Part 54 (1/2)

”He sought the storms; but, for a calm unfit, Would stem too nigh the sands, to boast his wit, Great wits are sure to madness near allied, And thin part.i.tions do their bounds divide.”*

*Absalom and Achitophel.

Dryden did not invent the heroic couplet, but it was he who first made it famous. ”It was he,” says Scott, ”who first showed that the English language was capable of uniting smoothness and strength.” But when you come to read Dryden's poems you may perhaps feel that in gaining the smoothness of Art they have lost something of the beauty of Nature. The perfect lines with their regular sounding rimes almost weary us at length, and we are glad to turn to the rougher beauty of some earlier poet.

But before speaking more of what Dryden did let me tell you a little of what we know of his life.

John Dryden was the son of a Northamptons.h.i.+re gentleman who had a small estate and a large family, for John was the eldest of fourteen children. The family was a Puritan one, although in 1631, when John was born, the Civil War had not yet begun.

When John Dryden left school he went, like nearly all the poets, to Cambridge. Of what he did at college we know very little. He may have been wild, for more than once he got into trouble, and once he was ”rebuked on the head” for speaking scornfully of some n.o.bleman. He was seven years at Cambridge, but he looked back on these years with no joy. He had no love for his University, and even wrote:--

”Oxford to him a dearer name shall be, Than his own Mother University.”

Already at college Dryden had begun to write poetry, but his poem on the death of Cromwell is perhaps the first that is worth remembering:--

”Swift and relentless through the land he past, Like that bold Greek, who did the East subdue; And made to battles of such heroic haste As if on wings of victory he flew.

He fought secure of fortune as of fame, Till by new maps the island might be shown Of conquests, which he strewed where'er he came, This as the galaxy with stars is sown.

Nor was he like those stars which only s.h.i.+ne, When to pale mariners they storms portend, He had a calmer influence, and his mien Did love and majesty together blend.

Nor died he when his ebbing fame went less, But when fresh laurels courted him to live: He seemed but to prevent some new success, As if above what triumphs earth could give.

His ashes in a peaceful urn shall rest; His name a great example stands, to show, How strangely high endeavours may be blessed, Where piety and valour jointly go.”

So wrote Dryden. But after the death of Cromwell came the Restoration. Dryden had been able to admire Cromwell, but although he came of a Puritan family he could never have been a Puritan at heart. What we learn of him in his writings show us that. He was not of the stern stuff which makes martyrs and heroes. There was no reason why he should suffer for a cause in which he did not whole-heartedly believe. So Dryden turned Royalist, and the very next poem he wrote was On the Happy Restoration and Return of His Majesty Charles the Second.

”How easy 'tis when destiny proves kind, With full spread sails to run before the wind!”*

*Astroe Redux.

So Dryden ran before the wind.

About three years after the Restoration Dryden married an earl's daughter, Lady Elizabeth Howard. We know very little about their life together, but they had three children of whom they were very fond.

With the Restoration came the re-opening of the theaters, and for fourteen years Dryden was known as a dramatic poet. There is little need to tell you anything about his plays, for you would not like to read them. During the reign of Puritanism in England the people had been forbidden even innocent pleasures. The Maypole dances had been banished, games and laughter were frowned upon. Now that these too stern laws had been taken away, people plunged madly into pleasure: laughter became coa.r.s.e, merriment became riotous. Puritan England had lost the sense of where innocent pleasure ends and wickedness begins. In another way Restoration England did the same. The people of the Restoration saw fun and laughter in plays which seem to us now simply vulgar and coa.r.s.e as well as dull. The coa.r.s.eness, too, is not the coa.r.s.eness of an ignorant people who know no better, but rather of a people who do know better and who yet prefer to be coa.r.s.e.

I do not mean to say that there are no well-drawn characters, no beautiful lines, in Dryden's plays for that would not be true.

Many of them are clever, the songs in them are often beautiful, but nearly all are unpleasant to read. The taste of the Restoration times condemned Dryden to write in a way unworthy of himself for money. ”Neither money nor honour--that in two words was the position of writers after the Restoration.”*

*Beljame, Le Public et les Hommes de Lettres in Angleterre.

”And Dryden, in immortal strain, Had raised the table-round again But that a ribald King and Court Bade him toil on to make them sport, Demanding for their n.i.g.g.ard pay, Fit for their souls, a loser lay.”*

*Walter Scott, Marmion.

Had Dryden written nothing but plays we should not remember him as one of our great poets. Yet it was during this time of play- writing that Dryden was made Poet Laureate and Historiographer Royal with the salary of 200 pounds a year and a b.u.t.t of sack.

It was after he became Poet Laureate that Dryden began to write his satires, the poems for which he is most famous. Although a satire is a poem which holds wickedness up to scorn, sometimes it was used, not against the wicked and the foolish, but against those who merely differed from the writer in politics or religion or any other way of life or thought. Such was Dryden's best satire--thought by some people the best in the English language.

It is called Absalom and Achitophel. To understand it we must know and understand the history of the times. Here in the guise of the old Bible story Dryden seeks to hold Lord Shaftesbury up to scorn because he tried to have a law pa.s.sed which would prevent the King's brother James from succeeding to the throne, and which would instead place the Duke of Monmouth there. When the poem was published Shaftesbury was in the Tower awaiting his trial for high treason. The poem had a great effect, but Shaftesbury was nevertheless set free.

In spite of the fine sounding lines you will perhaps never care to read Absalom and Achitophel save as a footnote to history.

But Dryden's was the age of satire. Those he wrote called forth others. He was surrounded and followed by many imitators, and it is well to remember Dryden as the greatest of them all. His satires were so powerful, too, that the people against whom they were directed felt them keenly, and no wonder. ”There are pa.s.sages in Dryden's satires in which every couplet has not only the force but the sound of a slap in the face,” says a recent writer.*

*Saintsbury.