"He was formed for a controvertist; with sufficient learning; with diction vehement and pointed, though often vulgar and incorrect; with unconquerable pertinacity; with wit in the highest degree keen and sarcastic; and with all those powers exalted and invigorated by the just confidence in his cause.
"Thus qualified, and thus incited, he walked out to battle, and a.s.sailed at once most of the living writers, from Dryden to Durfey. His onset was violent: those pa.s.sages, which while they stood single, had pa.s.sed with little notice, when they were acc.u.mulated and exposed together caught the alarm, and the nation wondered why it had so long suffered irreligion and licentiousness charge."
Notwithstanding the justice of this description, there is a strange mixture of sense and nonsense in Collier"s celebrated treatise. Not contented with resting his objections to dramatic immorality and religion, Jeremy labours to confute the poets of the 17th century, by drawing them into comparison with Plautus and Aristophanes, which is certainly judging of one crooked line by another. Neither does he omit, like his predecessor Prynne, to marshal against the British stage those fulminations directed by the fathers of the Church against the Pagan theatres; although Collier could not but know, that it was the performance of the heathen ritual, and not merely the action of the drama, which rendered it sinful for the early Christians to attend the theatre. The book was, however, of great service to dramatic poetry, which, from that time, was less degraded by licence and indelicacy.
Dryden, it may be believed, had, as his comedies well deserved, a liberal share of the general censure; but, however he might have felt the smart of Collier"s severity, he had the magnanimity to acknowledge its justice. In the preface to the Fables, he makes the _amende honorable._ "I shall say the less of Mr. Collier, because in many things he has taxed me justly; and I have pleaded guilty to all thoughts and expressions of mine, which can be truly argued of obscenity, profaneness, or immorality, and retract them. If he be my enemy, let him triumph; if he be my friend, as I have given him no personal occasion to be otherwise, he will be glad of my repentance. It becomes me not to draw my pen in the defence of a bad cause, when I have so often drawn it for a good one." To this manly and liberal admission, he has indeed tacked a complaint, that Collier had sometimes, by a strained interpretation, made the evil sense of which he complained; that he had too much "horse-play in his raillery;" and that, "if the zeal for G.o.d"s house had not eaten him up, it had at least devoured some part of his good manners and civility." Collier seems to have been somewhat pacified by this qualified acknowledgment, and, during the rest of the controversy, turned his arms chiefly against Congreve, who resisted, and spared, comparatively at least, the sullen submission of Dryden.[36]
While these controversies were raging, Dryden"s time was occupied with the translations or imitations of Chaucer and Boccacio. Among these, the "Character of the Good Parson" is introduced, probably to confute Milbourne, Blackmore, and Collier, who had severally charged our author with the wilful and premeditated contumely thrown upon the clergy in many pa.s.sages of his satirical writings. This too seems to have inflamed the hatred of Swift, who, with all his levities, was strictly attached to his order, and keenly jealous of its honours.[37] Dryden himself seems to have been conscious of his propensity to a.s.sail churchmen. "I remember," he writes to his sons, "the counsel you gave me in your letter; but dissembling, although lawful in some cases, is not my talent; yet, for your sake, I will struggle with the plain openness of my nature, and keep in my just resentments against that _degenerate order_."[38] Milbourne, and other enemies of our author, imputed this resentment against the clergy, to his being refused orders when he wished to take them, in the reign of Charles, with a view to the Provostship of Eton, or some Irish preferment.[39] But Dryden a.s.sures us, that he never had any thoughts of entering the Church. Indeed, his original offences of this kind may be safely ascribed to the fashionable practice, after the Restoration, of laughing at all that was accounted serious before that period.
And when Dryden became a convert to the Catholic faith, he was, we have seen, involved in an immediate and furious controversy with the clergy of the Church of England. Thus, an unbeseeming strain of raillery, adopted in wantonness, became aggravated, by controversy, into real dislike and animosity. But Dryden, in the "Character of a Good Parson,"
seems determined to show that he could estimate the virtue of the clerical order. He undertook the task at the instigation of Mr. Pepys, the founder of the Library in Magdalen College, which bears his name;[40] and has accomplished it with equal spirit and elegance; not forgetting, however, to make his pattern of clerical merit of his own jacobitical principles.
Another very pleasing performance, which entered [into] the Miscellany called "The Fables," is the epistle to John Driden of Chesterton, the poet"s cousin. The letters to Mrs. Steward show the friendly intimacy in which the relations had lived, since the opposition of the Whigs to King William"s government in some degree united that party in conduct, though not in motive, with the favourers of King James. Yet our author"s strain of politics, as at first expressed in the epistle, was too severe for his cousin"s digestion. Some reflections upon the Dutch allies, and their behaviour in the war, were omitted, as tending to reflect upon King William; and the whole piece, to avoid the least chance of giving offence, was subjected to the revision of Montague, with a deprecation of his displeasure, an entreaty of his patronage, and the humiliating offer, that, although repeated correction had already purged the spirit out of the poem, nothing should stand in it relating to public affairs.
without Mr. Montague"s permission. What answer "full-blown Bufo"
returned to Dryden"s pet.i.tion, does not appear; but the author"s opposition principles were so deeply woven in with the piece, that they could not be obliterated without tearing it to pieces. His model of an English member of parliament votes in opposition, as his Good Parson is a nonjuror, and the Fox in the fable of Old Chaucer is translated into a puritan.[41] The epistle was highly acceptable to Mr. Driden of Chesterton, who acknowledged the immortality conferred on him, by "a n.o.ble present," which family tradition states to have amounted to 500.[42] Neither did Dryden neglect so fair an opportunity to avenge himself on his personal, as well as his political adversaries. Milbourne and Blackmore receive in the epistle severe chastis.e.m.e.nt for their a.s.saults upon his poetry and private character:
"What help from art"s endeavours can we have?
Guibbons but guesses, nor is sure to save; But Maurus sweeps whole parishes, and peoples every grave, And no more mercy to mankind will use Than when he robbed and murdered Maro"s muse.
Wouldst thou be soon despatched, and perish whole, Trust Maurus with thy life, and Milbourne with thy soul"
Referring to another place, what occurs upon the style and execution of the Fables, I have only to add, that they were published early in spring 1700, in a large folio, and with the "Ode to Saint Cecilia." The epistle to Driden of Chesterton, and a translation of the first Iliad, must have move than satisfied the mercantile calculations of Tonson, since they contained seventeen hundred verses above the quant.i.ty which Dryden had contracted to deliver. In the preface, the author vindicates himself with great spirit against his literary adversaries; makes his usual strong and forcible remarks on the genius of the authors whom he had imitated; and, in this his last critical work, shows all the ac.u.men which had so long distinguished his powers. The Fables were dedicated to the last Duke of Ormond, the grandson of the Barzillai of "Absalom and Achitophel," and the son of the heroic Earl of Ossory; friends both, and patrons of Dryden"s earlier essays. There is something affecting in a connection so honourably maintained; and the sentiment, as touched by Dryden, is simply pathetic. "I am not vain enough to boast, that I have deserved the value of so ill.u.s.trious a line; but my fortune is the greater, that for three descents they have been pleased to distinguish my poems from those of other men; and have accordingly made me their peculiar care. May it be permitted me to say, that as your grandfather and father were cherished monarchs, so I have been esteemed and patronised by the grandfather, the father, and the son, descended from one of the most ancient, most conspicuous, and most deserving families in Europe."
There were also prefixed to the "Fables," those introductory verses addressed to the beautiful d.u.c.h.ess of Ormond,[43] which have all the easy, felicitous, and sprightly gallantry, demanded on such occasions.
The incense, it is said, was acknowledged by a present of 500; a donation worthy of the splendid house of Ormond. The sale of the "Fables" was surprisingly slow: even the death of the author, which has often sped away a lingering impression, does not seem to have increased the demand; and the second edition was not printed till 1713, when, Dryden and all his immediate descendants being no more, the sum stipulated upon that event was paid by Tonson to Lady Sylvius, daughter of one of Lady Elizabeth Dryden"s brothers, for the benefit of his widow, then in a state of lunacy.--See Appendix, vol. xviii.
The end of Dryden"s labours was now fast approaching; and, as his career began upon the stage, it was in some degree doomed to terminate there.
It is true, he never recalled his resolution to write no more plays; but Vanbrugh having about this time revised and altered for the Drury-lane theatre, Fletcher"s lively comedy of "The Pilgrim," it was agreed that Dryden, or, as one account says, his son Charles,[44] should have the profits of a third night on condition of adding to the piece a Secular Masque, adapted to the supposed termination of the seventeenth century;[45] a Dialogue in the Madhouse between two Distracted Lovers; and a Prologue and Epilogue. The Secular Masque contains a beautiful and spirited delineation of the reigns of James I., Charles I., and Charles II., in which the influence of Diana, Mars, and Venus, are supposed to have respectively predominated. Our author did not venture to a.s.sign a patron to the last years of the century, though the expulsion of Saturn might have given a hint for it. The music of the Masque is said to have been good; at least it is admired by the eccentric author of John Buncle.[46] The Prologue and Epilogue to "The Pilgrim," were written within twenty days of Dryden"s death; [47] and their spirit equals that of any of his satirical compositions. They afford us the less pleasing conviction, that even the last fortnight of Dryden"s life was occupied in repelling or retorting the venomed attacks of his literary foes. In the Prologue, he gives Blackmore a drubbing which would have annihilated any author of ordinary modesty; but the knight[48] was as remarkable for his powers of endurance, as some modern pugilists are said to be, for the quality technically called _bottom_. After having been "brayed in a mortar," as Solomon expresses it, by every wit of his time, Sir Richard not only survived to commit new offences against ink and paper, but had his faction, his admirers, and his panegyrists, among that numerous and sober cla.s.s of readers, who think that genius consists in good intention.[49] In the Epilogue, Dryden attacks Collier, but with more courteous weapons: it is rather a palliation than a defence of dramatic immorality, and contains nothing personally offensive to Collier. Thus so dearly was Dryden"s preeminent reputation purchased, that even his last hours were embittered with controversy; and nature, over-watched and worn out, was, like a besieged garrison, forced to obey the call to arms, and defend reputation even with the very last exertion of the vital spirit.
The approach of death was not, however, so gradual as might have been expected from the poet"s chronic diseases. He had long suffered both by the gout and gravel, and more lately the erysipelas seized one of his legs. To a shattered frame and a corpulent habit, the most trifling accident is often fatal. A slight inflammation in one of his toes, became, from neglect, a gangrene. Mr. Hobbes, an eminent surgeon, to prevent mortification, proposed to amputate the limb; but Dryden, who had no reason to be in love with life, refused the chance of prolonging it by a doubtful and painful operation.[50] After a short interval, the catastrophe expected by Mr. Hobbes took place, and, Dryden not long surviving the consequences, left life on Wednesday morning, 1st May 1700, at three o"clock. He seems to have been sensible till nearly his last moments, and died in the Roman Catholic faith, with submission and entire resignation to the divine will; "taking of his friends," says Mrs. Creed, one of the sorrowful number, "so tender and obliging a farewell, as none but he himself could have expressed."
The death of a man like Dryden, especially in narrow and neglected circ.u.mstances, is usually an alarum-bell to the public. Unavailing and mutual reproaches, for unthankful and pitiless negligence, waste themselves in newspaper paragraphs, elegies, and funeral processions; the debt to genius is then deemed discharged, and a new account of neglect and commemoration is opened between the public and the next who rises to supply his room. It was thus with Dryden: His family were preparing to bury him with the decency becoming their limited circ.u.mstances, when Charles Montague, Lord Jefferies, and other men of quality, made a subscription for a public funeral. The body of the poet was then removed to the Physicians" Hall, where it was embalmed, and lay in state till the 13th day of May, twelve days after the decease. On that day, the celebrated Dr. Garth p.r.o.nounced a Latin oration over the remains of his departed friend; which were then, with considerable state, preceded by a band of music, and attended by a numerous procession of carriages, transported to Westminster Abbey, and deposited between the graves of Chaucer and Cowley.
The malice of Dryden"s contemporaries, which he had experienced through life, attempted to turn into burlesque these funeral honours. Farquhar, the comic dramatist, wrote a letter containing a ludicrous account of the funeral;[51] in which, as Mr. Malone most justly remarks, he only sought to amuse his fair correspondent by an a.s.semblage of ludicrous and ant.i.thetical expressions and ideas, which, when accurately examined, express little more than the bustle and confusion which attends every funeral procession of uncommon splendour. Upon this ground-work, Mrs.
Thomas (the Corinna of Pope and Cromwell) raised, at the distance of thirty years, the marvellous structure of fable, which has been copied by all Dryden"s biographers, till the industry of Mr. Malone has sent it, with other figments of the same lady, to "the grave of all the Capulets."[52] She appears to have been something a.s.sisted by a burlesque account of the funeral, imputed by Mr. Malone to Tom Brown, who certainly continued to insult Dryden"s memory whenever an opportunity offered.[53] Indeed, Mrs. Thomas herself quotes this last respectable authority. It must be a well-conducted and uncommon public ceremony, where the philosopher can find nothing to condemn, nor the satirist to ridicule; yet, to our imagination, what can be more striking, than the procession of talent and rank, which escorted the remains of DRYDEN to the tomb of CHAUCER!
The private character of the individual, his personal appearance, and rank in society, are the circ.u.mstances which generally interest the public most immediately upon his decease.
We are enabled, from the various paintings and engravings of Dryden, as well as from the less flattering delineations of the satirists of his time, to form a tolerable idea of his face and person. In youth, he appears to have been handsome,[54] and of a pleasing countenance: when his age was more advanced, he was corpulent and florid, which procured him the nickname attached to him by Rochester.[55] In his latter days, distress and disappointment probably chilled the fire of his eye, and the advance of age destroyed the animation of his countenance.[56]
Still, however, his portraits bespeak the look and features of genius; especially that in which he is drawn with his waving grey hairs.
In disposition and moral character, Dryden is represented as most amiable, by all who had access to know him; and his works, as well as letters, bear evidence to the justice of their panegyric. Congreve"s character of the poet was drawn doubtless favourably, yet it contains points which demonstrate its fidelity.
"Whoever shall censure me, I dare be confident, you, my lord, will excuse me for anything that I shall say with due regard to a gentleman, for whose person I had as just an affection as I have an admiration of his writings. And indeed Mr. Dryden had personal qualities to challenge both love and esteem from all who were truly acquainted with him.
"He was of a nature exceedingly humane and compa.s.sionate; easily forgiving injuries, and capable of a prompt and sincere reconciliation with them who had offended him.
"Such a temperament is the only solid foundation of all moral virtues and sociable endowments. His friendship, where he professed it, went much beyond his professions; and I have been told of strong and generous instances of it by the persons themselves who received them, though his hereditary income was little more than a bare competency.
"As his reading had been very extensive, so was he very happy in a memory, tenacious of everything that he had read. He was not more possessed of knowledge, than he was communicative of it. But then his communication of it was by no means pedantic, or imposed upon the conversation; but just such, and went so far, as, by the natural turns of the discourse in which he was engaged, it was necessarily promoted or required. He was extreme ready and gentle in his correction of the errors of any writer, who thought fit to consult him: and full as ready and patient to admit of the reprehension of others, in respect of his own oversight or mistakes. He was of very easy, I may say, of very pleasing access; but something slow, and, as it were, diffident in his advances to others. He had something in his nature, that abhorred intrusion into any society whatsoever. Indeed, it is to be regretted, that he was rather blameable in the other extreme; for, by that means, he was personally less known, and, consequently, his character might become liable both to misapprehensions and misrepresentations.
"To the best of my knowledge and observation, he was, of all the men that I ever knew, one of the most modest, and the most easily to be discountenanced in his approaches either to his superiors or his equals."
This portrait is from the pen of friendship; yet, if we consider all the circ.u.mstances of Dryden"s life, we cannot deem it much exaggerated. For about forty years, his character, personal and literary, was the object of a.s.sault by every subaltern scribbler, t.i.tled or unt.i.tled, laureated or pilloried. "My morals," he himself has said, "have been sufficiently aspersed; that only sort of reputation, which ought to be dear to every honest man, and is to me." In such an a.s.sault, no weapon would remain unhandled, no charge, true or false, unurged; and what qualities we do not there find excepted against, must surely be admitted to pa.s.s to the credit of Dryden. His change of political opinion, from the time he entered life under the protection of a favourite of Cromwell, might have argued instability, if he had changed a second time, when the current of power and popular opinion set against the doctrines of the Reformation.
As it is, we must hold Dryden to have acted from conviction, since personal interest, had that been the ruling motive of his political conduct, would have operated as strongly in 1688 as in 1660. The change of his religion we have elsewhere discussed; and endeavoured to show that, although Dryden was unfortunate in adopting the more corrupted form of our religion, yet, considered relatively, it was a fortunate and laudable conviction which led him from the mazes of scepticism to become a catholic of the communion of Rome.[57] It would be vain to maintain, that in his early career he was free from the follies and vices of a dissolute period; but the absence of every positive charge, and the silence of numerous accusers, may be admitted to prove, that he partook in them more from general example than inclination, and with a moderate, rather than voracious or undistinguishing appet.i.te. It must be admitted, that he sacrificed to the Belial or Asmodeus of the age, in his writings; and that he formed his taste upon the licentious and gay society with which he mingled. But we have the testimony of one who knew him well, that, however loose his comedies, the temper of the author was modest;[58] his indelicacy was like the forced impudence of a bashful man; and Rochester has accordingly upbraided him, that his licentiousness was neither natural nor seductive. Dryden had unfortunately conformed enough to the taste of his age, to attempt that "nice mode of wit," as it is termed by the said n.o.ble author, whose name has become inseparably connected with it; but it sate awkwardly upon his natural modesty, and in general sounds impertinent, as well as disgusting. The clumsy phraseology of Burnet, in pa.s.sing censure on the immorality of the stage, after the Restoration, terms "Dryden, the greatest master of dramatic poesy, a monster of immodesty and of impurity of all sorts." The expression called forth the animated defence of Granville, Lord Lansdowne, our author"s n.o.ble friend. "All who knew him," said Lansdowne, "can testify this was not his character. He was so much a stranger to immodesty, that modesty in too great a degree was his failing: he hurt his fortune by it, he complained of it, and never could overcome it. He was," adds he, "esteemed, courted, and admired, by all the great men of the age in which he lived, who would certainly not have received into friendship a monster abandoned to all sorts of vice and impurity. His writings will do immortal honour to his name and country, and his poems last as long, if I may have leave to say it, as the Bishop"s sermons, supposing them to be equally excellent in their kind."[59]
The Bishop"s youngest son, Thomas Burnet, in replying to Lord Lansdowne, explained his father"s last expressions as limited to Dryden"s plays, and showed, by doing so, that there was no foundation for fixing this gross and dubious charge upon his private moral character.
Dryden"s conduct as a father, husband, and master of a family, seems to have been affectionate, faithful, and, so far as his circ.u.mstances admitted, liberal and benevolent. The whole tenor of his correspondence bears witness to his paternal feelings; and even when he was obliged to have recourse to Tonson"s immediate a.s.sistance to pay for the presents he sent them, his affection vented itself in that manner. As a husband, if Lady Elizabeth"s peculiarities of temper precluded the idea of a warm attachment, he is not upbraided with neglect or infidelity by any of his thousand a.s.sailants. As a landlord, Mr. Malone has informed us, on the authority of Lady Dryden, that "his little estate at Blakesley is at this day occupied by one Harriots, grandson of the tenant who held it in Dryden"s time; and he relates, that his grandfather was used to take great pleasure in talking of our poet. He was, he said, the easiest and the kindest landlord in the world, and never raised the rent during the whole time he possessed the estate."
Some circ.u.mstances, however, may seem to degrade so amiable a private, so sublime a poetical character. The licence of his comedy, as we have seen, had for it only the apology of universal example, and must be lamented, though not excused. Let us, however, remember, that if in the hey-day of the merry monarch"s reign, Dryden ventured to maintain, that, the prime end of poetry being pleasure, the muses ought not to be fettered by the chains of strict decorum; yet in his more advanced and sober mood, he evinced sincere repentance for his trespa.s.s, by patient and unresisting submission to the coa.r.s.e and rigorous chastis.e.m.e.nt of Collier. If it is alleged, that, in the fury of his loyal satire, he was not always solicitous concerning its justice, let us make allowance for the prejudice of party, and consider at what advantage, after the laps of more than a century, and through the medium of impartial history, we now view characters, who were only known to their contemporaries as zealous partisans of an opposite and detested faction. The moderation of Dryden"s reprisals, when provoked by the grossest calumny and personal insult, ought also to plead in his favour. Of the hundreds who thus a.s.sailed, not only his literary, but his moral reputation, he has distinguished Settle and Shadwell alone by an elaborate retort. Those who look into Mr. Luttrell"s collections, will at once see the extent of Dryden"s sufferance, and the limited nature of his retaliation.
The extreme flattery of Dryden"s dedications has been objected to him, as a fault of an opposite description; and perhaps no writer has equalled him in the profusion and elegance of his adulation. "Of this kind of meanness," says Johnson, "he never seems to decline the practice, or lament the necessity. He considers the great as ent.i.tled to encomiastic homage, and brings praise rather as a tribute than a gift; more delighted with the fertility of his invention than mortified by the prost.i.tution of his judgment." It may be noticed, in palliation of this heavy charge, that the form of address to superiors must be judged of by the manners of the times; and that the adulation contained in dedications was then as much a matter of course, as the words of submissive style which still precede the subscription Dryden considered his panegyrics as merely conforming with the fashion of the day, and rendering unto Caesar the things which were Caesar"s,--attended with no more degradation than the payment of any other tribute to the forms of politeness and usage of the world.
Of Dryden"s general habits of life we can form a distinct idea, from the evidence a.s.sembled by Mr. Malone. His mornings were spent in study; he dined with his family, probably about two o"clock. After dinner he went usually to Will"s Coffeehouse, the famous rendezvous of the wits of the time, where he had his established chair by the chimney in winter, and near the balcony in summer, whence he p.r.o.nounced, _ex cathedra_, his opinion upon new publications, and, in general, upon all matters of dubious criticism.[60] Latterly, all who had occasion to ridicule or attack him, represent him as presiding in this little senate.[61] His opinions, however, were not maintained with dogmatism; and we have an instance, in a pleasing anecdote told by Dr. Lockier,[62] that Dryden readily listened to criticism, provided it was just, from whatever unexpected and undignified quarter it happened to come. In general, however, it may be supposed, that few ventured to dispute his opinion, or place themselves of his censure. He was most falsely accused of carrying literary jealousy to such a length, as feloniously to encourage Creech to venture on a translation of Horace, that he might lose the character he had gained by a version of Lucretius. But this is positively contradicted, upon the authority of Southerne.[63]
We have so often stopped in our narrative of Dryden"s life, to notice the respectability of his general society, that little need here be said on the subject. Although no enemy to conviviality, he is p.r.o.nounced by Pope to have been regular in his hours in comparison with Addison, who otherwise lived the same coffee-house course of life. He has himself told us, that he was "saturnine and reserved, and not one of those who endeavour to entertain company by lively sallies of merriment and wit;"
and an adversary has put into his mouth this couplet--
"Nor wine nor love could ever see me gay; To writing bred, I knew not what to say."
_Dryden"s Satire to his Muse._
But the admission of the author, and the censure of the satirist, must be received with some limitation. Dryden was thirty years old before he was freed from the fetters of puritanism; and if the habits of lively expression in society are not acquired before that age, they are seldom gained afterward. But this applies only to the deficiency of repartee, in the sharp encounter of wit which was fashionable at the court of Charles, and cannot be understood to exclude Dryden"s possessing the more solid qualities of agreeable conversation, arising from a memory profoundly stocked with knowledge, and a fancy which supplied modes of ill.u.s.tration faster than the author could use them.[64] Some few sayings of Dryden have been, however, preserved; which, if not witty, are at least jocose. He is said to have been the original author of the repartee to the Duke of Buckingham, who, in bowling, offered to lay "his soul to a turnip," or something still more vile. "Give me the odds,"
said Dryden, "and I take the bet." When his wife wished to be a book, that she might enjoy more of his company, "Be an almanac then, my dear,"
said the poet, "that I may change you once a year."[65] Another time, a friend expressing his astonishment that even D"Urfey could write such stuff as a play they had just witnessed, "Ah, sir," replied Dryden, "you do not know my friend Tom so well as I do; I"ll answer for him, he can write worse yet." None of these anecdotes intimate great brilliancy of repartee; but that Dryden, possessed of such a fund of imagination, and acquired learning, should be dull in conversation, is impossible. He is known frequently to have regaled his friends, by communicating to them a part of his labours; but his poetry suffered by his recitation. He read his productions very ill;[66] owing, perhaps, to the modest reserve of his temper, which prevented his showing an animation in which he feared his audience might not partic.i.p.ate. The same circ.u.mstance may have repressed the liveliness of his conversation. I know not, however, whether we are, with Mr. Malone, to impute to diffidence his general habit of consulting his literary friends upon his poems, before they became public, since it might as well arise from a wish to antic.i.p.ate and soften criticism.[67]
Of Dryden"s learning, his works form the best proof. He had read Polybius before he was ten years of age;[68] and was doubtless well acquainted with the Greek and Roman cla.s.sics. But from these studies he could descend to read romances: and the present editor records with pride, that Dryden was a decided admirer of old ballads and popular tales.[69] His researches sometimes extended into the vain province of judicial astrology, in which he was a firm believer; and there is reason to think that he also credited divination by dreams. In the country, he delighted in the pastime of fishing, and used, says Mr. Malone, to spend some time with Mr. Jones of Ramsden, in Wiltshire. D"Urfey was sometimes of this party; but Dryden appears to have undervalued his skill in fishing, as much as his attempts at poetry. Hence Fenton, in his Epistle to Mr. Lambard:
"By long experience, D"Urfey may no doubt Ensnare a gudgeon, or sometimes a trout; Yet Dryden once exclaimed, in partial spite, "_He fish_!"--because the man attempts to write."
I may conclude this notice of Dryden"s habits, which I have been enabled to give chiefly by the researches of Mr. Malone, with two notices of a minute nature. Dryden was a great taker of snuff, which he made himself.
Moreover, as a preparation to a course of study, he usually took medicine, and observed a cooling diet.[70]
Dryden"s house, which he appears to have resided in from the period of his marriage till his death, was in Gerrard Street, the fifth on the left hand coming from Little Newport Street.[71] The back windows looked upon the gardens of Leicester House, of which circ.u.mstance our poet availed himself to pay a handsome compliment to the n.o.ble owner.[72] His excursions to the country seem to have been frequent; perhaps the more so, as Lady Elizabeth always remained in town. In his latter days, the friendship of his relations, John Driden of Chesterton, and Mrs. Steward of Cotterstock, rendered their houses agreeable places of abode to the aged poet. They appear also to have had a kind solicitude about his little comforts, of value infinitely beyond aiding them. And thus concludes all that we have learned of the private life of Dryden.
The fate of Dryden"s family must necessarily interest the admirers of English literature. It consisted of his wife, Lady Elizabeth Dryden, and three sons, John, Charles, and Erasmus Henry. Upon the poet"s death, it may be believed, they felt themselves slenderly provided for, since all his efforts, while alive, were necessary to secure them from the gripe of penury.
Yet their situation was not very distressing. John and Erasmus Henry were abroad; and each had an office at Rome, in which he was able to support himself. Charles had for some time been entirely dependent on his father, and administered to his effects, as he died without a will.
The liberality of the d.u.c.h.ess of Ormond, and of Driden of Chesterton, had been lately received, and probably was not expended. There was, besides, the poet"s little patrimonial estate, and a small property in Wiltshire, which the Earl of Berkshire settled upon Lady Elizabeth at her marriage, and which yielded 50 or 60 annually. There was therefore an income of about 100 a year, to maintain the poet"s widow and children; enough in these times to support them in decent frugality.
Lady Elizabeth Dryden"s temper had long disturbed her husband"s domestic happiness. "His invectives," says Mr. Malone, "against the married state are frequent and bitter, and were continued to the latest period of his life;" and he adds, from most respectable authority, that the family of the poet held no intimacy with his lady, confining their intercourse to mere visits of ceremony.[73] A similar alienation seems to have taken place between her and her own relations, Sir Robert Howard, perhaps, being excepted; for her brother, the Honourable Edward Howard, talks of Virgil, as a thing he had learned merely by common report.[74] Her wayward disposition was, however, the effect of a disordered imagination which, shortly after Dryden"s death, degenerated into absolute insanity, in which state she remained until her death in summer 1714, probably, says Mr. Malone, in the seventy-ninth year of her life.
Dryden"s three sons, says the inscription by Mrs. Creed, were ingenious and accomplished gentlemen. Charles, the eldest, and favourite son of the poet, was born at Charlton, Wiltshire, in 1666. He received a cla.s.sical education under Dr. Busby, his father"s preceptor, and was chosen King"s Scholar in 1680. Being elected to Trinity College in Cambridge, he was admitted a member in 1683. It would have been difficult to conceive that the son of Dryden should not have attempted poetry; but though Charles Dryden escaped the fate of Icarus, he was very, very far from emulating his father"s soaring flight. Mr. Malone has furnished a list of his compositions in Latin and English.[75] About 1692, he went to Italy, and through the interest of Cardinal Howard, to whom he was related by the mother"s side, he became Chamberlain of the Household; not, as Corinna pretends, "to that _remarkably fine gentleman_, Pope Clement XI.," but to Pope Innocent XII. His way to this preferment was smoothed by a pedigree drawn up in Latin by his father, of the families of Dryden and Howard, which is said to have been deposited in the Vatican. Dryden, whose turn for judicial astrology we have noticed, had calculated the nativity of his son Charles; and it would seem that a part of his predictions were fortuitously fulfilled.
Charles, however, having suffered, while at Rome, by a fall, and his health, in consequence, being much injured, his father prognosticated he would begin to recover in the month of September 1697. The issue did no great credit to the prediction; for young Dryden returned to England in 1698 in the same indifferent state of health, as is obvious from the anxious solicitude with which his father always mentions Charles in his correspondence. Upon the poet"s death, Charles, we have seen, administered to his effects on 10th June 1700, Lady Elizabeth, his mother, renouncing the succession. In the next year, Granville conferred on him the profits arising from the author"s night of an alteration of Shakespeare"s "Merchant of Venice;" and his liberality to the son of one great bard may be admitted to balance his presumption in manufacturing a new drama out of the labours of another.[76] Upon the 20th August 1704, Charles Dryden was drowned, in an attempt to swim across the Thames, at Datchet, near Windsor. I have degraded into the Appendix, the romantic narrative of Corinna, concerning his father"s prediction, already mentioned. It contains, like her account of the funeral of the poet, much positive falsehood, and gross improbability, with some slight scantling of foundation in fact.
John Dryden, the poet"s second son, was born in 1667, or 1668, was admitted a King"s Scholar in Westminster in 1682, and elected to Oxford in 1685. Here he became a private pupil of the celebrated Obadiah Walker, Master of University College, a Roman Catholic. It seems probable that young Dryden became a convert to that faith before his father. His religion making it impossible for him to succeed in England, he followed his brother Charles to Rome, where he officiated as his deputy in the Pope"s household. John Dryden translated the fourteenth Satire of Juvenal, published in his father"s version, and wrote a comedy ent.i.tled, "The Husband his own Cuckold," acted in Lincoln"s Inn Fields in 1696; Dryden, the father, furnishing a prologue, and Congreve an epilogue. In 1700-1, he made a tour through Sicily and Malta, and his journal was published in 1706. It seems odd, that in the whole course of his journal, he never mentions his father"s name, nor makes the least allusion to his very recent death. John Dryden, the younger, died at Rome soon after this excursion.
Erasmus Henry, Dryden"s third son, was born 2d May 1669, and educated in the Charterhouse, to which he was nominated by Charles II., shortly after the publication of "Absalom and Achitophel."[77] He does not appear to have been at any university; probably his religion was the obstacle. Like his brothers, he went to Rome; and as both his father and mother request his prayers, we are to suppose he was originally destined for the Church. But he became a Captain in the Pope"s guards, and remained at Rome till John Dryden, his elder brother"s death. After this event, he seems to have returned to England, and in 1708 succeeded to the t.i.tle of Baronet, as representative of Sir Erasmus Driden. the author"s grandfather. But the estate of Canons-Ashby, which should have accompanied the t.i.tle, had been devised by Sir Robert Driden, the poet"s first cousin, to Edward Dryden, the eldest son of Erasmus, the younger brother of the poet. Thus, if the author had lived a few years longer, his pecuniary embarra.s.sments would have been embittered by his succeeding to the honours of his family, without any means of sustaining the rank they gave him. With this Edward Dryden, Sir Erasmus Henry seems to have resided until his death, which took place at the family mansion of Canons-Ashby in 1710. Edward acted as a manager of his cousin"s affairs; and Mr. Malone sees reason to think, from their mode of accounting, that Sir Erasmus Henry had, like his mother, been visited with mental derangement before his death, and had resigned into Edward"s hands the whole management of his concerns. Thus ended the poet"s family, none of his sons surviving him above ten years. The estate of Canons-Ashby became again united to the t.i.tle, in the person of John Dryden, the surviving brother.[78]