Part 30 (1/2)
It is addressed to sir Robert Howard by a letter, which is not properly a dedication; and, writing to a poet, he has interspersed many critical observations, of which some are common, and some, perhaps, ventured without much consideration. He began, even now, to exercise the domination of conscious genius, by recommending his own performance: ”I am satisfied that as the prince and general [Rupert and Monk] are incomparably the best subjects I ever had, so what I have written on them is much better than what I have performed on any other. As I have endeavoured to adorn my poem with n.o.ble thoughts, so much more to express those thoughts with elocution.”
It is written in quatrains, or heroick stanzas of four lines; a measure which he had learned from the Gondibert of Davenant, and which he then thought the most majestick that the English language affords. Of this stanza he mentions the inc.u.mbrances, increased as they were by the exactness which the age required. It was, throughout his life, very much his custom to recommend his works, by representation of the difficulties that he had encountered, without appearing to have sufficiently considered, that where there is no difficulty there is no praise.
There seems to be, in the conduct of sir Robert Howard and Dryden towards each other, something that is not now easily to be explained[101].
Dryden, in his dedication to the earl of Orrery, had defended dramatick rhyme; and Howard, in the preface to a collection of plays, had censured his opinion. Dryden vindicated himself in his Dialogue on Dramatick Poetry: Howard, in his preface to the Duke of Lerma, animadverted on the vindication; and Dryden, in a preface to the Indian Emperor, replied to the animadversions with great asperity, and almost with contumely. The dedication to this play is dated the year in which the Annus Mirabilis was published. Here appears a strange inconsistency; but Langbaine affords some help, by relating that the answer to Howard was not published in the first edition of the play, but was added when it was afterwards reprinted; and, as the Duke of Lerma did not appear till 1668, the same year in which the dialogue was published, there was time enough for enmity to grow up between authors, who, writing both for the theatre, were naturally rivals.
He was now so much distinguished, that, in 1668[102], he succeeded sir William Davenant as poet laureate. The salary of the laureate had been raised in favour of Jonson, by Charles the first, from a hundred marks to one hundred pounds a year, and a tierce of wine; a revenue, in those days, not inadequate to the conveniencies of life.
The same year he published his Essay on Dramatick Poetry, an elegant and instructive dialogue; in which we are told, by Prior, that the princ.i.p.al character is meant to represent the duke of Dorset. This work seems to have given Addison a model for his Dialogues upon Medals.
Secret Love, or the Maiden Queen, 1668, is a tragicomedy. In the preface he discusses a curious question, whether a poet can judge well of his own productions? and determines very justly, that, of the plan and disposition, and all that can be reduced to principles of science, the author may depend upon his own opinion; but that, in those parts where fancy predominates, self-love may easily deceive. He might have observed, that what is good only because it pleases, cannot be p.r.o.nounced good till it has been found to please.
Sir Martin Mar-all, 1668, is a comedy published without preface or dedication, and at first without the name of the author. Langbaine charges it, like most of the rest, with plagiarism; and observes, that the song is translated from Voiture, allowing, however, that both the sense and measure are exactly observed.
The Tempest, 1670, is an alteration of Shakespeare's play, made by Dryden in conjunction with Davenant; ”whom,” says he, ”I found of so quick a fancy, that nothing was proposed to him in which he could not suddenly produce a thought extremely pleasant and surprising; and those first thoughts of his, contrary to the Latin proverb, were not always the least happy; and as his fancy was quick, so, likewise, were the products of it remote and new. He borrowed not of any other; and his imaginations were such as could not easily enter into any other man.”
The effect produced by the conjunction of these two powerful minds was, that to Shakespeare's monster, Caliban, is added a sister monster, Sycorax; and a woman, who, in the original play, had never seen a man, is, in this, brought acquainted with a man that had never seen a woman.
About this time, in 1673, Dryden seems to have had his quiet much disturbed by the success of the Emperess of Morocco, a tragedy written in rhyme, by Elkanah Settle; which was so much applauded, as to make him think his supremacy of reputation in some danger. Settle had not only been prosperous on the stage, but, in the confidence of success, had published his play, with sculptures and a preface of defiance. Here was one offence added to another; and, for the last blast of inflammation, it was acted at Whitehall by the court ladies.
Dryden could not now repress those emotions, which he called indignation, and others jealousy; but wrote upon the play and the dedication such criticism as malignant impatience could pour out in haste.
Of Settle he gives this character: ”He's an animal of a most deplored understanding, without reading and conversation. His being is in a twilight of sense, and some glimmering of thought, which he can never fas.h.i.+on into wit or English. His style is boisterous and rough-hewn, his rhyme incorrigibly lewd, and his numbers perpetually harsh and ill-sounding. The little talent which he has, is fancy. He sometimes labours with a thought; but, with the pudder he makes to bring it into the world, 'tis commonly stillborn; so that, for want of learning and elocution, he will never be able to express any thing either naturally or justly.”
This is not very decent; yet this is one of the pages in which criticism prevails most over brutal fury.
He proceeds: ”He has a heavy hand at fools, and a great felicity in writing nonsense for them. Fools they will be, in spite of him. His king, his two emperesses, his villain, and his sub-villain, nay, his hero, have all a certain natural cast of the father--their folly was born and bred in them, and something of the Elkanah will be visible.”
This is Dryden's general declamation; I will not withhold from the reader a particular remark. Having gone through the first act, he says: ”To conclude this act with the most rumbling piece of nonsense spoken yet:
”To flatt'ring lightning our feign'd smiles conform, Which, back'd with thunder, do but gild a storm.
”_Conform a smile to lightning_, make a _smile_ imitate _lightning_, and _flattering lightning_: lightning, sure, is a threatening thing. And this lightning must _gild a storm_. Now, if I must conform my smiles to lightning, then my smiles must gild a storm too: to _gild_ with _smiles_, is a new invention of gilding. And gild a storm by being _backed with thunder_. Thunder is part of the storm; so one part of the storm must help to _gild_ another part, and help by _backing_; as if a man would gild a thing the better for being backed, or having a load upon his back.
So that here is _gilding_ by _conforming, smiling, lightning, backing_, and _thundering_. The whole is as if I should say thus: I will make my counterfeit smiles look like a flattering stonehorse, which, being backed with a trooper, does but gild the battle. I am mistaken, if nonsense is not here pretty thick sown. Sure the poet writ these two lines aboard some smack in a storm, and, being sea-sick, spewed up a good lump of clotted nonsense at once.”
Here is, perhaps, a sufficient specimen; but as the pamphlet, though Dryden's, has never been thought worthy of republication, and is not easily to be found, it may gratify curiosity to quote it more largely:
”Whene'er she bleeds, He no severer a d.a.m.nation needs, That dares p.r.o.nounce the sentence of her death, Than the infection that attends that breath.
”_That attends that breath_. The poet is at _breath_ again; _breath_ can never scape him; and here he brings in a _breath_ that must be _infectious_ with _p.r.o.nouncing_ a sentence; and this sentence is not to be p.r.o.nounced till the condemned party _bleeds_; that is, she must be executed first, and sentenced after; and the _p.r.o.nouncing_ of this _sentence_ will be infectious; that is, others will catch the disease of that sentence, and this infecting of others will torment a man's self.
The whole is thus: when she bleeds, thou needest no greater h.e.l.l or torment to thyself, than infecting of others by p.r.o.nouncing a sentence upon her. What hodge-podge does he make here! Never was Dutch grout such clogging, thick, indigestible stuff. But this is but a taste to stay the stomach; we shall have a more plentiful mess presently.
”Now to dish up the poet's broth, that I promised:
”For when we're dead, and our freed souls enlarg'd, Of nature's grosser burden we're discharg'd, Then gently, as a happy lover's sigh, Like wand'ring meteors through the air we'll fly, And in our airy walk, as subtle guests, We'll steal into our cruel fathers' b.r.e.a.s.t.s, There read their souls, and track each pa.s.sion's sphere: See how revenge moves there, ambition here!
And in their orbs view the dark characters Of sieges, ruins, murders, blood, and wars.
We'll blot out all those hideous draughts, and write Pure and white forms; then with a radiant light Their b.r.e.a.s.t.s encircle, till their pa.s.sions be Gentle as nature in its infancy; Till, soften'd by our charms, their furies cease, And their revenge resolves into a peace.
Thus by our death their quarrel ends, Whom living we made foes, dead we'll make friends.
”If this be not a very liberal mess, I will refer myself to the stomach of any moderate guest. And a rare mess it is, far excelling any Westminster white-broth. It is a kind of giblet porridge, made of the giblets of a couple of young geese, stodged full of meteors, orbs, spheres, track, hideous draughts, dark characters, white forms, and radiant lights; designed not only to please appet.i.te, and indulge luxury, but it is also physical, being an approved medicine to purge choler: for it is propounded by Morena, as a receipt to cure their fathers of their cholerick humours; and, were it written in characters as barbarous as the words, might very well pa.s.s for a doctor's bill. To conclude: it is porridge, 'tis a receipt, 'tis a pig with a pudding in the belly, 'tis I know not what: for, certainly, never any one that pretended to write sense, had the impudence before to put such stuff as this into the mouths of those that were to speak it before an audience, whom he did not take to be all fools; and, after that, to print it too, and expose it to the examination of the world. But let us see what we can make of this stuff: