A DEFENCE OF DRYDEN

Press, Volume LXXI, Issue 21412, 2 March 1935, Page 15

A DEFENCE OF DRYDEN

(gPBCIALLT WRITTEN FOB TEE PEESS.) [By W. M. BROOKES.I The greatest hindrance to the enjoyment of Dryden's poetry* is an obsession with the unprofitable question: "Was he a poet?" Too many readers persist in sifting his work for evidence of the spirit of Milton and Wordsworth and condemn him because they get so little satisfaction. They fail to understand the aims and limits of his art and consequently to appreciate his triumphal achievement of what he set out to do. Dryden was a great literary craftsman; few writers have been so conscious of what they were about and so exacting of themselves in its fulfilment. But to read him with pleasure it is highly necessary to perceive what he had in mind and to be in whole-hearted sympathy with his intentions. To prof ess a dislike of satire, for instance, and to turn disapprovingly from the thunderous invective and sly keen irony of "Mac Flecknoe" is to have an entirely wrong attitude to the reading of Dryden. His poetry is detached and impersonal and it must be judged by detached and impersonal standards. Its merits are those of the best prose—order, clarity, and forcefulness; and there is complete freedom from romantic allusion and mistiness. Its enjoyment must come from the fine display of skill rather than from any appeal of personal emotion; for Dryden was far from being a writer who aimed to express his own soul or reveal himself in any way to his readers.

It Dryden's Detachment This personal unobtrusiveness in his work has laid Dryden open to Wordsworth's charge *of being artificial; and certainly, even in some of his most vivid passages there is an astonishing lack of spontaneous enthusiasm and emotion that might easily argue insincerity. The account of the origin of the Great Fire of London, from "Annus Mirabilis," is a good example. As when some dire usurper Heaven provides To scourge his country with a lawless sway: His birth perhaps some petty village hides, And sets his cradle out of Fortune's way: Such was the rise of this prodigious fire, Which in mean buildings first obscurely bred, From thence did soon to open streets aspire, And straight to palaces and temples spread.

The diligence of trades and noiseful gain, And luxury, more late, asleep, were laid: All was the night's, and in her silent reign No sound the rest of Nature did invade In this deep quiet from what source unknown Those seeds of fire their fatal birth disclose, * And first, few scatt'ring sparks about were blown, Big with the flames that to our ruin rose. To every nobler portion of the town The curling billows roll their restless, tide: In parties now they straggle up and down, As armies, unopposed, for prey divide. One mighty squadron with a sidewind sped, Through narrow lanes his cumber'd fire does haste: By pow'rful charms of gold and silver led, The Lombard Bankers and the change to waste. And so the description proceeds, through an ingenious series of metaphors, personifications and Virgilian reminiscences, but without the slightest agitation on the part of the author. He gives the impression of writing extremely well about something which is of no importance to him whatever; and this impression is occasionally strengthened by a pleasant weakness of his style—bathos: The Eternal heard, and from the heav'nly quire Chose out the cherub with the flaming sword: And bade him swiftly drive th' approaching fire From where our naval magazines were stor'd. Yet it is effective writing: the very absence of personal feeling makes the brilliant handling of the language all the more remarkable. The reader must not expect to be deeply moved. He will find solid satisfaction in the appreciation of the sheer literary ability, and need not be concerned with the depth of Dryden's feelings about the subject. This is also true of the didactic and

polemical poems. The ably-expresed reasoning of "The Hind and the Panther" and the "Religio Laid," their dignified language, can be admired and enjoyed without troubling about, or bothering to vindicate, the author's sincerity. The Satires As a satirist, Dryden has none of that meanness and pettiness which puts the work of his disciple Pope in an inferior position. In this sphere his real artistry gives his work a character which makes it impossible to regard it as the mere expression of personal animosity. At one time he can be grandly abusive; at another he can damn with the most ironical of praise. At all times he puts every word to its most effective use and is unsparing in the merciless force of the language: Now shut your noses, readers, all and some, For here's a tun of midnight work to come, Og from a Treason Tavern rolling home. Round as a globe and liquored ev'ry chink, Goodly and great, he sails behind his link; With all this bulk there's nothing lost in Og, For every inch that is not fool is rogue: A monstrous mass of foul corrupted matter As all the devils had spewed to make the batter. Poor Shad well! He is magnificently characterised here; but woe betide him when Dryden makes the old poet Flecknoe praise him as his successor: Shadwell alone my perfect image bears, Mature in dulness from his early years; Shadwell alone of all my sons is he Who stands confirmed in full stupidity.

The rest to some faint meaning make pretence, But Shadwell never deviates into sense. We can forgive the maliciousness, if it was ever there, that produced such masterpieces as these, just as we can overlook the fulsome flattery often to be found in Dryden's work. He could praise and blame with equal facility, and we can only ad-« mire him for doing both so well. A poet of his age, he turned his energies to the production of verse which was a brilliant and penetrating commentary on the questions and interests of his age. This is perhaps why Dryden to-day finds far fewer readers than Milton; but to the connoisseur of able, disciplined writing his work will never fail to afford pleasure. A Cold Lyrist Only in his lyrics do Dryden's powers fall sort of achieving a really satisfying result. Here verbal skill cannot compensate for warmly-felt and warmly-communicated emotion. Yet Dryden did undoubtedly show considerable metrical ability in his songs: incidentally he set the pattern for the stanza and metre of Tennyson's "Come into the garden, Maud" : Shall I marry the man I love? And shall I conclude my pains? Now blest be the powers above, I feel the blood leap in my veins; With a lively leap it began to move. And the vapours leave my brains.

The "Ode for St. Cecilia's Day" and "Alexander's Feast" are triumphs of Dryden's cool intellectual ability. Again, their success is gained, not by an outburst of ingenuous emotion, but by careful, deliberate art. One feels that they might have been (like Pope's attempt for a similar occasion) very tawdry indeed. They are not: they are very fine pieces of writing. Again, as a translator of the classics, Dryden showed that he understood the tastes of his readers. He made English versions of Vergil, Ovid, and Juvenal, and began on Homer. These works were very popular in their time, and their popularity survived even the shock of the "Lyrical Ballads" and continued well into the last century. Even to-day the fine, vigorous couplets of the Aeneid, whether they adequately represent Virgil or not, cannot lose their appeal: Obscure they went through dreary shades that led Along the waste dominions of the dead. Thus wander travellers in woods by night, By the moon's doubtful and malignant light; When Jove in dusky clouds involves the skies, And the faint crescent shoots by fits before their eyes. Just in the gate, and in the Jaws of hell Revengeful cares and sullen sorrows dwell, And pale diseases and repining age; Want, Fear, and Famines unresisted rage; Here Toils and Death, and Death's half-brother, Sleep, (Forms terrible to view), their sentry keep. In the next age Pope, inspired by Dryden's achievement, translated Homer. It was a worthy addition to the growing volume of renderings of the classics in the new and refined English which Dryden had created and in which the eighteenth century showed such pride and enthusiasm. For a century after his death Dryden's name was held in the highest reverence, and it was not till the time of Wordsworth that it fell into disrepute.

The Father of Modern English Prose Yet in one sphere of literature—the writing of prose—not even "Wordsworth's attack can diminish the credit due. to Dryden. Though he is best known as a poet, it was in his prose, writings that his influence was greatest. A reader and translator of the French language, he borrowed its clarity, simplicity, and precision and made them permanent qualities of English. He gave indeed to English prose a general character and structure which have not materially altered since his time. If there is any doubt of the change he effected, it is only necessary to take a paragraph from one of- his essays, bearing in mind that it was written in the age that had produced Sir Thomas Browne's "Religip Medici" and "Hydriotaphia": That which distinguishes Theocritus from all other poets, both Greek and Latin, and which raises him even above Virgil in his Eclogues, is the inimitable tenderness of his passions, and thV natural expression of them in words so becoming of a pastoral. A simplicity shines through. He shows his art and learning by disguising both. His shepherds never rise above their country education in their complaints of love: there is the same difference betwixt him and Virgil as there is betwixt Tasso's Arninta and the

Pastor Fido of Guarini. Virgil's shepherds are too well read in the philosophy pf Epicurus and of Plato, and Guarini's seem to have been bred in courts; but Theocritus and Tasso have taken theirs from cottages and plains. It is no very far cry from this to the prose style of Macaulay. Yet this is how Milton, who was almost an exact contemporary, wrote: They who to States and Governors ol the Commonwealth direct their speech, High Court of Parliament, or wanting such access in a private condition, write that which they foresee may advance the public good; I suppose them as at the beginning of no mean endeavour, not a little altered and moved inwardly in their minds: some with doubt of what will be the success, others with fear of what will be the censure: some with hope, others with confidence of what they have to speak. Milton brought the quality of poetry to his prose; Dryden the quality of prose to his poetry. His real triumph was in prose, and yet so thorough and far-reaching was his influence and so much was the style he set taken for granted by succeeding writers that it is easy to forget what is due to him. He was an extremely conscious artist, as his discussions of his own poetical work very clearly show. Modern criticism owes much to him. His literary judgments were reasonable and always well-grounded; and though he may have catered for his audiences by remodelling Shakespeare's plays, he was himself far from insensible to their real merit. He was, above all, careful, exact, and analytical to a far greater extent than most men of his age. Qualities like these, more characteristic of modern times, should commend his work to present-day readers.