OF DRYDEN' the great poet whose life I am about to delineate, the 1 curiosity which his reputation must excite will require a display more ample than can now be given. His contemporaries, however they reverenced his genius, left his life unwritten; and nothing therefore can be known beyond what casual mention and uncertain tradition have supplied. JOHN DRYDEN was born August 9, 16312, at Aldwincle 2 near Oundle, the son of Erasmus Dryden of Tichmersh, who was the third son of Sir Erasmus Dryden, Baronet, of Canons Ashby 3. All these places are in Northamptonshire, but the original stock of the family was in the county of Huntingdon *. He is reported by his last biographer, Derrick, to have 3 inherited from his father an estate of two hundred a year, and to have been bred, as was said, an Anabaptist. For either of these particulars no authority is given. Such a fortune ought to have "When I was a young fellow (said Johnson) I wanted to write the Life of Dryden.' Boswell's Johnson, iii. 71. He told us he had sent Derrick to Dryden's relations to gather materials for his Life; and he believed Derrick had got all that he himself should have got; but it was nothing.' Ib. v. 240. See also ib. i. 456; iv. 44; John. Letters, ii. 68. For Derrick see Boswell's Johnson, i. 394, 456, and for his attempt 'to gather materials' see post, DRYDEN, 188; Dryden's Misc. Works, 1760, Preface, p. 9. 'Johnson had a mind precisely formed to relish the excellences of Dryden-more vigorous than refined; more reasoning than impassioned.' HALLAM, Edin. Review, No. xxv. 117. 2 According to Malone there is 'no satisfactory evidence' of the date of his birth. Malone's Dryden's Prose Works, i. 3. On his tombstone 1632 is the date of his birth. Post, DRYDEN, 156 n. 3 Wood's Ath. Oxon. iii. 809. Wood adds that Fuller had the same birthplace. Dryden says of the Earl of Exeter:-'In a village belonging to his family I was born.' Works, xv. 191. Sir Erasmus was the generous grandsire' of the poet's Epistle to John Driden, 1. 188, who, 'for refusing to pay loan-money to Charles I, was "In a loathsome dungeon doomed Christie's Select Poems of Dryden, Dryden's great-great-grandfather came from Staffhill, Cumberland. Malone's Dryden, i. 10; Works, i. 18. 5 Dryden's Misc. Works, 1760, Preface, p. 14. "For his income see post, DRYDEN, 182. His father,' writes Malone, 'acted as a Justice of the Peace during the usurpation, and was probably a zealous Presbyterian, as his elder brother, Sir John Driden, certainly was. ... Derrick's authority was probably 4 5 secured him from that poverty which seems always to have oppressed him; or if he had wasted it, to have made him ashamed of publishing his necessities. But though he had many enemies, who undoubtedly examined his life with a scrutiny sufficiently malicious, I do not remember that he is ever charged with waste of his patrimony'. He was indeed sometimes reproached for his first religion. I am therefore inclined to believe that Derrick's intelligence was partly true, and partly erroneous 3. From Westminster School, where he was instructed as one of the king's scholars by Dr. Busby, whom he long after continued to reverence, he was in 1650 elected to one of the Westminster scholarships at Cambridge 5. Of his school performances has appeared only a poem on the death of Lord Hastings, composed with great ambition of such the lampoons of the last age.' Ma- 'His little estate at Blakesley is at this day [1800] occupied by a grandson of the tenant who held it in Dryden's time. He relates that his grandfather was used to take great pleasure in talking of the poet. He was, he said, the easiest and the kindest landlord in the world.' Malone's Dryden, i. 471. 2 This sentence is not in the first edition, the previous paragraph continuing:-'or considered as a deserter from another religion.' 3 In the first edition:-'Derrick was misinformed.' * See ante, STEPNEY, 1; JOHN PHILIPS, 3; post, DRYDEN, 208; SMITH, 29; DUKE, 1; KING, 2; HALIFAX, 2; ROWE, 2; PRIOR, 2, for the poets educated by Busby. He was head master from 1638 to 1695. Sargeaunt's Westminster School, p. 268. Locke and South were Dryden's schoolfellows. Malone's Dryden, i. 13. 'Busby educated more youths that were afterwards eminent in the Church and State than any master of his time.' WOOD, Ath. Oxon. iv. 418. 'Every one of the confederated band' of Christ Church men who defended Boyle's Phalaris against Bentley were his pupils. Monk's Bentley, i. 90. 'He strictly forbad the use of notes, and for our Greek and Latin authors we had nothing but the plain text.' H. FELTON, Dissertation on the Classics, p. 41. Two of Dryden's sons were under him in 1682. Works, xviii. 99. In 1693 the poet dedicated to him the Fifth Satire of Persius. Ib. xiii. 249. In 1699 he wrote about the correction of some of his own verses: -' I am now in feare that I purged them out of their spirit; as our Master Busby us'd to whip a boy so long till he made him a confirm'd blockhead.' lb. xviii. 158. See also John. Misc. ii. 304. 5 Dr. Aldis Wright informs me that Dryden was admitted at Trinity College on May 18, 1650, and matriculated on July 6. The eldest son of the Earl of Huntingdon. He died in 1649. 'No less than 98 elegies were made on him by the wits of the age, and published in 1650 under the title of Lachrymae Musarum. Collins's Peerage, ii. 101. The number, says Christie, was only thirty-three. Select Poems, Introd. p. 13. conceits as, notwithstanding the reformation begun by Waller and Denham, the example of Cowley still kept in reputation '. Lord Hastings died of the small-pox, and his poet has made of the pustules, first rosebuds, and then gems; at last exalts them into stars, and says, 'No comet need foretell his change drew on, Whose corps might seem a constellation 2.' At the university he does not appear to have been eager of 6 poetical distinction, or to have lavished his early wit either on fictitious subjects or publick occasions. He probably considered that he who purposed to be an author ought first to be a student 3. He obtained, whatever was the reason, no fellowship in the College*. Why he was excluded cannot now be known, and it is vain to guess; had he thought himself injured, he knew how to complain. In the Life of Plutarch he mentions his education in the College with gratitude 5; but in a prologue at Oxford, he has these lines: 'Oxford to him a dearer name shall be 1 In 1672 Dryden wrote:-' Mr. Cowley's authority is almost sacred to me.' Works, iv. 24. In 1693 he wrote: That noble wit of Scotland, Sir George Mackenzie, asked me why I did not imitate in my verses the turns of Mr. Waller and Sir John Denham.... This hint first made me sensible of my own wants.... I looked over the darling of my youth, the famous Cowley; there I found the points of wit and quirks of epigram.' Tb. xiii. 116; post, DRYDEN, 217, 222, 236. Works, xi. 96. poem see ib. xi. 1; i. 14. For another early 3 At the universities Cowley (ante, COWLEY, 9), Milton (ante, MILTON, 11), Prior (Eng. Poets, xxxii. 143), and Johnson (Boswell's Johnson, i. 61) each 'lavished his early wit.' Malone quotes the following order from 'the Conclusion Book in the Archives of the College, p. 221':-' July 19, 1652. Agreed then, that Dryden be put out of Commons for a forthnight at least, and that he goe not out of the colledg during the time aforesaid, excepting to sermons, without express leave, and that at the end of the forthnight he read a confession of his crime in the hall at the three Fellowes tables. His crime was his disobedience to the Vice-Master, and his contumacy in taking his punishment inflicted by him.' Malone's Dryden, i. 16. The tables were the tables of the Fellows formerly in use.' Ib. i. Part 2, p. 134. An entry on April 23, 1655, shows that Dryden, who was a Bachelor of Arts, was to forfeit his scholarship unless he returned to reside. This he did not do. Having ceased to be a scholar he was ineligible for a fellowship.' Select Poems, Introd. p. 15. For Milton's not getting a fellowship see ante, MILTON, II. The degree of M.A. was conferred on Dryden in 1668 by Archbishop Sheldon. Malone's Dryden, i. 553. 5 I read Plutarch in the library of Trinity College, to which foundation I gratefully acknowledge a great part of my education.' Works, xvii. 55. See ib. xiv. 216, where he says that many tutors at the university 'are the most positive blockheads in the world.' 7 8 Thebes did his rude [green] unknowing youth engage; It was not till the death of Cromwell, in 1658, that he became a publick candidate for fame 2, by publishing Heroic Stanzas on the late Lord Protector 3, which, compared with the verses of Sprat and Waller on the same occasion, were sufficient to raise great expectations of the rising poet. When the king was restored Dryden, like the other panegyrists of usurpation, changed his opinion, or his profession, and published Astrea Redux, a poem on the happy restoration and return of his most sacred Majesty King Charles the Second 5. 9 The reproach of inconstancy was, on this occasion, shared with such numbers that it produced neither hatred nor disgrace; if he changed, he changed with the nation. It was, however, not totally forgotten when his reputation raised him enemies ❝. 10 The same year he praised the new king in a second poem on his restoration". In the Astrea was the line, 'An horrid stillness first invades the ear, for which he was persecuted with perpetual ridicule, perhaps with more than was deserved. Silence is indeed mere privation; and, so considered, cannot invade 10; but privation likewise cerof his household. Select Poems, Introd. P. 17.] 'Works, x. 386. Dryden, in 1673, sending the Earl of Rochester 'a prologue and epilogue, which I made for our players when they went down to Oxford,' continues:-'By the event your Lordship will judge how easy 'tis to pass anything upon an university, and how gross flattery the learned will endure.' Ib. xviii. 95. The letter perhaps gives the date of the prologue quoted in the text; in that case the epilogue must be the one given in x. 325. For the good taste of an Oxford audience see post, TICKELL, 4 N. His elegy on Hastings was published in 1650. 3 Works, ix. 10. For Dryden's receipt on Oct. 19, 1657, for £50 from Secretary Thurloe see Masson's Milton, v. 375. [Christie thinks it not improbable that Dryden had been employed as secretary by his relative Sir Gilbert Pickering, one of Cromwell's Privy Council and Chamberlain Three Poems upon the Death of his Late Highness Oliver Lord Protector, &c. Written by Mr. Edmund Waller, Mr. John Dryden, Mr. Sprat of Oxford. London, 1659. 4to. See ante, WALLER, 67; post, DRYDEN, 234; SPRAT, 2. 'Dryden's poem was doubtless published before the end of 1658.' Select Poems, Introd. p. 57. Post, DRYDEN, 236; Works, ix. 32. Most' is not in the title. 6 He never republished his lines on Cromwell. 'They were reprinted by his adversaries in a broadsheet in 1681.' Malone's Dryden, i. 44. 7 A Panegyric on his Coronation, 1661. Works, ix. 54 ; post, DRYDEN, 240. 8 Works, ix. 32. 9 See Scott's note, ib. 1° Pope made the zephyrs to 'lament in silence.' Post, POPE, 313. tainly is darkness, and probably cold, yet poetry has never been refused the right of ascribing effects or agency to them as to positive powers. No man scruples to say that darkness hinders him from his work, or that cold has killed the plants. Death is also privation, yet who has made any difficulty of assigning to Death a dart and the power of striking? In settling the order of his works there is some difficulty, for, 11 even when they are important enough to be formally offered to a patron, he does not commonly date his dedication; the time of writing and publishing is not always the same; nor can the first editions be easily found, if even from them could be obtained the necessary information. 2 The time at which his first play was exhibited is not certainly 12 known, because it was not printed till it was some years afterwards altered and revived, but since the plays are said to be printed in the order in which they were written, from the dates of some those of others may be inferred 2; and thus it may be collected that in 1663, in the thirty-second year of his life, he commenced a writer for the stage3, compelled undoubtedly by necessity, for he appears never to have loved that exercise of his genius, or to have much pleased himself with his own dramas. Of the stage, when he had once invaded it, he kept possession 13 for many years; not indeed without the competition of rivals, who sometimes prevailed, or the censure of criticks, which was often poignant and often just; but with such a degree of reputation as made him at least secure of being heard, whatever might be the final determination of the publick *. He wrote The Duke of Guise, in the year of the Restoration; but 'it was damned in private.' Works, vii. 146; post, DRYDEN, 68. Johnson, in dealing with the plays, apparently aims at following the chronological order as he got it from Langbaine. Post, DRYDEN, 64 n. Nevertheless the six plays assigned to 1678 (post, DRYDEN, 92) he distributes over paragraphs 29, 48,63. 71,78. Dryden, in an 'Advertisement' prefixed to King Arthur, 'put,' he writes, 'the plays in the order I wrote them.' Malone's Dryden, i. 56. See also ib. p. 218 for this list, supplemented by the dates of entry at Stationers' Hall. 3 Feb. 3, 1663-4. In Covent Garden to-night I stopped at the great Coffee-house there; where Dryden, the poet, I knew at Cambridge, and all the wits of the town.' PEPYS, Diary, ii. 280. * Hume, fifty-five years after Dryden's death, speaks of 'the total oblivion to which are now condemned' all the plays of the Restoration. 'Dryden's plays, excepting a few scenes, are utterly disfigured by vice or folly.' Hist. of Eng. viii. 335. a Horace Walpole wrote a few years later: Dryden's tragedies are compound of bombast and heroic obscenity, inclosed in the most beautiful numbers.' Anec. of Painting, iii. 4. |