ENGLISH LITERATURE. 



191 



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LESSONS IN ENGLISH LITERATURE. XX. 



THE RESTORATION PERIOD: DRYDEN AND THE POETS. 

 FROM what we have said in earlier lessons, our readers will be 

 able to realise to some extent the strength of the reaction which 

 followed upon the downfall of the Puritan influence and the 

 victory of the Court party at the Restoration, and the effect 

 which this change produced upon the literature of the age. 

 Nothing can better show this contrast than a comparison of the 

 character and career of Milton with that of Dryden ; Milton the 

 very type of a Puritan poet, Dryden by far the greatest, and pro- 

 bably the best, among the literary offspring of the Restoration. 

 John Dryden was born in 1631, of an ancient and honourable 

 family, in the county of Northampton. After commencing his 

 education at a school in the neighbourhood of his home, he was 

 removed to Westminster School, then under the government of 

 the celebrated Dr. Busby. From Westminster he was elected 

 to a scholarship at Trinity College, Cambridge, where ho took 

 his bachelor's degree in 1654, though he continued to reside at 

 the University for several years after this time. Dryden then 

 removed to London, having in the meantime become possessed 

 of a small fortune by the death of his father. His relatives 

 were all of the Puritan party, and Sir Gilbert Pickering, a near 

 kinsman, under whose immediate auspices Dryden entered 

 public life, was a trusted friend and follower of Cromwell. 

 Naturally, therefore, Dryden's first public efforts were upon the 

 same side. The earliest of his poems of any great pretension is 

 his "Heroic Stanzas on the Death of Oliver Cromwell." But 

 Cromwell was dead, and the Restoration soon followed ; and 

 Drydon, like many another, abandoned the fallen creed to 

 worship the rising sun. This event, however, brought Dryden 

 no immediate improvement in fortune or circumstances, but the 

 reverse ; for the friends upon whose influence and protection he 

 had formerly relied remained faithful to the fallen cause, and 

 Dryden, separated from them, was left to rely upon his own re- 

 sources. The first fruits of Dryden's political conversion were 

 two poems " Astraea Redux," a poem in honour of the king's 

 return, and " A Panegyric on the King on the occasion of the 

 Coronation." But Dryden had to live by his pen, and he there- 

 fore applied himself to that form of literature for which, in the 

 reaction from the spirit of Puritanism, the demand was greatest 

 and the reward surest the drama. For many years, beginning 

 very soon after the Restoration, he produced, in pursuance of an 

 agreement into which he had entered, three pieces for the stage 

 every year ; and his plays show an inexhaustible variety in 

 subject and character, though they are all alike in the dramatic 

 defects which we shall have to refer to hereafter. Nor was his 

 diligence in other departments less remarkable, in poetry and in 

 prose alike. In 1670 he was appointed to the office of poet 

 laureate, and, unlike the modern holders of the office, became 

 court poet in reality as well as in name, zealously devoting his 

 great powers to the most servile and indiscriminate flattery of 

 the king and his favourites, and the most violent attacks on 

 all who opposed the party in power. Dryden had been edu- 

 cated among Puritans, but at the Restoration became a rigid 

 Anglican, and wrote one of his greatest poems in defence of the 

 Anglican position. But soon after the accession of James II. he 



abandoned hi- old faith, and proved himMlf a 

 Catholic. Of count the honerty of a change of creed so i 

 and ao opportune haa ben much impugned; and though we 

 may not bo called upon to suspect Dryden of OOBMIOM in- 

 y in thin change any more than in any other of hi* 

 tranaitiona, religious or political, they at leant show the abeeaoe 

 of that earnestness of pnrpoea and strength of conviction which 

 characterised the preceding generation, and the want of whkh 

 marked the age of the Restoration beyond all other periods in 

 oar history. 



Dryden married, in 1663, Lady Elizabeth Howard, ^furgMff 

 of the Earl of Berkshire, bat the marriage wan not a happy one. 

 His literary labours were carried on with nnceawng diligence 

 down to the time of his death. He died of dropsy in the year 1700. 



Before speaking in any detail of Dryden'a works individually, 

 it may be well to point out what were the leading features of 

 his genius, what qualities as a poet he had, and what be 

 wanted. The power of pathos is wholly absent in him ; he 

 neither arouses our sympathies nor touches oar pity. He ad- 

 dresses himself to the reason and judgment, not to the pas- 

 sions or emotions of his readers. The dramatic faculty, again, 

 is very defective in Dryden. He can describe characters with 

 unequalled power and felicity, the satirist's art ; bat he cannot 

 place them before our eyes living and in action, the dramatic 

 art. But Dryden was a man of immense intellectual ability, 

 capable of being applied with success to almost any task, 

 equally strong in argument and in satire. His observation of 

 the salient points of character was keen, and his judgment 

 in handling every subject with which he dealt admirable. 

 But his greatest gift that in which he specially excels alone 

 among poets is his power of expression, style, and ver- 

 sification. His language is everywhere a perfect model of 

 English style, clear, simple, nervous, full of variety and of 

 dignity. In every line there is a force and elevation rarely 

 attained by any other poet, the unmistakable presence of the 

 vis divinior of the Latin poet. His verse has been the ad- 

 miration of each succeeding generation. 



From what we have said, it will easily be believed that 

 Dryden's plays are not the works on which his fame should 

 be rested. They are brilliant frequently, with plenty of variety 

 of incident, and the versification (for his plays are, for the 

 most part, in regular rhymed verse) admirable. When they 

 were produced they enjoyed an unbounded popularity. But 

 that was an age in which Shakespeare was despised, and the 

 Elizabethan drama held barbarous. And to a sounder taste 

 Dryden's plays are wearisome, wanting in every dramatic ele- 

 ment. But their number is an extraordinary evidence of the 

 unwearied diligence of their author. 



The second class of Dryden's works consists of poems in 

 honour of public persons or public events. Some of this 

 class, those addressed to Cromwell and to Charles II., we 

 have already mentioned ; but the most remarkable of such 

 poems is the " Annus Mirabilis," the first in point of date 

 of his more ambitious poems. Its subjects are the Great 

 Fire of London, and certain successes gained by the English 

 fleet in the Dutch war, both happening in the year 1666; 

 hence named by the poet " Annns Mirabilis." The poem con- 

 sists of more than three hundred stanzas of four lines each, 

 the lines being ten-syllabled lines rhyming alternately. This 

 was a favourite metre in Dryden's day, but it is one that 

 wearies the ear, and is peculiarly ill suited for the purposes of 

 narrative. Indeed, the " Annus Mirabilis " is, on the whole, 

 one of the least pleasing of its author's works ; and it is de- 

 formed by occasional examples of ingenious extravagance, 

 showing that Dryden had not yet fully escaped the influence of 

 the metaphysical style prevalent in his younger days. 



The next class of Dryden's works which we have to consider 

 are his satires ; and in them we find his genius displayed in its 

 highest excellence. The most important of these are of the 

 nature of political satires, written in the interest of the king, 

 and in favour of the Duke of York's succession to the throne, 

 in opposition to the party which called itself the Protestant 

 party, led by the ambitious and unscrupulous Earl of Shaftes- 

 bury, and whose nominal rallying point was the unfortunate 

 Duke of Monmouth, natural son of the king. The first and 

 most successful of these satires is the first part of " Absalom 

 ' and Achitophel." This work was published in 1681, and pub- 

 : lished with the view of producing a specific effect upon the 



