We are in this disquisition naturally tempted to inquire, whether Dryden
would have succeeded in his proposed design to translate Homer, as
happily as in his Virgil? And although he himself more fiery, and
therefore better suited to his own than that of the Roman poet, there
may be room to question, whether in this case he rightly estimated his
own talents, or rather, whether, being fully conscious of their extent,
he was aware of labouring under certain deficiencies of taste, which
must have been more apparent in a version of the Iliad than of the
Г†neid. If a translator has any characteristic and peculiar foible, it is
surely unfortunate to choose an original, who may give peculiar
facilities to exhibit them. Thus, even Dryden's repeated disclamation of
puns, points, and quibbles, and all the repentance of his more sober
hours, was unable, so soon as he began to translate Ovid, to prevent his
sliding back into the practice of that false wit with which his earlier
productions are imbued. Hence he has been seduced, by the similarity of
style, to add to the offences of his original, and introduce, though it
needed not, points of wit and antithetical prettinesses, for which he
cannot plead Ovid's authority. For example, he makes Ajax say of
Ulysses, when surrounded by the Trojans,
"No wonder if he roared that all might hear,
His elocution was increased by fear."
The Latin only bears, _conclamat socios._ A little lower,
"_Opposui molem clypei, texique jacentem_,"
is amplified by a similar witticism,
"My broad buckler hid him from the foe,
Even the shield trembled as he lay below."
If, in translating Ovid, Dryden was tempted by the manner of his
original to relapse into a youthful fault, which he had solemnly
repented of and abjured, there is surely room to believe, that the
simple and almost rude manners described by Homer, might have seduced
him into coarseness both of ideas and expression, for which the studied,
composed, and dignified style of the Aeneid gave neither opening nor
apology. That this was a fault which Dryden, with all his taste, never
was able to discard, might easily be proved from various passages in his
translations, where the transgression is on his own part altogether
gratuitous. Such is the well-known version of
"_Ut possessor agelli
Diceret, hoec mea sunt, veteres migrate coloni,
Nune vidi," etc._
"When the grim captain, with a surly tone,
Cries out, Pack up, ye rascals, and be gone!
Kicked out, we set the best face on't we could," etc.
In translating the most indelicate passage of Lucretius, Dryden has
rather enhanced than veiled its indecency. The story of Iphis in the
Metamorphoses is much more bluntly told by the English poet than by
Ovid. In short, where there was a latitude given for coarseness of
description and expression, Dryden has always too readily laid hold of
it. The very specimen which he has given us of a version of Homer,
contains many passages in which the antique Grecian simplicity is
vulgarly and inelegantly rendered. The Thunderer terms Juno
"My household curse, my lawful plague, the spy
Of Jove's designs, his other squinting eye."
The ambrosial feast of Olympus concludes like a tavern revel:--
"Drunken at last, and drowsy, they depart
Each to his house, adored with laboured art
Of the lame architect. The thundering God,
Even he, withdrew to rest, and had his load;
His swimming head to needful sleep applied,
And Juno lay unheeded by his side."
There is reason indeed to think, that, after the Revolution, Dryden's
taste was improved in this, as in some other respects. In his
translation of Juvenal, for example, the satire against women, coarse as
it is, is considerably refined and softened from the grossness of the
Latin poet; who has, however, been lately favoured by a still more
elegant, and (excepting perhaps one or two passages) an equally spirited
translation, by Mr. Gifford of London. Yet, admitting this apology for
Dryden as fully as we dare, from the numerous specimens of indelicacy
even in his later translations, we are induced to judge it fortunate
that Homer was reserved for a poet who had not known the age of Charles
II.; and whose inaccuracies and injudicious decorations may be pardoned,
even by the scholar, when he considers the probability, that Dryden
might have slipped into the opposite extreme, by converting rude
simplicity into indecency or vulgarity. The Г†neid, on the other hand, if
it restrained Dryden's poetry to a correct, steady, and even flight, if
it damped his energy by its regularity, and fettered his excursive
imagination by the sobriety of its decorum, had the corresponding
advantage of holding forth to the translator no temptation to licence,
and no apology for negligence. Where the fervency of genius is required,
Dryden has usually equalled his original; where peculiar elegance and
exact propriety is demanded, his version may be sometimes found flat and
inaccurate, but the mastering spirit of Virgil prevails, and it is never
disgusting or indelicate. Of all the classical translations we can
boast, none is so acceptable to the class of readers, to whom the
learned languages are a clasped book and a sealed fountain. And surely
it is no moderate praise to say, that a work is universally pleasing to
those for whose use it is principally intended, and to whom only it is
absolutely indispensable.
The prose of Dryden may rank with the best in the English language. It
is no less of his own formation than his versification, is equally
spirited, and equally harmonious. Without the lengthened and pedantic
sentences of Clarendon, it is dignified where dignity is becoming, and
is lively without the accumulation of strained and absurd allusions and
metaphors, which were unfortunately mistaken for wit by many of the
author's contemporaries. Dryden has been accused of unnecessarily
larding his style with Gallicisms. It must be owned that, to comply
probably with the humour of Charles, or from an affectation of the
fashionable court dialect, the poet-laureate employed such words as
_fougue, fraicheur_, etc., instead of the corresponding expressions in
English; an affectation which does not appear in our author's later
writings. But even the learned and excellent Sir David Dalrymple was led
to carry this idea greatly too far. "Nothing," says that admirable
antiquary, "distinguishes the genius of the English language so much as
its general naturalisation of foreigners. Dryden in the reign of Charles
II., printed the following words as pure French newly imported: _amour,
billet-doux, caprice, chagrin, conversation, double-entendre,
embarrassed, fatigue, figure, foible, gallant, good graces, grimace,
incendiary, levГ©e, maltreated, rallied, repartГ©e, ridicule, tender,
tour_; with several others which are now considered as natives.--
'Marriage Г la Mode.'"[23] But of these words many had been long
naturalised in England, and, with the adjectives derived from them, are
used by Shakespeare and the dramatists of his age.[24] By their being
printed in italics in the play of "Marriage Г la Mode," Dryden only
meant to mark, that Melantha, the affected coquette in whose mouth they
are placed, was to use the _French_, not the vernacular pronunciation.
It will admit of question, whether any single French word has been
naturalised upon the sole authority of Dryden.
Although Dryden's style has nothing obsolete, we can occasionally trace
a reluctance to abandon an old word or idiom; the consequence, doubtless
of his latter studies in ancient poetry. In other respects, nothing can
be more elegant than the diction of the praises heaped upon his patrons,
for which he might himself plead the apology he uses for Maimbourg,
"who, having enemies, made himself friends by panegyrics." Of these
lively critical prefaces, which, when we commence, we can never lay
aside till we have finished, Dr. Johnson has said with equal force and
beauty,--"They have not the formality of a settled style, in which the
first half of the sentence betrays the other. The clauses are never
balanced, nor the periods modelled; every word seems to drop by chance,
though it falls into its proper place. Nothing is cold or languid; the
whole is airy, animated, and vigorous; what is little is gay, what is
great is splendid. He may be thought to mention himself too frequently;
but while he forces himself upon our esteem, we cannot refuse him to
stand high in his own. Everything is excused by the play of images and
the sprightliness of expression. Though all is easy, nothing is feeble;
though all seems careless, there is nothing harsh; and though, since his
earlier works, more than a century has passed, they have nothing yet
uncouth or obsolete."
"He, who writes much, will not easily escape a manner, such a recurrence
of particular modes as may be easily noted. Dryden is always _another
and the same._ He does not exhibit a second time the same elegancies in
the same form, nor appears to have any art other than that of expressing
with clearness what he thinks with vigour. His style could not easily be
imitated, either seriously or ludicrously; for, being always equable and
always varied, it has no prominent or discriminative characters. The
beauty, who is totally free from disproportion of parts and features,
cannot be ridiculed by an overcharged resemblance."
The last paragraph is not to be understood too literally; for although
Dryden never so far copied himself as to fall into what has been
quaintly called _mannerism_; yet accurate observation may trace, in his
works, the repetition of some sentiments and illustrations from prose to
verse, and back again to prose.[24] In his preface to the _Г†neid_, he
has enlarged on the difficulty of varying phrases, when the same sense
returned on the author; and surely we must allow full praise to his
fluency and command of language, when, during so long a literary career,
and in the course of such a variety of miscellaneous productions, we can
detect in his style so few instances of repetition, or self-imitation.
The prose of Dryden, excepting his translations, and one or two
controversial tracts, is entirely dedicated to criticism, either general
and didactic, or defensive and exculpatory. There, as in other branches
of polite learning, it was his lot to be a light to his people. About
the time of the Restoration, the cultivation of letters was prosecuted
in France with some energy. But the genius of that lively nation being
more fitted for criticism than poetry; for drawing rules from what
others have done, than for writing works which might be themselves
standards; they were sooner able to produce an accurate table of laws
for those intending to write epic poems and tragedies, according to the
best Greek and Roman authorities, than to exhibit distinguished
specimens of success in either department; just as they are said to
possess the best possible rules for building ships of war, although not
equally remarkable for their power of fighting them. When criticism
becomes a pursuit separate from poetry, those who follow it are apt to
forget, that the legitimate ends of the art for which they lay down
rules, are instruction or delight, and that these points being attained,
by what road soever, entitles a poet to claim the prize of successful
merit. Neither did the learned authors of these disquisitions
sufficiently attend to the general disposition of mankind, which cannot
be contented even with the happiest imitations of former excellence, but
demands novelty as a necessary ingredient for amusement. To insist that
every epic poem shall have the plan of the Iliad and Г†neid, and every
tragedy be fettered by the rules of Aristotle, resembles the principle
of an architect, who should build all his houses with the same number of
windows, and of stories. It happened too, inevitably, that the critics,
in the plenipotential authority which they exercised, often assumed as
indispensable requisites of the drama, or epopeia, circumstances, which,
in the great authorities they quoted, were altogether accidental and
indifferent. These they erected into laws, and handed down as essentials
to be observed by all succeeding poets; although the forms prescribed
have often as little to do with the merit and success of the originals
from which they are taken, as the shape of the drinking-glass with the
flavour of the wine which it contains. "To these encroachments," says
Fielding, after some observations to the same purpose, "time and
ignorance, the two great supporters of imposture, gave authority; and
thus many rules for good writing have been established, which have not
the least foundation in truth or nature; and which commonly serve for no
other purpose than to curb and restrain genius, in the same manner as it
would have restrained the dancing-master, had the many excellent
treatises on that art laid it down as an essential rule, that every man
must dance in chains."[25] It is probable, that the tyranny of the
French critics, fashionable as the literature of that country was with
Charles and his courtiers, would have extended itself over England at
the Restoration, had not a champion so powerful as Dryden placed himself
in the gap. We have mentioned in its place his "Essay on Dramatic
Poetry," the first systematic piece of criticism which our literature
has to exhibit. In this Essay, he was accused of entertaining private
views, of defending some of his own pieces, at least of opening the door
of the theatre wider, and rendering its access more easy, for his own
selfish convenience. Allowing this to be true in whole, as it may be in
part, we are as much obliged to Dryden for resisting the domination of
Gallic criticism, as we are to the fanatics who repressed the despotism
of the crown, although they buckled on their armour against white
surplices, and the cross in baptism. The character which Dryden has
drawn of our English dramatists in the Essay, and the various prefaces
connected with it, have unequalled spirit and precision. The contrast of
Ben Jonson with Shakespeare is peculiarly and strikingly felicitous. Of
the latter portrait, Dr. Johnson has said, that the editors and admirers
of Shakespeare, in all their emulation of reverence, cannot boast of
much more than of having diffused and paraphrased this epitome of
excellence, of having changed Dryden's gold for baser metal, of lower
value, though of greater bulk. While Dryden examined, discussed,
admitted, or rejected the rules proposed by others, he forbore, from
prudence, indolence, or a regard for the freedom of Parnassus, to erect
himself into a legislator. His doctrines, which chiefly respect the
intrinsic qualities necessary in poetry, are scattered, without system
of pretence to it, over the numerous pages of prefatory and didactic
essays, with which he enriched his publications. It is impossible to
read far in any of them, without finding some maxim for doing or
forbearing, which every student of poetry will do well to engrave upon
the tablets of his memory. But the author's mode of instruction is
neither harsh nor dictatorial. When his opinion changed, as in the case
of rhyming tragedies, he avows the change with candour, and we are
enabled the more courageously to follow his guidance, when we perceive
the readiness with which he retracts his path, if he strays into error.
The gleams of philosophical spirit which so frequently illumine these
pages of criticism; the lively and appropriate grace of illustration;
the true and correct expression of the general propositions; the simple
and unaffected passages, in which, when led to allude to his personal
labours and situation, he mingles the feelings of the man with the
instructions of the critic,--unite to render Dryden's Essays the most
delightful prose in the English language.
The didactic criticism of Dryden is necessarily, at least naturally,
mingled with that which he was obliged to pour forth in his own defence;
and this may be one main cause of its irregular and miscellaneous form.
What might otherwise have resembled the extended and elevated front of a
regular palace, is deformed by barriers, ramparts, and bastions of
defence; by cottages, mean additions, and offices necessary for personal
accommodation. The poet, always most in earnest about his immediate
task, used, without ceremony, those arguments, which suited his present
purpose, and thereby sometimes supplied his foes with weapons to assail
another quarter. It also happens frequently, if the same allusion may be
continued, that Dryden defends with obstinate despair, against the
assaults of his foemen, a post which, in his cooler moments, he has
condemned as untenable. However easily he may yield to internal
conviction, and to the progress of his own improving taste, even these
concessions, he sedulously informs us, are not wrung from him by the
assault of his enemies; and he often goes out of his road to show, that,
though conscious he was in the wrong, he did not stand legally convicted
by their arguments. To the chequered and inconsistent appearance which
these circumstances have given to the criticism of Dryden, it is an
additional objection, that through the same cause his studies were
partial, temporary, and irregular. His mind was amply stored with
acquired knowledge, much of it perhaps the fruits of early reading and
application. But, while engaged in the hurry of composition, or overcome
by the lassitude of continued literary labour, he seems frequently to
have trusted to the tenacity of his memory, and so drawn upon this fund
with injudicious liberality, without being sufficiently anxious as to
accuracy of quotation, or even of assertion. If, on the other hand, he
felt himself obliged to resort to more profound learning than his own,
he was at little pains to arrange or digest it, or even to examine
minutely the information he acquired, from hasty perusal of the books he
consulted; and thus but too often poured it forth in the crude form in
which he had himself received it, from the French critic, or Dutch
schoolman. The scholarship, for example, displayed in the Essay on
Satire, has this raw and ill-arranged appearance; and stuck, as it
awkwardly is, among some of Dryden's own beautiful and original writing,
gives, like a borrowed and unbecoming garment, a mean and inconsistent
appearance to the whole disquisition. But these occasional imperfections
and inaccuracies are marks of the haste with which Dryden was compelled
to give his productions to the world, and cannot deprive him of the
praise due to the earliest and most entertaining of English critics.
I have thus detailed the life, and offered some remarks on the literary
character, of JOHN DRYDEN: who, educated in a pedantic taste, and a
fanatical religion, was destined, if not to give laws to the stage of
England, at least to defend its liberties; to improve burlesque into
satire; to free translation from the fetters of verbal metaphrase, and
exclude it from the licence of paraphrase; to teach posterity the
powerful and varied poetical harmony of which their language was
capable; to give an example of the lyric ode of unapproached excellence;
and to leave to English literature a name, second only to those of
Milton and of Shakespeare.
FOOTNOTES
[1] Life and Works of Arthur Maynwaring, 1715, p. 17.
[2] So says Charles Blount, in the dedication to the _Religio Laici_. He
is contradicted by Tom Brown.
[3] In a poem published on Dryden's death, by Brome, written, as Mr.
Malone conjectures, by Captain Gibbon, son of the physician.
[4] In "The Postboy," for Tuesday, May 7, 1700, Playford inserted the
following advertisement:
"The death of the famous John Dryden, Esq., Poet-Laureate to their two
late Majesties, King Charles, and King James the Second, being a subject
capable of employing the best pens; and several persons of quality, and
others, having put a stop to his interment, which is designed to be in
Chaucer's grave, in Westminster Abbey; this is to desire the gentlemen
of the two famous Universities, and others, who have a respect for the
memory of the deceased, and are inclinable to such performances, to send
what copies they please, as Epigrams, etc., to Henry Playford, at his
shop at the Temple 'Change, in Fleet Street, and they shall be inserted
in a Collection, which is designed after the same nature, and in the
same method (in what language they shall please), as is usual in the
composures which are printed on solemn occasions, at the two
Universities aforesaid."
This advertisement (with some alterations) was continued for a month in
the same paper.
[5]
"Thy reliques, Rowe, to this fair urn we trust,
And sacred place by Dryden's awful dust:
Beneath a rude and nameless stone he lies,
To which thy tomb shall guide inquiring eyes:
Peace to thy gentle shade, and endless rest!
Blest in thy genius, in thy love too, blest!
One greatful woman to thy fame supplies,
What a whole thankless land to his denies."
[6] The epitaph at first intended by Pope for this monument was,
"This Sheffield raised; the sacred dust below
Was Dryden once:--the rest, who does not know?"
Atterbury had thus written to him on this subject, in 1720: "What I said
to you in mine, about the monument, was intended only to quicken, not to
alarm you. It is not worth your while to know what I meant by it; but
when I see you, you shall. I hope you may be at the Deanery towards the
end of October, by which time I think of settling there for the winter.
What do you think of some such short inscription as this in Latin, which
may, in a few words, say all that is to be said of Dryden, and yet
nothing more than he deserves?
JOHANNI DRYDENO,
CUI POESIS ANGICANA
VIM SUAM AC VENERES DEBET;
ET SI QUA IN POSTERUM AUGEBITUR LAUDE,
EST ADHUC DEBITURA.
HONORIS ERGO P. ETC.
"To show you that I am as much in earnest in the affair as you yourself,
something I will send you of this kind in English. If your design holds,
of fixing Dryden's name only below, and his busto above, may not lines
like these be graved just under the name?
This Sheffield raised, to Dryden's ashes just;
Here fixed his name, and there his laureled bust:
What else the Muse in marble might express,
Is known already: praise would make him less.
"Or thus:
More needs not; when acknowledged merits reign,
Praise is impertinent, and censure vain."
The thought, as Mr. Malone observes, is nearly the same as in the
following lines in "Luctus Britannici," by William Marston, of Trinity
College, Cambridge:
"_In_ JOANNEM DRYDEN, _poelarum facile principem._
Si quis in has aedes intret fortasse viator,
Busta poetarum dum veneranda notet,
Cernat et exuvias Drydeni,--plura referre
Haud opus: ad laudes _vox ea_ sola satis."
[7] Life of Pope.
[8] ["The Bacon of the rhyming tribe," as Landor has since called him in
a vigorous description (_Works_, vol. viii. p. 137).--ED.]
[9] [Transcriber's note: "See page 39" in original. This is to be found
in Section I.]
[10] "_Novimus judicium Drydeni de poemate quodam Chauceri, pulchro sane
illo, et admodum laudando, nimirum quod non modo vere epicura sit, sed
Iliada etiam alque Aeneada aequet, imo superet. Sed novimus eodem
tempore viri illius maximi non semper accuratissimas esse censuras, nec
ad severissimam critices normam exactas: illo judice id plerumque
optimum est, quod nunc prae manibus habet, et in quo nunc occupatur_."
[11] Dryden was not the first who translated this tale of terror. There
is in the collection of the late John, Duke of Roxburghe, "A Notable
History of Nastagio and Traversari, no less pitiful than pleasaunt;
translated out of Italian into English verse, by C.T. London, 1569."
[12] "_Amor puo troppo piu, che ne voi ne io possiamo_." This sentiment
loses its dignity amid the "levelling of mountains and raising plains,"
with which Dryden has chosen to illustrate it.
[13] An emblem of a similar kind is said to have been found in the
palace of Tippoo Sultan.
[14] As "Near bliss, and yet not blessed." And this merciless quibble,
where Arcite complains of the flames he endures for Emily:--
"Of such a goddess no time leaves record,
Who burnt the temple where she was adored."--Vol. xi.
Yet Dryden, in the preface, declaims against the "_inopem me copia
fecit_," and similar jingles of Ovid.
[15] [Transcriber's note: "See p. 258" in original. This is to be found
in Section VI.]
[16]
"The longest tyranny that ever swayed,
Was that wherein our ancestors betrayed
Their free-born reason to the Stagyrite,
And made his torch their universal light.
So truth, while only one supplied the state,
Grew scarce, and dear, and yet sophisticate.
Still it was bought, like emp'ric wares, or charms,
Hard words sealed up with Aristotle's arms."
[17] These I found quaintly summed up in an old rhyme:
"With a red man read thy rede,
With a brown man break thy bread,
On a pale man draw thy knife,
From a black man keep thy wife."
[18] See the introduction to Britannia Rediviva, vol. x.
[19] Vol. x.
[20] It is twice stated in these volumes (p. 246, and vol. x.), on the
authority of the "Life of Southerne," that Dryden had originally five
guineas for each prologue, and raised the sum to ten guineas on occasion
of Southerne's requiring such a favour for his first play. But I am
convinced the sum is exaggerated; and incline now to believe, with Dr.
Johnson, that the advance was from _two_ to _three_ guineas only. [See
note _supra_, l.c.--ED.]
[21] Life of Lucian, vol. xviii.
[22] [Is it possible that in this famous passage "Veer" is a clerical
error or a misprint for "Ware"? This would at once make sense and a
literal version.--ED.]
[23] Poems from the Bannatyne Manuscript, p. 228.
[24] Shakespeare has _capricious, conversation_, fatigate
(if not _fatigue_), _figure, gallant, good graces; incendiary_ is in
Minshew's "Guide to the Tongues," ed. 1627. _Tender_ often occurs in
Shakespeare both as a substantive and verb. And many other of the above
words may be detected by those who have time and inclination to search
for them, in authors prior to Dryden's time. [See, for a discussion of
Dryden's Gallicisms, vol. xviii. of the present edition.--ED.]
[24] The remarkable phrase, "to possess the soul in patience," occurs in
"The Hind and Panther;" and in the Essay on Satire, vol. xiii., we have
nearly the same expression. The image of a bird's wing flagging in a
damp atmosphere occurs in Don Sebastian, and in prose elsewhere, though
I have lost the reference. The same thought is found in "The Hind and
Panther," but is not there used metaphorically:--
"Nor need they fear the dampness of the sky
Should flag their wings, and hinder them to fly."
Dryden is ridiculed by an imitator of Rabelais, for the recurrence of
the phrase by which he usually prefaces his own defensive criticism:
"_If it be allowed me to speak so much in my own commendation;--_ see
Dryden's preface to his Fables, or to any other of his works that you
please." The full title of this whimsical tract, from which Sterne
borrowed several hints, is "An Essay towards the theory of the
intelligible world intuitively considered. Designed for forty-nine
parts. Part Third, consisting of a preface, a postscript, and a little
something between, by Gabriel Johnson; enriched by a faithful account of
his ideal voyages, and illustrated with poems by several hands, as
likewise with other strange things not insufferably clever, nor
furiously to the purpose; printed in the year 17," etc. [The phrase
mentioned first is perhaps less remarkable than Scott's apparent
forgetfulness of its Biblical origin.--ED.]
[25] Introduction to Book Fifth of "Tom Jones."
END OF VOLUME FIRST.
