In the school of reformed English poetry, of which Dryden must be
acknowledged as the founder, there soon arose disciples not unwilling to
be considered as the rivals of their muster. Addison had his partisans,
who were desirous to hold him up in this point of view; and he himself
is said to have taken pleasure, with the assistance of Steele, to
depreciate Dryden, whose fame was defended by Pope and Congreve. No
serious invasion of Dryden's pre-eminence can be said, however, to have
taken place, till Pope himself, refining upon that structure of
versification which our author had first introduced, and attending with
sedulous diligence to improve every passage to the highest pitch of
point and harmony, exhibited a new style of composition, and claimed at
least to share with Dryden the sovereignty of Parnassus. I will not
attempt to concentrate what Johnson has said upon this interesting
comparison:--

"In acquired knowledge, the superiority must be allowed to Dryden, whose
education was more scholastic, and who, before he became an author, had
been allowed more time for study, with better means of information. His
mind has a larger range, and he collects his images and illustrations
from a more extensive circumference of science. Dryden knew more of man
in his general nature, and Pope in his local manners. The notions of
Dryden were formed by comprehensive speculation, and those of Pope by
minute attention. There is more dignity in the knowledge of Dryden, and
more certainty in that of Pope.

"Poetry was not the sole praise of either; for both excelled likewise in
prose; but Pope did not borrow his prose from his predecessor. The style
of Dryden is capricious and varied, that of Pope is cautious and
uniform. Dryden obeys the motions of his own mind, Pope constrains his
mind to his own rules of composition. Dryden is sometimes vehement and
rapid; Pope is always smooth, uniform, and gentle. Dryden's page is a
natural field, rising into inequalities, and diversified by the varied
exuberance of abundant vegetation; Pope's is a velvet lawn, shaven by
the scythe, and levelled by the roller.

"Of genius, that power which constitutes a poet; that quality, without
which judgment is cold, and knowledge is inert; that energy, which
collects, combines, amplifies, and animates; the superiority must, with
some hesitation, be allowed to Dryden. It is not to be inferred, that of
this poetical vigour Pope had only a little, because Dryden had more;
for every other writer, since Milton, must give place to Pope: and even
of Dryden it must be said, that if he has brighter paragraphs, he has
not better poems. Dryden's performances were always hasty, either
excited by some external occasion, or extorted by domestic necessity; he
composed without consideration, and published without correction. What
his mind could supply at call, or gather in one excursion, was all that
he sought, and all that he gave. The dilatory caution of Pope enabled
him to condense his sentiments, to multiply his images, and to
accumulate all that study might produce, or chance might supply. If the
flights of Dryden, therefore, are higher, Pope continues longer on the
wing. If of Dryden's fire the blaze is brighter, of Pope the heat is
more regular and constant. Dryden often surpasses expectation, and Pope
never falls below it. Dryden is read with frequent astonishment, and
Pope with perpetual delight."[7]

As the eighteenth century advanced, the difference between the styles of
these celebrated authors became yet more manifest. It was then obvious,
that though Pope's felicity of expression, his beautiful polish of
sentiment, and the occasional brilliancy of his wit, were not easily
imitated, yet many authors, by dint of a good ear, and a fluent
expression, learned to command the unaltered sweetness of his melody,
which, like a favourite tune, when descended to hawkers and
ballad-singers, became disgusting as it became common. The admirers of
poetry then reverted to the brave negligence of Dryden's versification,
as, to use Johnson's simile, the eye, fatigued with the uniformity of a
lawn, seeks variety in the uncultivated glade or swelling mountain. The
preference for which Dennis, asserting the cause of Dryden, had raved
and thundered in vain, began, by degrees, to be assigned to the elder
bard; and many a poet sheltered his harsh verses and inequalities under
an assertion that he belonged to the school of Dryden. Churchill--

  "Who, born for the universe, narrowed his mind,
  And to party gave up what was meant for mankind,"--

Churchill was one of the first to seek in the "Mac-Flecknoe," the
"Absalom," and "The Hind and Panther," authority for bitter and personal
sarcasm, couched in masculine, though irregular versification, dashed
from the pen without revision, and admitting occasional rude and flat
passages, to afford the author a spring to comparative elevation. But
imitation always approaches to caricature; and the powers of Churchill
have been unable to protect him from the oblivion into which his poems
are daily sinking, owing to the ephemeral interest of political
subjects, and his indolent negligence of severe study and regularity. To
imitate Dryden, it were well to study his merits, without venturing to
adopt the negligences and harshness, which the hurry of his composition,
and the comparative rudeness of his age, rendered in him excusable. At
least, those who venture to sink as low, should be confident of the
power of soaring as high; for surely it is a rash attempt to dive,
unless in one conscious of ability to swim. While the beauties of Dryden
may be fairly pointed out as an object of emulation, it is the less
pleasing, but not less necessary, duty of his biographer and editor, to
notice those deficiencies, which his high and venerable name may excuse,
but cannot render proper objects of applause or imitation.

So much occasional criticism has been scattered in various places
through these volumes, that, while attempting the consideration of one
or two of his distinguishing and pre-eminent compositions, which have
been intentionally reserved to illustrate a few pages of general
criticism, I feel myself free from the difficult, and almost
contradictory task, of drawing my maxims and examples from the extended
course of his literary career.

My present task is limited to deducing his poetic character from those
works which he formed on his last and most approved model. The general
tone of his genius, however, influenced the whole course of his
publications; and upon that, however his taste, a few preliminary
notices may not be misplaced.

The distinguishing characteristic of Dryden's genius seems to have been
the power of reasoning, and of expressing the result in appropriate
language.[8] This may seem slender praise; yet these were the talents
that led Bacon into the recesses of philosophy, and conducted Newton to
the cabinet of nature. The prose works of Dryden bear repeated evidence
to his philosophical powers. His philosophy was not indeed of a formed
and systematic character; for he is often contented to leave the path of
argument which must have conducted him to the fountain of truth, and to
resort with indolence or indifference to the leaky cisterns which had
been hewn out by former critics. But where his pride or his taste are
interested, he shows evidently, that it was not want of the power of
systematising, but of the time and patience necessary to form a system,
which occasions the discrepancy that we often notice in his critical and
philological disquisitions. This power of ratiocination, of
investigating, discovering, and appreciating that which is really
excellent, if accompanied with the necessary command of fanciful
illustration, and elegant expression, is the most interesting quality
which can be possessed by a poet. It must indeed have a share in the
composition of everything that is truly estimable in the fine arts, as
well as in philosophy. Nothing is so easily attained as the power of
presenting the extrinsic qualities of fine painting, fine music, or fine
poetry; the beauty of colour and outline, the combination of notes, the
melody of versification, may be imitated by artists of mediocrity; and
many will view, hear, or peruse their performances, without being able
positively to discover why they should not, since composed according to
all the rules, afford pleasure equal to those of Raphael, Handel, or
Dryden. The deficiency lies in the vivifying spirit, which, like
_alcohol_, may be reduced to the same principle in all, though it
assumes such varied qualities from the mode in which it is exerted or
combined. Of this power of intellect, Dryden seems to have possessed
almost an exuberant share, combined, as usual, with the faculty of
correcting his own conceptions, by observing human nature, the practical
and experimental philosophy as well of poetry as of ethics or physics.
The early habits of Dryden's education and poetical studies gave his
researches somewhat too much of a metaphysical character; and it was a
consequence of his mental acuteness, that his dramatic personages often
philosophised or reasoned, when they ought only to have felt. The more
lofty, the fiercer, the more ambitious feelings, seem also to have been
his favourite studies. Perhaps the analytical mode in which he exercised
his studies of human life tended to confine his observation to the more
energetic feelings of pride, anger, ambition, and other high-toned
passions. He that mixes in public life must see enough of these stormy
convulsions; but the finer and more imperceptible operations of love, in
its sentimental modifications, if the heart of the author does not
supply an example from its own feelings, cannot easily be studied at the
expense of others. Dryden's bosom, it must be owned, seems to have
afforded him no such means of information; the licence of his age, and
perhaps the advanced period at which he commenced his literary career,
had probably armed him against this more exalted strain of passion. The
love of the senses he has in many places expressed, in as forcible and
dignified colouring as the subject could admit; but of a mere moral and
sentimental passion he seems to have had little idea, since he
frequently substitutes in its place the absurd, unnatural, and
fictitious refinements of romance. In short, his love is always in
indecorous nakedness, or sheathed in the stiff panoply of chivalry. But
if Dryden fails in expressing the milder and more tender passions, not
only did the stronger feelings of the heart, in all its dark or violent
workings, but the face of natural objects, and their operation upon the
human mind, pass promptly in review at his command. External pictures,
and their corresponding influence on the spectator, are equally ready at
his summons; and though his poetry, from the nature of his subjects, is
in general rather ethic and didactic, than narrative of composition,
than his figures and his landscapes are presented to the mind with the
same vivacity as the flow of his reasoning, or the acute metaphysical
discrimination of his characters.

But the powers of observation and of deduction are not the only
qualities essential to the poetical character. The philosopher may
indeed prosecute his experimental researches into the _arcana_ of
nature, and announce them to the public through the medium of a friendly
_rГ©dacteur_, as the legislator of Israel obtained permission to speak to
the people by the voice of Aaron; but the poet has no such privilege;
nay, his doom is so far capricious, that, though he may be possessed of
the primary quality of poetical conception to the highest possible
extent, it is but like a lute without its strings, unless he has the
subordinate, though equally essential, power of expressing what he feels
and conceives, in appropriate and harmonious language. With this power
Dryden's poetry was gifted in a degree, surpassing in modulated harmony
that of all who had preceded him, and inferior to none that has since
written English verse. He first showed that the English language was
capable of uniting smoothness and strength. The hobbling verses of his
predecessors were abandoned even by the lowest versifiers; and by the
force of his precept and example, the meanest lampooners of the year
seventeen hundred wrote smoother lines than Donne and Cowley, the chief
poets of the earlier half of the seventeenth century. What was said of
Rome adorned by Augustus, has been, by Johnson, applied to English
poetry improved by Dryden; that he found it of brick, and left it of
marble. This reformation was not merely the effect of an excellent ear,
and a superlative command of gratifying it by sounding language; it was,
we have seen, the effect of close, accurate, and continued study of the
power of the English tongue. Upon what principles he adopted and
continued his system of versification, he long meditated to communicate
in his projected prosody of English poetry. The work, however, might
have been more curious than useful, as there would have been some danger
of its diverting the attention, and misguiding the efforts of poetical
adventurers; for as it is more easy to be masons than architects, we may
deprecate an art which might teach the world to value those who can
build rhymes, without attending to the more essential qualities of
poetry. Strict attention might no doubt discover the principle of
Dryden's versification; but it seems no more essential to the analysing
his poetry, than the principles of mathematics to understanding music,
although the art necessarily depends on them. The extent in which Dryden
reformed our poetry, is most readily proved by an appeal to the ear; and
Dr. Johnson has forcibly stated, that "he knew how to choose the flowing
and the sonorous words; to vary the pauses and adjust the accents; to
diversify the cadence, and yet preserve the smoothness of the metre." To
vary the English hexameter, he established the use of the triplet and
Alexandrine. Though ridiculed by Swift, who vainly thought he had
exploded them for ever, their force is still acknowledged in classical
poetry.

Of the various kinds of poetry which Dryden occasionally practised, the
drama was that which, until the last six years of his life, he chiefly
relied on for support. His style of tragedy, we have seen, varied with
his improved taste, perhaps with the change of manners. Although the
heroic drama, as we have described it at length in the preceding pages,
presented the strongest temptation to the exercise of argumentative
poetry in sounding rhyme, Dryden was at length contented to abandon it
for the more pure and chaste style of tragedy, which professes rather
the representation of human beings, than the creation of ideal
perfection, or fantastic and anomalous characters. The best of Dryden's
performances in this latter style, are unquestionably "Don Sebastian,"
and "All for Love." Of these, the former is in the poet's very best
manner; exhibiting dramatic persons, consisting of such bold and
impetuous characters as he delighted to draw, well contrasted, forcibly
marked, and engaged in an interesting succession of events. To many
tempers, the scene between Sebastian and Dorax must appear one of the
most moving that ever adorned the British stage. Of "All for Love," we
may say, that it is successful in a softer style of painting; and that
so far as sweet and beautiful versification, elegant language, and
occasional tenderness, can make amends for Dryden's deficiencies in
describing the delicacies of sentimental passion, they are to be found
in abundance in that piece. But on these, and on the poet's other
tragedies, we have enlarged in our preliminary notices prefixed to each
piece.

Dryden's comedies, besides being stained with the licence of the age (a
licence which he seems to use as much from necessity as choice), have,
generally speaking, a certain heaviness of character. There are many
flashes of wit; but the author has beaten his flint hard ere he struck
them out. It is almost essential to the success of a jest, that it
should at least seem to be extemporaneous. If we espy the joke at a
distance, nay, if without seeing it we have the least reason to suspect
we are travelling towards one, it is astonishing how the perverse
obstinacy of our nature delights to refuse it currency. When, therefore,
as is often the case in Dryden's comedies, two persons remain on the
stage for no obvious purpose but to say good things, it is no wonder
they receive but little thanks from an ungrateful audience. The
incidents, therefore, and the characters, ought to be comic; but actual
jests, or _bon mots_, should be rarely introduced, and then naturally,
easily, without an appearance of premeditation, and bearing a strict
conformity to the character of the person who utters them. Comic
situation Dryden did not greatly study; indeed I hardly recollect any,
unless in the closing scene of "The Spanish Friar," which indicates any
peculiar felicity of invention. For comic character, he is usually
contented to paint a generic representative of a certain class of men or
women; a Father Dominic, for example, or a Melantha, with all the
attributes of their calling and manners, strongly and divertingly
portrayed, but without any individuality of character. It is probable
that, with these deficiencies, he felt the truth of his own
acknowledgment, and that he was forced upon composing comedies to
gratify the taste of the age, while the bent of his genius was otherwise
directed.

In lyrical poetry, Dryden must be allowed to have no equal. "Alexander's
Feast" is sufficient to show his supremacy in that brilliant department.
In this exquisite production, he flung from him all the trappings with
which his contemporaries had embarrassed the ode. The language, lofty
and striking as the ideas are, is equally simple and harmonious; without
far-fetched allusions, or epithets, or metaphors, the story is told as
intelligibly as if it had been in the most humble prose. The change of
tone in the harp of Timotheus, regulates the measure and the melody, and
the language of every stanza. The hearer, while he is led on by the
successive changes, experiences almost the feelings of the Macedonian
and his peers; nor is the splendid poem disgraced by one word or line
unworthy of it, unless we join in the severe criticism of Dr. Johnson,
on the concluding stanzas. It is true, that the praise of St. Cecilia is
rather abruptly introduced as a conclusion to the account of the Feast
of Alexander; and it is also true, that the comparison,

  "He raised a mortal to the sky,
  She drew an angel down,"

is inaccurate, since the feat of Timotheus was metaphorical, and that of
Cecilia literal. But, while we stoop to such criticism, we seek for
blots in the sun.

Of Dryden's other pindarics, some, as the celebrated "Ode to the Memory
of Mrs. Killigrew," are mixed with the leaven of Cowley; others, like
the "_Threnodia Augustalis_," are occasionally flat and heavy. All
contain passages of brilliancy, and all are thrown into a versification,
melodious amidst its irregularity. We listen for the completion of
Dryden's stanza, as for the explication of a difficult passage in music;
and wild and lost as the sound appears, the ear is proportionally
gratified by the unexpected ease with which harmony is extracted from
discord and confusion.

The satirical powers of Dryden were of the highest order. He draws his
arrow to the head, and dismisses it straight upon his object of aim. In
this walk he wrought almost as great a reformation as upon versification
in general; as will plainly appear, if we consider, that the satire,
before Dryden's time, bore the same reference to "Absalom and
Achitophel," which an ode of Cowley bears to "Alexander's Feast." Butler
and his imitators had adopted a metaphysical satire, as the poets in the
earlier part of the century had created a metaphysical vein of serious
poetry.[9] Both required store of learning to supply the perpetual
expenditure of extraordinary and far-fetched illustration; the object of
both was to combine and hunt down the strangest and most fanciful
analogies; and both held the attention of the reader perpetually on the
stretch, to keep up with the meaning of the author. There can be no
doubt, that this metaphysical vein was much better fitted for the
burlesque than the sublime. Yet the perpetual scintillation of Butler's
wit is too dazzling to be delightful; and we can seldom read far in
"Hudibras" without feeling more fatigue than pleasure. His fancy is
employed with the profusion of a spendthrift, by whose eternal round of
banqueting his guests are at length rather wearied out than regaled.
Dryden was destined to correct this, among other errors of his age; to
show the difference between burlesque and satire; and to teach his
successors in that species of assault, rather to thrust than to flourish
with their weapon. For this purpose he avoided the unvaried and
unrelieved style of grotesque description and combination, which had
been fashionable since the satires of Cleveland and Butler. To render
the objects of his satire hateful and contemptible, he thought it
necessary to preserve the lighter shades of character, if not for the
purpose of softening the portrait, at least for that of preserving the
likeness. While Dryden seized, and dwelt upon, and aggravated, all the
evil features of his subject, he carefully retained just as much of its
laudable traits as preserved him from the charge of want of candour, and
fixed down the resemblance upon the party. And thus, instead of
unmeaning caricatures, he presents portraits which cannot be mistaken,
however unfavourable ideas they may convey of the originals. The
character of Shaftesbury, both as Achitophel, and as drawn in "The
Medal," bears peculiar witness to this assertion. While other court
poets endeavoured to turn the obnoxious statesman into ridicule on
account of his personal infirmities and extravagances, Dryden boldly
confers upon him all the praise for talent and for genius that his
friends could have claimed, and trusts to the force of his satirical
expression for working up even these admirable attributes with such a
mixture of evil propensities and dangerous qualities, that the whole
character shall appear dreadful, and even hateful, but not contemptible.
But where a character of less note, a Shadwell or a Settle, crossed his
path, the satirist did not lay himself under these restraints, but wrote
in the language of bitter irony and immeasurable contempt: even then,
however, we are less called on to admire the wit of the author, than the
force and energy of his poetical philippic. These are the verses which
are made by indignation, and, no more than theatrical scenes of real
passion, admit of refined and protracted turns of wit, or even the
lighter sallies of humour. These last ornaments are proper in that
Horatian satire, which rather ridicules the follies of the age, than
stigmatises the vices of individuals; but in this style Dryden has made
few essays. He entered the field as champion of a political party, or as
defender of his own reputation; discriminated his antagonists, and
applied the scourge with all the vehemence of Juvenal. As he has himself
said of that satirist, "his provocations were great, and he has revenged
them tragically." This is the more worthy of notice, as, in the Essay
on Satire, Dryden gives a decided preference to those nicer and more
delicate touches of satire, which consist in fine raillery. But whatever
was the opinion of his cooler moments, the poet's practice was dictated
by the furious party-spirit of the times, and the no less keen
stimulative of personal resentment. It is perhaps to be regretted, that
so much energy of thought, and so much force of expression, should have
been wasted in anatomising such criminals as Shadwell and Settle; yet we
cannot account the amber less precious, because they are grubs and flies
that are enclosed within it.

The "Fables" of Dryden are the best examples of his talents as a
narrative poet; those powers of composition, description, and narration,
which must have been called into exercise by the Epic Muse, had his fate
allowed him to enlist among her votaries. The "Knight's Tale," the
longest and most laboured of Chaucer's stories, possesses a degree of
regularity which might satisfy the most severe critic. It is true, that
the honour arising from thence must be assigned to the more ancient
bard, who had himself drawn his subject from an Italian model; but the
high and decided preference which Dryden has given to this story,
although somewhat censured by Trapp, enables us to judge how much the
poet held an accurate combination of parts, and coherence of narrative,
essentials of epic poetry.[10] That a classic scholar like Trapp should
think the plan of the "Knight's Tale" equal to that of the Iliad, is a
degree of candour not to be hoped for; but surely to an unprejudiced
reader, a story which exhausts in its conclusion all the interest which
it has excited in its progress, which, when terminated, leaves no
question to be asked, no personage undisposed of, and no curiosity
unsatisfied, is, abstractedly considered, more gratifying than the
history of a few weeks of a ten years' war, commencing long after the
siege had begun, and ending long before the city was taken. Of the other
tales, it can hardly be said that their texture is more ingenious or
closely woven than that of ordinary novels or fables: but in each of
them Dryden has displayed the superiority of his genius, in selecting
for amplification and ornament those passages most susceptible of
poetical description. The account of the procession of the Fairy
Chivalry in the "Flower and the Leaf;" the splendid description of the
champions who came to assist at the tournament in the "Knight's Tale;"
the account of the battle itself, its alternations and issue,--if they
cannot be called improvements on Chaucer, are nevertheless so spirited a
transfusion of his ideas into modern verse, as almost to claim the merit
of originality. Many passages might be shown in which this praise may be
carried still higher, and the merit of invention added to that of
imitation. Such is the description of the commencement of the tourney,
which is almost entirely original, and most of the ornaments in the
translations from Boccacio, whose prose fictions demanded more additions
from the poet than the exuberant imagery of Chaucer. To select instances
would be endless; but every reader of poetry has by heart the
description of Iphigenia asleep, nor are the lines in "Theodore and
Honoria,"[11] which describe the approach of the apparition, and its
effects upon animated and inanimated nature even before it becomes
visible, less eminent for beauties of the terrific order:

"While listening to the murmuring leaves he stood,
More than a mile immersed within the wood,
At once the wind was laid; the whispering sound
Was dumb; a rising earthquake rocked the ground;
With deeper brown the grove was overspread,
A sudden horror seized his giddy head,
And his ears tingled, and his colour fled,
Nature was in alarm; some danger nigh
Seemed threatened, though unseen to mortal eye."

It may be doubted, however, whether the simplicity of Boccacio's
narrative has not sometimes suffered by the additional decorations of
Dryden. The retort of Guiscard to Tancred's charge of ingratitude is
more sublime in the Italian original,[12] than as diluted by the English
poet into five hexameters. A worse fault occurs in the whole colouring
of Sigismonda's passion, to which Dryden has given a coarse and
indelicate character, which he did not derive from Boccacio. In like
manner, the plea used by Palamon in his prayer to Venus, is more nakedly
expressed by Dryden than by Chaucer. The former, indeed, would probably
have sheltered himself under the mantle of Lucretius; but he should have
recollected, that Palamon speaks the language of chivalry, and ought
not, to use an expression of Lord Herbert, to have spoken like a
_paillard_, but a _cavalier_. Indeed, we have before noticed it as the
most obvious and most degrading imperfection of Dryden's poetical
imagination, that he could not refine that passion, which, of all
others, is susceptible either of the purest refinement, or of admitting
the basest alloy. With Chaucer, Dryden's task was more easy than with
Boccacio. Barrenness was not the fault of the Father of English poetry;
and amid the profusion of images which he presented, his imitator had
only the task of rejecting or selecting. In the sublime description of
the temple of Mars, painted around with all the misfortunes ascribed to
the influence of his planet, it would be difficult to point out a single
idea, which is not found in the older poem. But Dryden has judiciously
omitted or softened some degrading and some disgusting circumstances; as
the "cook scalded in spite of his long ladle," the "swine devouring the
cradled infant," the "pickpurse," and other circumstances too grotesque
or ludicrous to harmonise with the dreadful group around them. Some
points, also, of sublimity, have escaped the modern poet. Such is the
appropriate and picturesque accompaniment of the statue of Mars:--

  "A wolf stood before him at his feet,
  With eyen red, and of a man he eat."[13]

In the dialogue, or argumentative parts of the poem, Dryden has
frequently improved on his original, while he falls something short of
him in simple description, or in pathetic effect. Thus, the quarrel
between Arcite and Palamon is wrought up with greater energy by Dryden
than Chaucer, particularly by the addition of the following lines,
describing the enmity of the captives against each other:--

  "Now friends no more, nor walking hand in hand,
  But when they met, they made a surly stand,
  And glared like angry lions as they passed,
  And wished that every look might be their last."

But the modern must yield the palm, despite the beauty of his
versification, to the description of Emily by Chaucer; and may be justly
accused of loading the dying speech of Arcite with conceits for which
his original gave no authority.[14]

When the story is of a light and ludicrous kind, as the Fable of the
Cock and Fox, and the Wife of Bath's Tale, Dryden displays all the
humorous expression of his satirical poetry, without its personality.
There is indeed a quaint Cervantic gravity in his mode of expressing
himself, that often glances forth, and enlivens what otherwise would be
mere dry narrative. Thus, he details certain things which passed,

  "While Cynion was _endeavouring_ to be wise;"

the force of which single word contains both a ludicrous and appropriate
picture of the revolution which the force of love was gradually creating
in the mind of the poor clown. This tone of expression he perhaps
borrowed from Ariosto, and other poets of Italian chivalry, who are
wont, ever and anon, to raise the mask, and smile even at the romantic
tale they are themselves telling.

Leaving these desultory reflections on Dryden's powers of narrative, I
cannot but notice, that, from haste or negligence, he has sometimes
mistaken the sense of his author. Into the hands of the champions in
"The Flower and the Leaf," he has placed _bows_ instead of _boughs_,
because the word is in the original spelled _bowes_; and, having made
the error, he immediately devises an explanation of the device which he
had mistaken:--

  "For bows the strength of brawny arms imply,
  Emblems of valour, and of victory."

He has, in like manner, accused Chaucer of introducing Gallicisms into
the English language; not aware that French was the language of the
court of England not long before Chaucer's time, and, that, far from
introducing French phrases into the English tongue, the ancient bard was
successfully active in introducing the English as a fashionable dialect,
instead of the French, which had, before his time, been the only
language of polite literature in England. Other instances might be given
of similar oversights, which, in the situation of Dryden, are
sufficiently pardonable.

Upon the whole, in introducing these romances of Boccacio and Chaucer to
modern readers, Dryden has necessarily deprived them of some of the
charms which they possess for those who have perused them in their
original state. With a tale or poem, by which we have been sincerely
interested, we connect many feelings independent of those arising from
actual poetical merit. The delight, arising from the whole, sanctions,
nay, sanctifies, the faulty passages; and even actual improvements, like
supplements to a mutilated statue of antiquity, injure our preconceived
associations, and hurt, by their incongruity with our feelings, more
than they give pleasure by their own excellence. But to antiquaries
Dryden has sufficiently justified himself, by declaring his version made
for the sake of modern readers, who understand sense and poetry as well
as the old Saxon admirers of Chaucer, when that poetry and sense are put
into words which they can understand. Let us also grant him, that, for
the beauties which are lost, he has substituted many which the original
did not afford; that, in passages of gorgeous description, he has added
even to the chivalrous splendour of Chaucer, and has graced with
poetical ornament the simplicity of Boccacio; that, if he has failed in
tenderness, he is never deficient in majesty; and that if the heart be
sometimes untouched, the understanding and fancy are always exercised
and delighted.

The philosophy of Dryden, we have already said, was that of original and
penetrating genius; imperfect only, when, from want of time and of
industry, he adopted the ideas of others, when he should have communed
at leisure with his own mind. The proofs of his philosophical powers are
not to be sought for in any particular poem or disquisition. Even the
"Religio Laici," written expressly as a philosophical poem, only shows
how easily the most powerful mind may entangle itself in sophistical
toils of its own weaving; for the train of argument there pursued was
completed by Dryden's conversion to the Roman Catholic faith.[15] It is
therefore in the discussion of incidental subjects, in his mode of
treating points of controversy, in the new lights which he seldom fails
to throw upon a controversial subject, in his talent of argumentive
discussion, that we are to look for the character of Dryden's moral
powers. His opinions, doubtless, are often inconsistent, and sometimes
absolutely contradictory; for, pressed by the necessity of discussing
the object before him, he seldom looked back to what he said formerly,
or forward to what he might be obliged to say in future. His sole
subject of consideration was to maintain his present point; and that by
authority, by declamation, by argument, by every means. But his
philosophical powers are not the less to be estimated, because thus
irregularly and unphilosophically employed. His arguments, even in the
worst cause, bear witness to the energy of his mental conceptions; and
the skill with which they are stated, elucidated, enforced, and
exemplified, ever commands our admiration, though, in the result, our
reason may reject their influence. It must be remembered also, to
Dryden's honour, that he was the first to hail the dawn of experimental
philosophy in physics; to gratulate his country on possessing Bacon,
Harvey, and Boyle; and to exult over the downfall of the Aristotelian
tyranny.[16] Had he lived to see a similar revolution commenced in
ethics, there can be little doubt he would have welcomed it with the
same delight; or had his leisure and situation permitted him to dedicate
his time to investigating moral problems, he might himself have led the
way to deliverance from error and uncertainty. But the dawn of
reformation must ever be gradual, and the acquisitions even of those
calculated to advance it must therefore frequently appear desultory and
imperfect. The author of the _Novum Organum_ believed in charms and
occult sympathy; and Dryden in the chimeras of judicial astrology, and
probably in the jargon of alchemy. When these subjects occur in his
poetry, he dwells on them with a pleasure which shows the command they
maintained over his mind. Much of the astrological knowledge displayed
in the Knight's Tale is introduced, or at least amplified, by Dryden;
and while, in the fable of the Cock and the Fox, he ridicules the
doctrine of prediction from dreams, the inherent qualities of the four
complexions,[17] and other abstruse doctrines of Paracelsus and his
followers, we have good reason to suspect that, like many other
scoffers, he believed in the efficacy and truth of the subject of his
ridicule. However this shade of credulity may injure Dryden's character
as a philosopher, we cannot regret its influence on his poetry. Collins
has thus celebrated Fairfax:--

  "Prevailing poet, whose undoubting mind,
  Believed the magic wonders which he sung."

Nor can there be a doubt that, as every work of imagination is tinged
with the author's passions and prejudices, it must be deep and energetic
in proportion to the character of these impressions. Those superstitious
sciences and pursuits, which would, by mystic rites, doctrines, and
inferences, connect us with the invisible world of spirits, or guide our
daring researches to a knowledge of future events, are indeed usually
found to cow, crush, and utterly stupefy, understandings of a lower
rank; but if the mind of a man of acute powers, and of warm fancy,
becomes slightly imbued with the visionary feelings excited by such
studies, their obscure and undefined influence is ever found to aid the
sublimity of his ideas, and to give that sombre and serious effect,
which he can never produce, who does not himself feel the awe which it
is his object to excite. The influence of such a mystic creed is often
felt where the cause is concealed; for the habits thus acquired are not
confined to their own sphere of belief, but gradually extend themselves
over every adjacent province: and perhaps we may not go too far in
believing, that he who has felt their impression, though only in one
branch of faith, becomes fitted to describe, with an air of reality and
interest, not only kindred subjects, but superstitions altogether
opposite to his own. The religion, which Dryden finally adopted, lent
its occasional aid to the solemn colouring of some of his later
productions, Tipon which subject we have elsewhere enlarged at some
length.[18]

The occasional poetry of Dryden is marked strongly by masculine
character. The Epistles vary with the subject; and are light, humorous,
and satirical, or grave, argumentative, and philosophical, as the case
required. In his Elegies, although they contain touches of true feeling,
especially where the stronger passions are to be illustrated, the poet
is often content to substitute reasoning for passion, and rather to show
us cause why we ought to grieve, than to set us the example by grieving
himself. The inherent defect in Dryden's composition becomes here
peculiarly conspicuous; yet we should consider, that, in composing
elegies for the Countess of Abingdon, whom he never saw, and for Charles
II., by whom he had been cruelly neglected, and doubtless on many
similar occasions, Dryden could not even pretend to be interested in the
mournful subject of his verse; but attended, with his poem, as much in
the way of trade, as the undertaker, on the same occasion, came with his
sables and his scutcheon. The poet may interest himself and his reader,
even to tears, in the fate of a being altogether the creation of his own
fancy, but hardly by a hired panegyric on a real subject, in whom his
heart acknowledges no other interest than a fee can give him. Few of
Dryden's elegiac effusions, therefore, seem prompted by sincere sorrow.
That to Oldham may be an exception; but, even there, he rather strives
to do honour to the talents of his departed friend, than to pour out
lamentations for his loss. Of the Prologues and Epilogues we have spoken
fully elsewhere.[19]  Some of them are coarsely satirical, and others
grossly indelicate. Those spoken at Oxford are the most valuable, and
contain much good criticism and beautiful poetry. But the worst of them
was probably well worth the petty recompence which the poet
received.[20] The songs and smaller pieces of Dryden have smoothness,
wit, and when addressed to ladies, gallantry in profusion, but are
deficient in tenderness. They seem to have been composed with great
ease; thrown together hastily and occasionally; nor can we doubt that
many of them are now irrecoverably lost. Mr. Malone gives us an instance
of Dryden's fluency in extempore composition, which was communicated to
him by Mr. Walcott. "Conversation, one day after dinner, at Mrs.
Creed's, running upon the origin of names, Mr. Dryden bowed to the good
old lady, and spoke extempore the following verses:--

  "So much religion in _your_ name doth dwell,
  Your soul must needs with piety excel.
  Thus names, like [well-wrought] pictures drawn of old,
  Their owners' nature and their story told.--
  Your name but half expresses; for in you
  Belief and practice do together go.
  My prayers shall be, while this short life endures,
  These may go hand in hand, with you and yours;
  Till faith hereafter is in vision drowned,
  And practice is with endless glory crowned."

The Translations of Dryden form a distinguished part of his poetical
labours. No author, excepting Pope, has done so much to endenizen the
eminent poets of antiquity. In this sphere, also, it was the fate of
Dryden to become a leading example to future poets, and to abrogate laws
which had been generally received although they imposed such trammels on
translation as to render it hardly intelligible. Before his
distinguished success showed that the object of the translator should be
to transfuse the spirit, not to copy servilely the very words of his
original, it had been required, that line should be rendered for line,
and, almost, word for word. It may easily be imagined, that, by the
constraint and inversion which this cramping statute required, a poem
was barely rendered _not Latin_, instead of being made English, and
that, to the mere native reader, as the connoisseur complains in "The
Critic", the interpreter was sometimes "the harder to be understood of
the two." Those who seek examples, may find them in the jaw-breaking
translations of Ben Jonson and Holyday. Cowley and Denham had indeed
rebelled against this mode of translation, which conveys pretty much the
same idea of an original, as an imitator would do of the gait of
another, by studiously stepping after him into every trace which his
feet had left upon the sand. But they assumed a licence equally faulty,
and claimed the privilege of writing what might be more properly termed
imitations, than versions of the classics. It was reserved to Dryden
manfully to claim and vindicate the freedom of a just translation; more
limited than paraphrase, but free from the metaphrastic severity exacted
from his predecessors.

With these free yet unlicentious principles, Dryden brought to the task
of translation a competent knowledge of the language of the originals,
with an unbounded command of his own. The latter is, however, by far the
most marked characteristic of his Translations. Dryden was not indeed
deficient in Greek and Roman learning; but he paused not to weigh and
sift those difficult and obscure passages, at which the most learned
will doubt and hesitate for the correct meaning. The same rapidity,
which marked his own poetry, seems to have attended his study of the
classics. He seldom waited to analyse the sentence he was about to
render, far less scrupulously to weigh the precise purport and value of
every word it contained. If he caught the general spirit and meaning of
the author, and could express it with equal force in English verse, he
cared not if minute elegancies were lost, or the beauties of accurate
proportion destroyed, or a dubious interpretation hastily adopted on the
credit of a _scholium_. He used abundantly the licence he has claimed
for a translator, to be deficient rather in the language out of which he
renders, than of that into which he translates. If such be but master of
the sense of his author, Dryden argues, he may express that sense with
eloquence in his own tongue, though he understand not the nice turns of
the original. "But without the latter quality he can never arrive at the
useful and the delightful, without which reading is a penance and
fatigue."[21] With the same spirit of haste, Dryden if often contented
to present to the English reader some modern image, which he may at once
fully comprehend, instead of rendering precisely a classic expression,
which might require explanation or paraphrase. Thus the _pulchra
Sicyonia_, or buskins of Sicyon, are rendered,

  "Diamond-buckles sparkling in their shoes."

By a yet more unfortunate adaptation of modern technical phraseology,
the simple direction of Helenus,

  "_Læva tibi tellus, et longo læva pelantur
  Г†quora circuitu: dextrum fage lillus et undas_,"

is translated,

  "Tack to the larboard, and stand off to sea,
  Veer starboard sea and land:"

--a counsel which, I shrewdly suspect, would have been unintelligible,
not only to Palinurus, but to the best pilot in the British navy.[22] In
the same tone, but with more intelligibility, if not felicity, Dryden
translates _palatia coeli_ in Ovid, the _Louvre of the sky_; and, in the
version of the first book of Homer, talks of the court of Jupiter in the
phrases used at that of Whitehall. These expressions, proper to modern
manners, often produce an unfortunate confusion between the age in which
the scene is laid, and the date of the translation. No judicious poet is
willing to break the interest of a tale of ancient times, by allusions
peculiar to his own period: but when the translator, instead of
identifying himself as closely as possible with the original author,
pretends to such liberty, he removes us a third step from the time of
action, and so confounds the manners of no less than three distinct
eras,--that in which the scene is laid, that in which the poem was
written, and that, finally, in which the translation was executed. There
are passages in Dryden's Г†neid, which, in the revolution of a few pages,
transport our ideas from the time of Troy's siege to that of the court
of Augustus, and thence downward to the reign of William the Third of
Britain.

It must be owned, at the same time, that when the translator places
before you, not the exact words, but the image of the original, as the
classic author would probably have himself expressed it in English, the
licence, when moderately employed, has an infinite charm for those
readers for whose use translations are properly written. Pope's Homer
and Dryden's Virgil can never indeed give exquisite satisfaction to
scholars, accustomed to study the Greek and Latin originals. The minds
of such readers have acquired a classic tone; and not merely the ideas
and poetical imagery, but the manners and habits of the actors, have
become intimately familiar to them. They will not, therefore, be
satisfied with any translation in which these are violated, whether for
the sake of indolence in the translator, or ease to the unlettered
reader; and perhaps they will be more pleased that a favourite bard
should move with less ease and spirit in his new habiliments, than that
his garments should be cut upon the model of the country to which the
stranger is introduced. In the former case, they will readily make
allowance for the imperfection of modern language; in the latter, they
will hardly pardon the sophistication of ancient manners. But the mere
English reader, who finds rigid adherence to antique costume rather
embarrassing than pleasing, who is prepared to make no sacrifices in
order to preserve the true manners of antiquity, shocking perhaps to his
feelings and prejudices, is satisfied that the Iliad and Г†neid shall
lose their antiquarian merit, provided they retain that vital spirit and
energy, which is the soul of poetry in all languages, and countries, and
ages whatsoever. He who sits down to Dryden's translation of Virgil,
with the original text spread before him, will be at no loss to point
out many passages that are faulty, many indifferently understood, many
imperfectly translated, some in which dignity is lost, others in which
bombast is substituted in its stead. But the unabated vigour and spirit
of the version more than overbalances these and all its other
deficiencies. A sedulous scholar might often approach more nearly to the
dead letter of Virgil, and give an exact, distinct, sober-minded idea of
the meaning and scope of particular passages. Trapp, Pitt, and others
have done so. But the essential spirit of poetry is so volatile, that it
escapes during such an operation, like the life of the poor criminal,
whom the ancient anatomist is said to have dissected alive, in order to
ascertain the seat of the soul. The carcase indeed is presented to the
English reader, but the animating vigour is no more. It is in this art,
of communicating the ancient poet's ideas with force and energy equal to
his own, that Dryden has so completely exceeded all who have gone
before, and all who have succeeded him. The beautiful and unequalled
version of the Tale of Myrrha in the "Metamorphoses," the whole of the
Sixth Г†neid, and many other parts of Dryden's translations, are
sufficient, had he never written one line of original poetry, to
vindicate the well-known panegyric of Churchill:--

  "Here let me bend, great Dryden, at thy shrine,
  Thou dearest name to all the tuneful Nine!
  What if some dull lines in cold order creep,
  And with his theme the poet seems to sleep?
  Still, when his subject rises proud to view,
  With equal strength the poet rises too:
  With strong invention, noblest vigour fraught,
  Thought still springs up, and rises out of thought;
  Numbers ennobling numbers in their course,
  In varied sweetness flow, in varied force;
  The powers of genius and of judgment join,
  And the whole art of poetry is thine."