle. See vol. ix.

[40] Vol. xviii. [The _Diary_ had not been deciphered when Scott wrote. --ED.]

[41] There was, to be sure, in the provoking scruples of that rigid sect, something peculiarly tempting to a satirist. How is it possible to forgive Baxter, for the affectation with which he records the enormities of his childhood?

"Though my conscience," says he, "would trouble me when I sinned, yet divers sins I was addicted to, and oft committed against my conscience, which, for the warning of others, I will here confess to my shame. I was much addicted to the _excessive gluttonous eating of apples and pears_, which I think laid the foundation of the imbecility and flatulency of my stomach, which caused the bodily calamities of my life. To this end, and to concur with naughty boys that gloried in evil, I have oft gone into other men's orchards, and stolen the fruit, when I had enough at home." There are six other retractions of similar enormities, when he concludes: "These were my sins in my childhood, as to which, conscience troubled me for a great while before they were overcome." Baxter was a pious and worthy man; but can any one read this confession without thinking of Tartuffe, who subjected himself to penance for killing a flea, with too much anger?

[42] See vol. xviii. Mr. Malone thinks tradition has confounded a present made to the poet himself probably of £100, with a legacy bequeathed to his son Charles, which last did amount to £500, but which Charles lived not to receive.

[43] She is distinguished for beauty and virtue, by the author of "The Court at Kensington." 1699-1700.

"So Ormond's graceful mien attracts all eyes,
And nature needs not ask from art supplies;
An heir of grandeur shines through every part,
And in her beauteous form is placed the noblest heart:
In vain mankind adore, unless she were
By Heaven made less virtuous, or less fair."

[44] Gildon, in his "Comparison between the Stages."--"Nay then," says the whole party at Drury-lane, "we'll even put 'The Pilgrim' upon him." "Ay, 'faith, so we will," says Dryden: "and if you'll let my son have the profits of the third night, I'll give you a Secular Masque." "Done," says the House; and so the bargain was struck.

[45] _i.e._ Upon the 25th March 1700; it being supposed (as by many in our own time) that the century was concluded so soon as the hundredth year commenced; as if a play was ended at the _beginning of the fifth act._

[46] It was again set by Dr. Boyce, and in 1749 performed in the Drury-lane theatre, with great success.

[47] By a letter to Mrs. Steward, dated the 11th April 1700, it appears they were then only in his contemplation, and the poet died upon the first of the succeeding month. Vol. xviii.

[48]
"Quick Maurus, though he never took degrees
In either of our universities,
Yet to be shown by Rome kind wit he looks,
Because he played the fool, and writ three books.
But if he would be worth a poet's pen,
He must be more a fool, and write again:
For all the former fustian stuff he wrote
Was dead-born doggrel, or is quite forgot;
His man of Uz, stript of his Hebrew robe,
Is just the proverb, and 'As poor as Job.'
One would have thought he could no longer jog;
But Arthur was a level, Job's a bog.
_There_ though he crept, yet still he kept in sight;
But _here_ he founders in, and sinks downright.
Had he prepared us, and been dull by rule,
Tobit had first been turned to ridicule;
But our bold Briton, without fear or awe,
O'erleaps at once the whole Apocrypha;
Invades the Psalms with rhymes, and leaves no room
For any Vandal Hopkins yet to come.
But when, if, after all, this godly gear
Is not so senseless as it would appear,
Our mountebank has laid a deeper train;
His cant, like Merry Andrew's noble vein,
Cat-calls the sects to draw them in again.
At leisure hours in epic song he deals,
Writes to the rumbling of his coach's wheels;
Prescribes in haste, and seldom kills by rule,
But rides triumphant between stool and stool.
Well, let him go,--'tis yet too early day
To get himself a place in farce or play;
We know not by what name we should arraign him,
For no one category can contain him.
A pedant,--canting preacher,--and a quack,
Are load enough to break an ass's back.
At last, grown wanton, he presumed to write,
Traduced two kings, their kindness to requite;
One made the doctor, and one dubbed the knight."

[49] One of these well-meaning persons insulted the ashes of Dryden while they were still warm, in "An Epistle to Sir Richard Blackmore, occasioned by the New Session of the Poets." Marked by Mr. Luttrell, 1st November 1700.

"His mighty Dryden to the shades is gone,
And Congreve leaves successor of his throne:
Though long before his final exit hence,
He was himself an abdicated Prince;
Disrobed of all regalities of state,
Drawn by a hind and panther from his seat.
Heir to his plays, his fables, and his tales,
Congreve is the poetic prince of Wales;
Not at St. Germains, but at Will's, his court,
Whither the subjects of his dad resort;
Where plots are hatched, and councils yet unknown,
How young Ascanius may ascend the throne,
That in despite of all the Muses' laws,
He may revenge his injured father's cause,
Go, nauseous rhymers, into darkness go,
And view your monarch in the shades below,
Who takes not now from Helicon his drink,
But sips from Styx a liquor black as ink;
Like Sisyphus a restless stone he turns,
And in a pile of his own labours burns;
Whose curling flames most ghastly fiends do raise,
Supplied with fuel from his impious plays;
And when he fain would puff away the flame,
One stops his mouth with bawdy Limberham;
There, to augment the terrors of the place,
His Hind and Panther stare him in the face;
They grin like devils at the cursed toad,
Who made [them] draw on earth so vile a load.
Could some infernal painter draw the sight,
And once transmit it to the realms of light,
It might our poets from their sins affright;
Or could they hear, how there the sons of verse
In dismal yells their tortures do express;
How scorched with ballads on the Stygian shore,
They horrors in a dismal chorus roar;
Or see how the laureate does his grandeur bear,
Crowned with a wreath of flaming sulphur there.
This, sir, 's your fate, cursed critics you oppose,
The most tyrannical and cruel foes;
Dryden, their huntsman dead, no more he wounds,
But now you must engage his pack of hounds."

[50] According to Ward, his expressions were, "that he was an old man, and had not long to live by course of nature, and therefore did not care to part with one limb, at such an age, to preserve an uncomfortable life on the rest."--_London Spy_, Part xviii.

[51] "I come now from Mr. Dryden's funeral, where we had an Ode in Horace sung, instead of David's Psalms; whence you may find, that we don't think a poet worth Christian burial. The pomp of the ceremony was a kind of rhapsody, and fitter, I think, for Hudibras, than him; because the cavalcade was mostly burlesque: but he was an extraordinary man, and buried after an extraordinary fashion; for I do believe there was never such another burial seen. The oration, indeed, was great and ingenious, worthy the subject, and like the author; whose prescriptions can restore the living, and his pen embalm the dead. And so much for Mr. Dryden; whose burial was the same as his life,--variety, and not of a piece:-- the quality and mob, farce and heroics; the sublime and ridicule mixed in a piece;--great Cleopatra in a hackney coach."

[52] Those who wish to peruse this memorable romance may find it in vol. xviii. It was first published in Wilson's "Life of Congreve," 1730. Mr. Malone has successfully shown that it is false in almost all its parts; for, independently of the extreme improbability of the whole story, it is clear, from Ward's account, written at the time, that Lord Jefferies, who it is pretended interrupted the funeral, did, in fact, largely contribute to it. This also appears from a paragraph, in a letter from Doctor afterwards Bishop Tanner, dated May 6th, 1700, and thus given by Mr. Malone:--"Mr. Dryden died a papist, if at all a Christian. Mr. Montague had given orders to bury him; but some lords (my Lord Dorset, Jefferies, etc.), thinking it would not be splendid enough, ordered him to be carried to Russel's: there he was embalmed; and now lies in state at the Physicians' College, and is to be buried with Chaucer, Cowley, etc., at Westminster Abbey, on Monday next."--_MSS. Ballard. in Bibl. Bodl._ vol. iv. p. 29.

[53] The following lines are given by Mr. Malone as a specimen:--

"Before the hearse the mourning hautboys go,
And screech a dismal sound of grief and woe:
More dismal notes from bog-trotters may fall,
More dismal plaints at Irish funeral;
But no such floods of tears e'er stopped our tide,
Since Charles, the martyr and the monarch, died.
The decency and order first describe,
Without regard to either sex or tribe.
The sable coaches led the dismal van,
But by their side, I think, few footmen ran;
Nor needed these; the rabble fill the streets,
And mob with mob in great disorder meets.
See next the coaches, how they are accouter'd,
Both in the inside, eke and on the outward:
One p----y spark, one sound as any roach,
One poet and two fiddlers in a coach:
The playhouse drab, that beats the beggar's bush,
* * * * *
By everybody kissed, good truth,--but such is
Now her good fate, to ride with mistress Duchess.
Was e'er immortal poet thus buffooned!
In a long line of coaches thus lampooned!"

[54] [Transcriber's note: "Page 73" in original. See Footnote 14, Section II.]

[55] [Transcriber's note: "'Poet Squab,' p. 215" in original. See Footnote 14, Section V.]

[56] From "Epigrams on the Paintings of the most eminent Masters," by J.E. (John Elsum), Esq., 8vo, 1700, Mr. Malone gives the following lines:--

The Effigies of Mr. Dryden, by Closterman,
_Epig_. clxiv.

"A sleepy eye he shows, and no sweet feature,
Yet was indeed a favourite of nature:
Endowed and graced with an exalted mind,
With store of wit, and that of every kind.
Juvenal's tartness, Horace's sweet air,
With Virgil's force, in him concentered were.
But though the painter's art can never show it,
That his exemplar was so great a poet,
Yet are the lines and tints so subtly wrought,
You may perceive he was a man of thought.
Closterman, 'tis confessed, has drawn him well,
But short of Absalom and Achitophel."

[57] [Transcriber's note: "See pages 258-261" in original. This corresponds to the discussion on Dryden's conversion to Catholicism,