ii. Love: pure, disinterested love did not arouse his faculties; he looked on it as a means or a result of fiercer passions, such as rivalry, ambition, or revenge. iii. Pathos rare in his works; simplicity he despised; nature had no attractions for him. iv. Motives to fill the ear; to captivate an audience; to show learning; to engage in disputation and to prolong the argument. v. Comedy he was not naturally qualified for this; his jests are those of action rather than of sentiment, his humour is acquired by imitation. vi. Extravagant imagery: he approached absurdity, and wrote lines which are almost devoid of meaning. (Johnson gives examples.) These bursts of magnificent extravagance pleased his audience and himself, though he could not approve of them. vii. Less noble faults: frequent use of mythology and fable in connection with religion; pedantic display of knowledge; meanness or confusion of metaphors; vanity in use of French words; negligence in composition, and objection to correct and revise his work. viii. Versification: described in a triplet by Pope. He established the use of Triplets and Alexandrines. His rhymes are rarely open to objection. He enriched his language with a greater variety of models than any other author. 19. Dryden's observations on Tragedy, pp. 100-8. 20. Original letter from Dryden to his sons, pp. 108-10, JOHNSON'S LIFE OF DRYDEN. 1631-1701. Or the great poet whose life I am about to delineate, the 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, 1631, at Aldwincle, near Oundle, the son of Erasmus Dryden of Tichmarsh, who was the third son of Sir Erasmus Dryden, Baronet, of Canons Ashby. All these places are in Northamptonshire; but the 10 original stock of the family was in the county of Huntingdon. He is reported by his last biographer, Derrick, to have 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 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 20 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, 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. Of his school performances has appeared only a poem on the death of Lord Hastings, composed with great ambition of such 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 10 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, At the university he does not appear to have been eager of poetical distinction, or to have lavished his early wit either on fictitious subjects or public occasions. He probably considered that he who purposed to be an author, ought first to be a student. He obtained, whatever was the reason, no fellowship in the college. Why he was excluded 20 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; but in a prologue at Oxford, he has these lines : Oxford to him a dearer name shall be Than his own mother-university; Thebes did his rude, unknowing youth engage; He chooses Athens in his riper age. It was not till the death of Cromwell, in 1658, that he 30 became a public candidate for fame, by publishing Heroic Stanzas on the late Lord Protector; 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 restora tion and return of his most sacred Majesty King Charles the Second. 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. 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, And in that silence we a tempest fear 10 for which he was persecuted with perpetual ridicule, perhaps with more than was deserved. Silence is indeed mere privation; and, so considered, cannot invade; but privation likewise certainly 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 20 and the power of striking? In settling the order of his works there is some difficulty; for, 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. The time at which his first play was exhibited is not certainly known, because it was not printed till it was, some years afterwards, altered and revived; but since the 30 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; and thus it may be collected, that in 1663, in the thirty-second year of his life, he commenced a writer for the stage; 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 for many years; not indeed without the competition of rivals who sometimes prevailed, or the censure of critics, 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 public. His first piece was a comedy called the Wild Gallant. 10 He began with no happy auguries; for his performance was so much disapproved, that he was compelled to recall it, and change it from its imperfect state to the form in which it now appears, and which is yet sufficiently defective to vindicate the critics. I wish that there were no necessity of following the progress of his theatrical fame, or tracing the meanders of his mind through the whole series of his dramatic performances; it will be fit, however, to enumerate them, and to take especial notice of those that are distinguished by any 20 peculiarity, intrinsic or concomitant; for the composition and fate of eight-and-twenty dramas include too much of a poetical life to be omitted. In 1664 he published the Rival Ladies, which he dedicated to the Earl of Orrery a man of high reputation both as a writer and a statesman. In this play he made his essay of dramatic rhyme, which he defends, in his dedication, with sufficient certainty of a favourable hearing; for Orrery was himself a writer of rhyming tragedies. He then joined with Sir Robert Howard in the Indian 30 Queen, a tragedy in rhyme. The parts which either of them wrote are not distinguished. The Indian Emperor was published in 1667. It is a tragedy in rhyme, intended for a sequel to Howard's Indian Queen. Of this connection notice was given to the audience by printed bills, distributed at the door; an expedient supposed to be ridiculed in the Rehearsal, when Bayes tells |