Who was John Dryden?

John Dryden (1631-1700)

His Life
Dryden was born near Oundle in Northamptonshire, and may have begun his education at Oundle Grammar School. He later entered Westminster School and went on to Cambridge. In 1657 or 1658 he moved to London, where he remained for the rest of his life as a man of letters. His life was a long one. It was, in addition, an exceedingly fruitful one. For forty years he continued to produce an abundance of literary works of every kind like poems, plays, and prose works. The quality of it was almost unfailingly good, and at the end of his life his poetry was as fresh and vivacious as it had been in the prime of his manhood.

Of Dryden, it can be said without qualification that he is representative of his age. Indeed, it has been urged as a fault in a conscience to the changing fortunes of the times. His earliest work of any importance is Pre-Restoration (1659), and consists of a laudation of the recently dead Oliver Cromwell. At the Restoration he changed his views, attaching himself to the fortunes of Charles II and to the Church of England. This loyalty brought its rewards in honors and pensions, so that for many years Dryden was easily the most considerable literary figure in the land. Yet his career was not without its thorns, for smaller men were busy with their slanders. On the accession of James II in 1685, Dryden changed his faith and political persuasion, becoming a Roman Catholic. To his new belief he adhered steadfastly, even when in 1688 the Revolution brought certain disaster to such public men as adhered to Catholicism. Thus Dryden lost his posts of Poet Laureate and Historiographer Royal. The Laureateship was conferred on Shadwell, his most rancorous foe; and Dryden retired with dignity to sustain his last years with his literary labours. To this last period of his career we owe some of his finest translations and narrative poems. When he died in 1700 he was accorded a splendid funeral in Westminster Abbey, though it was many years before his grave was marked by a tombstone.

His Poetry
Dryden began his life’s work with poetry; he concluded it with poetry; and the years between are starred with the brightness of his greater poems. As early as February 1664, Pepys records in his diary that he met “Mr. Dryden, the poet”; and he remained “Mr. Dryden, the poet” till the day of his death. It is therefore as a poet that Dryden is chiefly to be judged.

His first published poem of any consequence was a series of heroic stanzas on the death of Protector Oliver Cromwell (1659). It consists of thirty-seven quatrains of no particular merit. They move stiffly, and are quite uninspired by any political or personal enthusiasm, but they are a striking manifestation of Dryden’s directness, and show a certain angular force and some metrical dexterity. Two stanzas will show the art of the earliest Dryden:

His grandeur he derived from Heaven alone,
For he was great, ere fortune made him so;
No borrowed bays his temples did adorn,
But to our crown he did fresh jewels bring;

In 1660 he made a great step forward in poetical craftsmanship by publishing Astrea Redux, in celebration of Charles II’s return. The poem represents a complete reversal of the poet’s political opinions; but it is nevertheless a noteworthy literary advance. In its handling of the subject it shows a firmer grip and stronger common sense; in its style, a new command of sonorous and dignified phrasing; and (as important a feature as any of the others) it is written in the heroic couplet.

Methinks I see those crowds on Dover’s stand,
Who in their haste to welcome you to land

Here we see Dryden, though not yet at his best, coming to his own. The couplet marches with a steady but animated ring and swing. Its phrasing is apt and vivid; and it possesses a strength and music that are new. It marks the beginning of that adherence to the use of the couplet which was to be Dryden’s lifelong habit, and which was to mark a new epoch in our literature.

Two other poems of this year, one on the coronation and one addressed to the Chancellor, Clarendon, resemble Astrea Redux in their main features, and are a little inferior.

Dryden’s early poetical work concludes with Annus Mirabillis (published 1667), which gives a spirited account of the Great Fire and the war with the Dutch in the previous year. The poem is in quatrains, and shows a great increase in ease and flexibility within the verse form. The two parts of the narrative are skillfully blended, and the description of the fire, in particular, is full of vigour and striking imagery. The poem abounds in fine images, though it sometimes reveals a lingering weakness for the fantastic conceit. It has a strong, dignified tone combined with the force and impetus which is characteristically Dryden’s.

For more than fifteen years succeeding this, Dryden devoted himself almost entirely to the writing of plays. Then, about 1680, events both political and personal drove him back to the poetical medium, with results both splendid and astonishing. Political passions over the Exclusion Bills were at their height, and Dryden appeared as the chief literary champion of the monarchy in the famous satirical allegory, Absalom and Achitophel (1681). Absalom is the Duke of Monmouth, the unfortunate aspirant to the succession; and Achitophel is his daring but injudicious counselor Shaftesbury. These two are surrounded by a cluster of lesser politicians, upon each of whom Dryden bestows a Biblical name of deadly aptness and transparency. The excellence of the work lies mainly in the numerous portraits, which show Dryden’s keen insight. The satire is of amazing force and range, rarely stooping to scurrility, but punishing its victims with devastating scorn and aloofness; and it takes shape in the best quality of Dryden’s couplet. Long practice in dramatic couplet-writing had now given Dryden a new metrical facility, tightening and strengthening the measure, and giving it crispness and energy without allowing it to become violent and obscure. We give a specimen of this measure, which in many ways represents the summit of Dryden’s poetical achievement:

Of these the false Achitophel was first;
A name to all succeeding ages curst:

Of such satire as this Dryden himself says not unfairly, “It is not bloody, but it is ridiculous enough. I avoided the mention of great crimes, and applied myself to the representing of blind sides and little extravagances.” The hitting is hard, but not foul.

Next year he produced another political poem, The Medal, which called forth an answer from an old friend of Dryden’s Shadwell. Dryden retorted in MacFlecknoe, a stinging, destructive, personal lampoon degraded with much coarseness and personal spite. A similar poem is the second part of Absalom and Achitophel (1682), to which poem Dryden contributed a violent attack on Shadwell, giving him the name of Og. The main part of the work was composed by Nahum Tate, a satellite of Dryden’s.

A new poetical development was manifest in Religio Laici (1682) and the Hind and the Panther (1687). The first poem is a thesis in support of the English Church; the second, written after the accession of James, is an allegorical defence of the Roman Catholic faith. Alterations like this in Dryden’s opinions gave free play to the gibes of his enemies. In spite of their difference in opinion, these poems have much in common: a clear light of argument, a methodical arrangement of ideas, and a mastery of the couplet that often lifts the drabness of the expository theme into passage of noble feeling and splendour. The allegorical treatment of The Hind and the Panther allows of a livelier handling; but the poem is very long, consisting of more than one part, and much of it is dogmatic assertion and tedious argument.

After the Revolution, when he was driven away from his public appointments, Dryden occupied himself chiefly with translations. He once more used the couplet medium, turning Virgil, Ovid, and Boccaccio into English, and adapting Chaucer to the taste of his time. The translation is so free that much of it is Dryden’s own, and all of it teems with his own individuality. We give a passage to illustrate both the latest phase of his couplet and his power as a narrative poet:

Scarce the third glass of measured hours was run,
When like a fiery meteor sunk the sun,
The promise of a storm; the shifting gales
Forsake by fits and fill the flagging sails;

Though it is small in bulk, Dryden’s lyrical poetry is of much importance. The longest and the best-known pieces of this class are his song for St Cecilia’s Day (1687) and Alexander’s Feast, written for the same anniversary in 1697. Both show Dryden as a master of melodious verse and of a varied and powerful style. The numerous lyrics that appear in his plays are charming. One stanza will illustrate this sweetly facile phase of the poet’s art:

On a bank, beside a willow,
Heaven her covering, earth her pillow,
Sad Amynta sighed alone;

His numerous prologues and epilogues, written in couplets, show abundant wit and vivacity, yet they habitually appeal to the worst instincts of his audiences, being very often coarse and unmannerly. Dryden’s versatility is apparent when we observe that in prose, as well as in poetry and drama, he attains primacy in his generation.

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