D R Y D E N. 



165 



appeared in 167.1, dedicated to the Earl of Rochester, 

 whom he acknowledges not only as the defender of his 

 poetry, but the promoter of his fortune. This was the 

 same infamous Rochester, who, on supposing Dryden 

 to be the author of a satire really written by Lord Mill- 

 grave, was base enough to hire ruffians, to way lay and 

 beat him with bludgeons. His play of " Assignation, 

 or Love in a Nunnery," bears the same date of publi- 

 cation, and was driven off the stage. " Amboyna," a 

 tissue of verse and prose dialogue, written to influence 

 the nation against the Dutch, was not worthy of a bet- 

 ter fate. Without entering individually on the notice 

 of all his plays, we shall only remark, that, in 1675, 

 " Aureng Zebe" was the last of his rhyming ones. 

 Experience, and the study of Shakespeare, had taught 

 him, even during the composition of his pieces, that 

 the fierce passions of the stage were unfit for the fetters 

 of rhyme, an appendage as inappropriate to the thea- 

 trical poetry, that would develope strong, simple, and 

 naked nature, as a load of close and ornate drapery to 

 the scidpture of the human form. Still he had hopes 

 of employing rhyme in a province of poetry, where he 

 conceived that he could use it with all its splendour. 

 He projected an epic poem on the subject, either of 

 Arthur, or the Black Prince, and l>esought his patron 

 Mulgrave to use his influence with his Majesty, tlvat 

 he might be insured of subsistence while he should 

 compose it. Mulgrave gave the poet an opportunity of 

 conversing on the project with Charles ; but from the 

 king he had only fair words. The court, however, re- 

 quired a literary champion to oppose the popular 

 strength of Monmouth and the Whigs, through the me- 

 dium of the press ; and Dryden was selected as laureat, 

 to fight the battles of Toryism with keener, though 

 lighter, veapons than epic jx>etry. For this purpose, 

 came forth his " Absalom and Achitophel," a satire not 

 new indeed in its plan of scripture parallel, but in 

 strength and fineness of execution altogether unprece- 

 dented. The joy of the Whigs on the acquittal of 

 Sliaftesbury, was said to be suggested by Charles him- 

 self, as the subject of his next satire, Which took its 

 name from the medal worn by the opposers of court 

 politics on that occasion. Among the host of inferior 

 rhymers who answered the medal witli abundant abuse 

 of Dryden, Og and Doeg, or Shad well and .Settle, re- 

 ceived a ridiculous immortality from his castigation ; 

 the former, in Maefleenoe, the prototype of the Dun- 

 ciad ; the latter, in the second part of " Absalom and 

 Achitophtl." These were followed, in 1C82, by his 

 Udi'ji/t Laid, a poetical defence of the English church 

 against the sectaries. It has been urged, with some 

 appearance of reason, by those who have accounted 

 tor Drydcn's subsequent change to the Roman Catho- 

 lic faith, on the score of principle, that he wrote the 

 Rf/^in Laid in a state of scepticism concerning re- 

 vealed religion ; not of hard and confirmed scepticism, 

 but of that gentler sort which is accompanied with such 

 a ^willingness to believe, as extrinsic circumstances 

 might afterwards lead to the opposite extreme of cre- 

 dulity. It is well when scepticism can be thus cured ; 

 but the idea of [)ryden sitting down half a sceptic to 

 convert others, places him in no very venerable light 

 as a teacher of religion. The drama of " the Duke of 

 fiiti-e," written in conjunction with I.ee, in which a 

 parallel w;;s plainly exhibited between the Leaguers of 

 France and the party of Monmouth, was another fa- 

 vour which he conferred on the ruling powers. About 

 the wme time, the king's express command engaged 



him in translating Maimburgh's History of the League, 

 the dedication of which to Charles is allowed to savour 

 strongly of political ferocity. The king is exhorted to 

 lay aside his forgiving disposition, and to treat the con- 

 spirators as Hercules dealt with Antetn " they must 

 be hoisted from their mother earth, and strangled in 

 the air." This pious exhortation was given after the 

 reign of Charles had filled Scotland with tortures and 

 legal massacres ; after he had trampled on the liberties 

 of England, and robbed her cities of their charters, at 

 the time when Jeffries polluted the bench ; and "in the 

 year (16'83,) that Algernon Sidney died on the scaffold. 

 It is much to be hoped that Dryden approached his poli- 

 tical tasks with a little of that scepticism which is sup- 

 posed to have attended his first religious lucubration. 

 For all these services, it appears that he received only 

 one donation of 100 broad pieces ; and a deplorable me- 

 morial of his poverty still remains in one of his letters 

 to Hyde, Earl of Rochester, imploring in vain for some 

 permanent subsistence ; deplorable we may call such a 

 memorial, for the effects of his subserviency to bad prin- 

 ciples passed away with the cause which he supported, 

 while the benefits which he conferred on literature still 

 remain. Under the following reign he became a Ro- 

 man Catholic. King James added L. 1 00 to his pen- 

 sion, and Dryden was stigmatized as a hired convert. 

 It is enough, however, to tax his memory with the flat- 

 tery of a base and bigotted court in the proof of his own 

 degrading dedications, without pronouncing on the in- 

 most secrets of the human heart, and assuming the in- 

 sincerity of motives which could be known only to him- 

 self. It is hardly cliaritable to suspect motives which 

 malignity itself can only call suspicious. 



The most important poetry, out of the limits of the dra- 

 ma, which he wrote under King James's auspices, was 

 " The Hind and the Panther." His pen was more un- 

 profitably engaged in a prose apology for the conversion 

 of the Duchess of York to Catholicism ; and in transla- 

 ting the life of Francis Xavier, one of the last saints of 

 the Hoinan calendar. Believing, as he did, in astrology, 

 there was nothing in the wildest of Popish legends which 

 his strong imagination might not be able to digest. The 

 Revolution soon after blasted all his projects ; placed 

 the laurel on the head of his enemy Shadwell ; and, in 

 spite of the kindness of Dorset, who, when obliged to 

 deprive him of his office, made him munificent presents, 

 obliged him to resume his theatrical labours as an im- 

 mediate resource. During the reign of King James, he 

 had contributed to a miscellany published by Tonson, 

 some of those translations from Virgil, Lucretius, and 

 Horace, to which Garth has applied the eulogy former- 

 ly paid to D'Ablancourt, that it was uncertain whether 

 the dead or the living owed him the greater obligation. 

 There is more quaintness than truth in this assertion. 

 The living are positively indebted to him for a fine 

 poem in the English Eneid ; but from Virgil's obliga- 

 tion to him, we must deduce all the beauties of the ori- 

 ginal, which are lost or diminished in their translated 

 form. After the Revolution, he contributed to the ma- 

 terials of two other miscellanies published by Tonson, 

 in concert with bis two sons, and other inferior assist- 

 ants ; and being now retired from the stage, bent his 

 thoughts to the great task of translating Virgil. He 

 wrote the first lines of tin's performance with a diamond 

 on a pane of glass in one of the windows of Chesterton 

 House in Huntingdonshire, the residence of his kins- 

 men John Dryden ; but the antiquary may now search 

 in vain for that frail memorial, for the house of Ches- 



Dryde. 



