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The Works of John Dryden, now first collected in eighteen volumes. Volume 18
No. VII.
EXTRACT FROM AN EPISTOLARY POEM,
TO JOHN DRYDEN, ESQ
THE PREFACE
1699. 13. June.
… And though I am not an author confirmed enough to carry my copies about to gentlemen’s chambers, in order to pick up amendments and corrections, as the practice is now of our most received writers; yet I must, in justice to myself, and the gentleman who has favoured me with its perusal, tell the world, it had been much worse had not Mr Dryden acquainted me with its faults. Nothing indeed was so displeasing to him, as what was pleasing to myself, viz. his own commendations: and if it pleases the world, the reader has no one to thank but so distinguishing a judgment who occasioned it.
I might here lay hold of the opportunity of returning the obliging compliments he sent me by the person who brought the papers to him before they were printed; but I may chance to call his judgement in question by it, which I always accounted infallible, but in his kind thoughts of me; and therefore refer the reader to the poem, in order to see whether he’ll be so good natured as to join his opinion with the compliment the gentleman aforesaid has honoured me with.
POEM
But thou, great bard, whose hoary merits claimThe laureat’s place, without the laureat’s name;Whose learned brows, encircled by the bays,Bespeak their owner’s, and their giver’s praise;Thou, Dryden, should’st our loss alone relate,And heroes mourn, who heroes canst create.Amidst thy verse the wife already shines,And owes her virtues, what she owes thy lines.Down from above the saint our sorrows views,And feels a second heaven in thy muse;Whose verse as lasting as her fame shall be,While thou shall live by her, and she by thee.Oh! let the same immortal numbers tell,How just the husband lived, and how he fell;What vows, when living, for his life were made;What floods of tears at his decease were paid;And since their deathless virtues were the same,Equal in worth, alike should be their fame.But thou, withdrawn from us, and public cares,Flatter’st thy age, and feed’st thy growing years;Supine, unmoved, regardless of our cries,Thou mind’st not where thy noble patron lies:Wrapt in death’s icy arms, within his urn,Behold him sleeping, and, beholding, mourn:Speechless that tongue for wholesome counsels famed,And without sight those eyes for lust unblamed;Bereaved of motion are those hands which gaveAlms to the needy, did the needy crave.Ah! such a sight, and such a man divine,Does only call for such a hand as thine!Great is the task, and worthy is thy pen;The best of bards should sing the best of men.Awake, arise from thy lethargic state,Mourn Britain’s loss, though Britain be ingrate;Nor let the sacred Mantuan’s labours beA ne plus ultra to thy fame and thee.Thy Abingdon, if once thy glorious theme,Shall vie with his Marcellus for esteem;Tears in his eyes, and sorrow in his heart,Shall speak the reader’s grief, and writer’s art;And, though this barren age does not produceA great Augustus, to reward thy muse;Though in this isle no good Octavia reigns,And gives thee Virgil’s premium for his strains:Yet, Dryden, for a while forsake thy ease,And quit thy pleasures, that thou more may’st please.Apollo calls, and every muse attends,With every grace, who every beauty lends.Sweet is thy voice, as was thy subject’s mind,And, like his soul, thy numbers unconfined;Thy language easy, and thy flowing song,Soft as a vale, but like a mountain strong.Such verse as thine, and such alone, should dareTo charge the muses with their present care.Thine, and the cause of wit, with speed maintain,Lest some rude hand the sacred work profane,And the dull, mercenary, rhyming crew,Rob the deceased and thee, of what’s your due.Such fears as these, (if duty cannot move,And make thy labours equal to thy love,)Should hasten forth thy verse, and make it showWhat thou, mankind, and every muse does owe.As Abingdon’s high worth exalted shines,And gives and takes a lustre from thy lines;As Eleonora’s pious deeds reviveIn him who shared her praises when alive:So the stern Greek, whom nothing could persuadeTo quit the rash engagements which he made,With sullen looks, and helmet laid aside,He soothed his anger, and indulged his pride;Careless of fate, neglectful of the callOf chiefs entreating, till Patroclus’ fall.Roused by his death, his martial soul could bend,And lose his whole resentments in his friend;As to the dusky field he winged his course,With eyes impatient, and redoubled force,And weeped him dead, in thousands of the slain,Whom living, Greece had beg’d his sword in vain.O Dryden! quick the sacred pencil take,And rise in virtue’s cause for virtue’s sake;Of heaven’s the song, and heaven-born is thy muse,Fitting to follow bliss, which mine will lose:Bold are thy thoughts, and soaring is thy flight;Thy fancy tempting, thy expressions bright;Moving thy grief, and powerful is thy praise,Or to command our tears, or joys to raise.So shall his worth, from age to age conveyed,Shew what the hero did, and poet paid;And future times shall practice what they seePerformed so well by him, and praised by thee,While I confess the weakness of my lays,And give my wonder where thou giv’st thy praise:As I from every muse but thine retire,And him in thee, and thee in him, admire.No. VIII.
EXTRACTS FROM POEMS ATTACKING DRYDEN, FOR HIS SILENCE UPON THE DEATH OF QUEEN MARY
The author of one of these Mourning Odes inscribes it to Dryden with the following letter:
Sir,
Though I have little acquaintance with you, nor desire to have more, I take upon me, with the assurance of a poet, to make this dedication to you, which I hope you will the more easily excuse, since you have often used the same freedom to others; and since I protest sincerely, that I expect no money from you.
I could not forbear mentioning your admired Lewis, whom you compare to Augustus, as justly as one may compare you to Virgil. Augustus (though not the most exact pattern of a prince) yet, on some occasions, shewed personal valour, and was not a league-breaker, a poisoner, a pirate: Virgil was a good man and a clean poet; all his excellent writings may be carried by a child in one hand more easily, than all your almonzors can be by a porter upon both shoulders.
When I saw your prodigious epistle to the translation of Juvenal, I feared you were wheeling to the government; I confess too, I long expected something from you on the late sad occasion, that has employed so many pens; but it is well that you have kept silence. I hope you will always be on the other side; did even popery ever get any honour by you? You may wonder that I subscribe not my name at length, but I defer that to another time. I hear you are translating again; let English Virgil be better than English Juvenal, or it is odds you will hear of me more at large. In the mean time, hoping that you and your covey will dislike what I have written, I remain, Sir, your very humble servant,
A. B.
There is also an attack upon our author, as presiding in the Wits Coffee-house, which gives us a curious view into the interior of that celebrated place of rendezvous. It is entitled, “Urania’s Temple; or, a Satire upon the Silent Poets,” and is as follows: —
URANIA’S TEMPLE;
OR, A SATIRE UPON THE SILENT POETS
Carmina, nulla canam.– Virg.
1694-5. 2. March.
A house there stands where once a convent stood,A nursery still to the old convent brood:This ever hospitable roof of yoreThe famous sign of the old Osiris bore,A fair red Io, hieroglyphic-fair,For all the suckling wits o’ the town milcht there.This long old emblematic, that had pastFull many a bleak winter’s shaking blast,At last with age fell down, some say, confusion,Shamed and quite dasht at the new Revolution;Dropt out of modesty, (as most suppose,)Not daring face the new bright Royal Rose.Here in supiner state, ’twixt reaking tiff,And fumigating clouds of funk and whiff,Snug in a nook, his dusky tripos, sitsA senior Delphic ’mongst the minor wits;Feared like an Indian god, a god indeedTrue Indian, smoked with his own native weed.From this oped mouth, soft eloquence rich mintSteals now and then a keen well-hammered hint,Some sharp state raillery, or politic squint,Hard midwived wit, births by slow labours stopt,Sense not profusely shower’d, but only dropt.Sometimes for oracles yet more profound,A titillating sonnet’s handed round,Some Abdication-Damon madrigal,His own sour pen’s too overflowing gall.I must confess in pure poetic rage,Bowed down to the old Moloch of that age,His strange bigotted muse our wonder saw,Tuned to the late great court tarantula.What though worn out in pleasures old and stale,The reverend Outly sculkt within the pale;It was enough, like the old Mahomet’s pigeon,He lured to bread, and masked into religion.Had that, now silent, muse been but so kindAs to this funeral-dirge her numbers joined,On that great theme what wonders had he told!For though the bard, the quill is not grown old,Writes young Apollo still, with his whole raysEncircled and enriched, though not his bays.Thus when the wreath, so long, so justly due,The great Mecænas from those brows withdrew,With pain he saw such merit sunk so far,Shamed that the dragon’s tail swept down the star.Not that the conscience-shackle tied so hard,But had he been the prophet, as the bard,Prognostick’d the diminutive slender birthHis seven-hill’d mountain-labour has brought forth,His foreseen precipice; that thought aloneHad stopt his fall, secured him all our own;Free from his hypochondriac dreams he had slept,And still his unsold Esau’s birthright kept.’Tis thus we see him lost, thus mourn his fall;That single teint alone has sullied all.So have I in the Muses garden seenThe spreading rose, or blooming jessamine;Once from whose bosom the whole Hybla trainThe industrious treasurers of the rich plain,Those winged foragers for their fragrant prey,On loaded thighs bore thousand sweets away:Now shaded by a sullen venomed guestCankered and sooted o’er to a spider’s nest.His sweets thus soured, what melancholy change,What an ill-natur’d lour, a face so strange!His life one whole long scene of all unrest,And airy hopes his thin cameleon-feast;Pleased only with the pride of being preferred,The echoed voice to his own listning herd,A magisterial Belweather tape,The lordly leader of his bleating troop.These doctrines our young Sullenists preach round,The texts which their poetic silence found.But why the doctor of their chair, why thou,Their great rabbinic voice, thus silent too?Could Noll’s once meteor glories blaze so fair,To make thee that all-prostrate zealot there?Strange, that that fiery nose could boast that charmThy muse with those seraphic raptures warm!And our fair Albion star to shine so bleak,Her radiant influence so chill, so weak!Gorged with his riotous festival of fame,Could thy weak stomach pule at Mary’s name!Or was thy junior palate more canine,And now in years grows squeamish, and more fine!Fie, peevish-niggard, with thy flowing storeTo play the churl, – excuse thy shame no more.No. IX.
VERSES OCCASIONED BY READING MR DRYDEN’S FABLES
TO THE READER
1720-1, March.
It is now almost fourteen years since these lines were first written; and as I had no thought of making them public, I laid them aside among other papers; where they had still continued private, if it had not, in a manner, become my duty to print them, by the noble regard which is paid to Mr Dryden’s memory, by his grace the Duke of Buckingham, who, to his high quality, has added the liberal distinction of having long been at once both an eminent patron of elegant literature, and the most accomplished judge and pattern of it.
It might indeed seem an adventurous presumption to offer so trivial a poem to his Grace’s view; but he who is able to instruct the most skilful writer, will have benevolence enough to forgive the imperfections of the weakest, and to consider the inscribing these slight verses to his Grace, merely as a respectful acknowledgment of the common obligation he has laid upon all who have a true value for English poetry, by thus honouring the remains of a man who advanced it so highly, and is so justly celebrated for beauty of imagination, and force and delicacy of expression and numbers.
I must also observe, that I have had the happiness to see one part of these verses abundantly disproved by Mr Pope, and accordingly I retract it with pleasure; for that admirable author, who evidently inherits the bright invention, and the harmonious versification of Mr Dryden, has increased the reputation his other ingenious writings had obtained him, by the permanent fame of having finished a translation of the Iliad of Homer, with surprising genius and merit.
UPON READING MR DRYDEN’S FABLES
Our great forefathers, in poetic song,Were rude in diction, though their sense was strong;Well-measured verse they knew not how to frame,Their words ungraceful, and the cadence lame.Too far they wildly ranged to start the prey,And did too much of Fairy-land display;And in their rugged dissonance of lines,True manly thought debased with trifles shines.Each gaudy flower that wantons on the mead,Must not appear within the curious bed;But nature’s chosen birth should flourish there,And with their beauties crown the sweet parterre.Such was the scene, when Dryden came to foundMore perfect lays, with harmony of sound:What lively colours glow on every draught!How bright his images, how raised his thought!The parts proportioned to their proper place,With strength supported, and adorned with grace.With what perfection did his artful handThe various kinds of poesy command!And the whole choir of Muses at his call,In his rich song, which was inspired of all,Spoke from the chords of his enchanting lyre,And gave his breast the fulness of their fire.As while the sun displays his lordly light,The host of stars are humbly veiled from sight,Till when he falls, they kindle all on high,And smartly sparkle in the nightly sky:His fellow bards suspended thus their ray,Drowned in the strong effulgence of his day;But glowing to their rise, at his decline,Each cast his beams, and each began to shine.As years advance, the abated soul, in most,Sinks to low ebb, in second childhood lost;And spoiling age, dishonouring our kind,Robs all the treasures of the wasted mind;With hovering clouds obscures the muffled sight,And dim suffusion of enduring night:But the rich fervour of his rising rage,Prevailed o’er all the infirmities of age;And, unimpaired by injuries of time,Enjoyed the bloom of a perpetual prime.His fire not less, he more correctly writ,With ripened judgment, and digested wit;When the luxuriant ardour of his youth,Succeeding years had tamed to better growth,And seemed to break the body’s crust away,To give the expanded mind more room to play;Which, in its evening, opened on the sight,Surprising beams of full meridian light;As thrifty of its splendour it had been,And all its lustre had reserved till then.So the descending sun, which hid his rayIn mists before, diminishing the day,Breaks radiant out upon the dazzled eye,And in a blaze of glory leaves the sky.Revolving time had injured Chaucer’s name,And dimmed the brilliant lustre of his fame;Deformed his language, and his wit depressed,His serious sense oft sinking to a jest;Almost a stranger even to British eyes,We scarcely knew him in the rude disguise:But, clothed by thee, the burnished bard appearsIn all his glory, and new honours wears.Thus Ennius was by Virgil changed of old;He found him rubbish, and he left him gold.Who but thyself could Homer’s weight sustain,And match the voice of his majestic strain;When Phœbus’ wrath the sovereign poet sings,And the big passion of contending kings!No tender pinions of a gentle muse,Who little points in epigram pursues,And, with a short excursion, meekly playsIts fluttering wings in mean enervate lays,Could make a flight like this; to reach the skies,An eagle’s vigour can alone suffice.In every part the courtly Ovid’s style,Thy various versions beautifully foil.Here smoothly turned melodious measures move,And feed the flame, and multiply the love:So sweet they flow, so touch the heaving heart,They teach the doctor202 in his boasted art.But when the theme demands a manly tone,Sublime he speaks in accents not his own.The bristly boar, and the tremendous rage,When the fell Centaurs in the fight engage;The cruel storm where Ceyx lost his life,And the deep sorrows of his widowed wife;The covered cavern, and the still abodeOf empty visions, and the Sleepy God;The powers of nature, in her wonderous reign,Old forms subverting, to produce again,And mould the mass anew, the important verseDoes with such dignity of words rehearse,That Virgil, proud of unexampled fame,Looks with concern, and fears a rival name.What vaunting Grecians, of their knowledge vain,In lying legends insolently feignOf magic verses, whose persuasive charmAppeased the soul with glowing passion warm;Then discomposed the calm, and changed the scene,And with the height of madness vexed again, —Thou hast accomplished in thy wondrous song,203With utmost energy of numbers strong.A flow of rage comes hurrying on amain,And now the refluent tide ebbs out again;A quiet pause succeeds; when unconfinedIt rushes back, and swells upon the mind.The inimitable lay, through all the mazeOf harmony’s sweet labyrinth, displaysThe power of music, and Cecilia’s praise.At first it lifts the flattered monarch high,With boasted lineage, to his kindred sky;Then to the pleasures of the flowing bowl,And mellow mirth, unbends his easy soul;And humbles now, and saddens all the feast,With sense of human miseries expressed;Relenting pity in each face appears,And heavy sorrow ripens into tears.Grief is forbid; and see! in every eyeThe gaiety of love, and wanton joy!Soft smiles and airs, which tenderly inspireDelightful hope, and languishing desire.But lo! the pealing verse provokes aroundThe frown of rage, and kindles with the sound;Behold the low’ring storm at once arise,And ardent vengeance sparkling in their eyes;Fury boils high, and zeal of fell debate,Demanding ruin, and denouncing fate.Ye British beauties, in whose finished faceSmile the gay honours of each bloomy grace;Whose forms, inimitably fair, inviteThe sighing heart, and cheer the ravished sight,Say, what sweet transports, and complacent joy,Rise in your bosoms, and your soul employ,When royal Emily, the tuneful bardPaints in his song, and makes the rich rewardOf knightly arms, in costly lists arrayed,The world at once contending for the maid.How nobly great does Sigismonda shine,With constant faith, and courage masculine!No menaces could bend her mind to fear,But for her love she dies without a tear.There Iphigenia, with her radiant eyes,As the bright sun, illuminates the skies;In clouded Cymon chearful day began,Awaked the sleeping soul, and charmed him into man.The pleasing legends, to your honour, proveThe power of beauty, and the force of love.Who, after him, can equally rehearseSuch various subjects, in such various verse?And with the raptures of his strain controul,At will, each passion, and command the soul?Not ancient Orpheus, whose surprising lyreDid beasts, and rocks, and rooted woods, inspire,More sweetly sung, nor with superior artSoothed the sad shades, and softened Pluto’s heart.All owned, at distance, his distinguished name,Nor vainly vied to share his awful fame;Unrivalled, living, he enlarged his praise,And, dying, left without an heir his bays.So Philip’s son his universal reignExtended amply over earth and main;Through conquered climes with ready triumph rode,And ruled the nations with his powerful nod;But when fate called the mighty chief away,None could succeed to his imperial sway,And his wide empire languished to decay.No. IX.
AN ODE BY WAY OF ELEGY, ON THE UNIVERSALLY LAMENTED DEATH OF THE INCOMPARABLE MR DRYDEN
By ALEXANDER OLDYS.
TO MY WORTHY FRIEND MR JAMES DIXON
Sir, 1700, 22d June.
The many and great obligations which you have been pleased to lay on me, give me the greatest confusion imaginable at present, when I consider that I am suing for a greater favour than all, in having the liberty to prefix your name to these lines; which though I am sensible they will be condemned by the great, yet the shame of that can no way affect you, when I do you the justice to assure the town, that it is contrary to your knowledge that you are become my patron: so your nicer sense cannot be accountable in the least; for you had no hand in it, and you may plead
– Quæ non fecimus ipsiVix ea nostra voco.Nay, you were not guilty of so much as of the knowledge of this my wicked intentions; wicked. I mean, if it should offend you and my other friends, who need not blush for me, since I have already such a terror upon my conscience for this aggression, as is, I think, a punishment in some measure equal to any crime; and all that I can urge in my defence is, that it was pure respect to the dear memory of this great man, to whom I had the honour to be known, that provoked, or, let me rather say, obliged me to expose myself on this occasion. I never attempted any thing in this measure for the public before; and I doubt not that I shall do yet severer penance for it, in the censures of our awful wits, which I already fear; but your judgment is still more dreadful than all, by
Worthy Sir,
Your most obliged obedient and humble servant,
Alexander Oldys.
AN ODE ON THE DEATH OF MR DRYDEN
I
On a soft bank of camomel I sate,O’ershaded by two mournful yews;(Doubtless it was the will of fateI this retreat should chuse.)Where on delicious poetry I fed,Amazing thoughts chilled all my blood,And almost stopt the vital flood,As Dryden’s sacred verse I read.Whilst killing raptures seized my head,I shook, as if I had foreknownWhat all-commanding fate had done;What for our sovereign Dryden had designed,Till sleep o’erwhelmed my brain, as sorrow had my mind;To think that all the great, even he, must die,And here, in fame alone, have immortality.When in my dream the fatal muse,With hair dishevell’d, and in tears,Melpomene appears;Upon my throbbing heart her hand she laid,Her hand as cold as death, and thus she said, —“Least of my care, be calmed! No more just heaven accuse!II
“Eternal fate has said, – He must remove;The bards triumphant wait for him above.To everlasting day and blest abodes(The seats of poets and of gods)He’s gone, to fill the throneWhich none could fill but he alone;The glorious throne for him prepared;Of glorious acts the glorious, just reward.See, see, as he ascends on high,The sacred bards attending in the sky!So low do they descendTo meet their now immortal friend!Immortal there above, and here below,As long as men shall wit and English know,The unequalled Dryden must be so,Immortal in his verse, in verse unequalled too.” —She said, – then disappear’d; when ICould plainly see all that was done on high.III
I saw above an universal joy,Perfect without alloy;(So great as ne’er till then had beenSince the sweet Waller entered in,)When all that sacred companyBrought the triumphant bard from ours to heaven’s great jubilee;That was the occasion of his happiness,And of our sorrows, surely that the cause,Called hence heaven’s monarch’s praise to help to express,And to receive for that his own deserved applause.There wanted still one in the heavenly quire,Dryden alone was their desire,Whom for the sacred song th’ Almighty did inspire’Twas pity to us that so long delayedHis blest translation to eternal light;Or, otherwise may we not be afraid,’Twas for the sins of some who durst presume to write;Who durst in verse, in sacred poetry,Even heaven’s own design bely,And damn themselves with utmost industry!For this may we not dreadThe mighty prophet’s taken from our head?And though the fate of these I fear,I in respect must venture here.A long and racking war was sent,Of common sins, a common punishment;To the unthinking crowd the only curse,Who feel no loss but in their purse:But ah! what loss can now be worse?The mighty Pan has left our mournful shore;The mighty Pan is gone, Dryden is here no more.
