Page images
PDF
EPUB

superior to him in reverential admiration of Chaucer, has confessed his complete failure in the attempt to modernise these delightful works without thus losing their bouquet. But what he wants in tenderness Dryden amply makes up in grandeur, in variety of diction, and in richness of metrical arrangement. Among the finest of these tales are the admirable stories of Palamon and Arcite, Cymon and Iphigenia, January and May, and Theodore and Honoria. The besetting sin of Dryden was the vice of his age-licentiousness; a defect which stains this no less than his other works. Chaucer is sometimes coarse and plain-spoken, but he is never immoral ; his indelicacies are less in the idea than in the language, and arise less from any native pruriency in the poet's mind than from the comparative rudeness and simplicity of his age: Dryden's, we must confess with sorrow and humiliation, are deliberate and most reprehensible administerings to the base profligacy of a corrupted society. In these tales, many of which are distinguished, in the original of Chaucer or Boccaccio, for deep and simple pathos, Dryden shows his usual insensibility to the softer and tenderer emotions. His love is little else than the physical or sensual passion, and he signally fails in exciting pity. Of this latter remark we shall find abundant proofs; we need only mention the weak and cold painting, in Dryden, of the dying scene in Palamon and Arcite a scene which, in Chaucer, it is scarcely possible to read without tears.

Prose.

Dryden's prose is such as such a man might naturally be expected to write. It is careless, hasty, and unequal, but vigorous and idiomatic to the highest degree. His unversified compositions consist chiefly of dedications and prefaces. The former was a species of necessary accompaniment to every book at a time when the literary profession occupied a much lower place in the scale of society than it has since attained. It is humiliating to think of the greatest genius and intellect thus begging, in a strain of adu lation only the more fulsome as the more elegant, the patronage of some obscure great man to works which were destined to immortalise the age which produced them, and to form the brightest ornament of the country which gave them birth.

How painful to see them thus selling their precedency and birthright for "a piece of silver," and stimulating the niggard bounty of a patron with the highest refinements of intellectual flattery! But this deplorable sacrifice of independence literature is no longer compelled to make,

"The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide,
To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame,
To heap the shrine of luxury and pride

With incense kindled at the Muse's flame."

These dedications in most cases are absolute models of elegance and style; so much so, that in reading them one almost forgets the grossness of the adulation they convey. In the prefaces, which were generally treatises on various departments of poetry, or critical essays on the characters of poets, Dryden has established for himself a claim, not only to the glory of being one of the most nervous and idiomatic writers in the language, but also to that of having been the first to write in English anything that deserves the appellation of liberal and comprehensive criticism. These prefaces were in general composed with no higher object than that of swelling the size, and consequently augmenting the price, of the pamphlet or volume to which they were appended; and though written to all appearance very rapidly and carelessly, these essays frequently contain the first germs or outlines of a true judgment respecting the merit of ancient or modern authors, and remarks, equally solid and original, concerning many important departments of literature. That Dryden's literary creed is not always orthodox, nor his opinions always tenable, can be matter neither of astonishment nor animadversion; for we must remember that he lived when the fundamental principles of criticism were not yet established, and that he was the first English labourer who drove a plough into that rich and fertile field which was destined to be so assiduously cultivated. In some of these compositions he has given us short but masterly sketches of many of our older authors, whose works, when Dryden wrote, were either not read at all, or were quoted with a species of disparaging and half-contemptuous approbation. He deserves therefore, and he will obtain, everlasting glory for the justice which he has so nobly ren

dered to the merits of our elder dramatists-authors with whose peculiar excellences he could hardly have been expected (à priori) to feel any very deep sympathy, and whom the fashion of his age had apparently consigned to oblivion; and a still higher degree of applause must be assigned to him for the noble testimony he has borne to the transcendent merit of Milton, an author whose works it must have been, were it only from political motives, unfashionable, if not even dangerous to praise.

In the brief account which we have given of the numerous and varied productions of this great man, we think we have omitted few of any importance, if we except his translation, or rather paraphrase, of the satires of Juvenal and Persius, and his imitations of the epistles of Horace. There was so much resemblance between the personal and literary characters of Dryden and Juvenal, that we should expect to find in the English poet a perfect reproduction, not only of the matter, but of the manner, of the Roman bard. And we shall not be disappointed. The declamatory boldness, mingled with frequent touches of sarcastic humour; the rhetorical gravity, relieved by a kind of stern mirth; the inexhaustible richness of invective; and the condensed weight of moral precept ;all these were qualities which Dryden's moral poetry possesses of itself: he had not to go out of his own manner to be a perfect representative of Juvenal. This is amply proved by his own satire entitled Mac-Flecknoe, perhaps the most vehement, rich, and varied piece of invective in which personal hatred and contempt ever borrowed the language of moral or literary reprobation. It is chiefly directed against Shadwell, whom he represents, in a kind of mock-heroic allegory, admirable for its boldness and vivacity, as the successful candidate for the crown of stupidity, left vacant by the abdication of Flecknoe, a wretched poetaster of that day, and whose Irish origin is wittily indicated in the name Mac-Flecknoe conferred upon his worthy successor. This poem is "the sublime of personal satire:" the lines seem to flow on, burning bright, and irresistible, like the flood of lava bursting from the crater of the volcano, withering, crushing, and blasting all that they approach.

Dryden died in comparative poverty, though universally placed by all his contemporaries at the head of the poets of his age, a position which his name will ever continue to retain. This event took place on the 1st of May, 1700, and his remains were buried with great pomp in Westminster Abbey. The expense of his funeral was defrayed by a public subscription, and a monument was afterwards erected in his honour by the Duke of Buckingham, intended to bear the following dignified and laconic inscription:

"This Sheffield raised: the sacred dust below

Was Dryden once. The rest who does not know ?"

CHAPTER XI.

CLARENDON, BUNYAN, AND LOCKE.

Clarendon's Life-History of the Rebellion-Characters-John Bunyan -The Pilgrim's Progress-Allegory-Style-Life of Bunyan-Locke -The New Philosophy-Practical Character of Locke's Works-Life -Letters on Toleration-Essay on the Human UnderstandingTheory of Ideas-Treatises on Government-Essay on Education.

In the same manner as the external character of the scenery of any country is reflected in the fine arts which flourish there, do the great and stirring periods of history tend to produce the talent by which alone they can be worthily commemorated and described: the savage grandeur of the Calabrian mountains and the sunny loveliness of the plains of Romagna are not more certainly the suggestive cause of Salvator's wild sublimity or Claude's romantic grace, than the rout of Xerxes was of the patriotic fervour of the Eschylean tragedy, or the Peloponnesian War of the profound political philosophy of Thucydides. We cannot therefore wonder that the great Civil War in England, the Republic, the Protectorate, and the Restoration-a period so crowded with events, and so full of intense dramatic interest—should have produced a historian worthy of describing the mighty revolutions which were to exercise so extensive and enduring an influence upon the future fortunes of Great Britain.

These events were sufficiently striking and important to have inspired even an ordinary intellect: a narration tolerably faithful and detailed, and executed by a common hand, could not fail to possess a strong and lasting interest. How fortunate are we, then, to have a history of this busy period, executed by a man not only endowed with extraordinary powers of intellect, but one who was himself a principal actor in the occurrences he describes! This was Edward Hyde, afterwards Earl of Clarendon and Lord Chancellor of England. His work is

« PreviousContinue »