The Age of Dryden. Richard Garnett
shall ever I
Quit my beloved mistress, Poetry?
Thou sweet beguiler of my lonely hours,
Which thus glide unperceiv’d, with silent course:
Thou gentle spell, which undisturb’d dost keep
My breast, and charm intruding care asleep:
They say thou’rt poor, and un-endow’d, what tho’?
For thee, I this vain, worthless world forego:
Let wealth and honour be for fortune’s slaves,
The alms of fools, and prize of crafty knaves:
To me thou art, whate’er th’ambitious crave,
And all that greedy misers want or have.
In youth or age, in travel or at home;
Here, or in town, at London, or at Rome;
Rich, or a beggar, free, or in the Fleet,
What’er my fate is, ’tis my fate to write.”’
Oldham’s talent, depending upon masculine sense and vigour of expression rather than upon the more ethereal graces of poetry, was of the kind to expand and mellow by age and practice. Had he lived longer he would undoubtedly have left a name conspicuous in English literature. As it is, he can only be regarded as a bright satellite revolving at a respectful distance around the all-illumining orb of Dryden. Before passing to Marvell and Butler, the only two really original poets after Dryden besides the veterans Cowley and Waller, who belong to the preceding period, it will be convenient to despatch a group of minor bards, whose inclusion in the standard collections of poetry, involving memoirs by a master of biography, has given them more celebrity than they in most instances deserve.
Lord Rochester (1647-1680).
John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester (1647-1680), is principally known to posterity by his vices and his repentance. The latter has helped to preserve the memory of the former, which have also left abiding traces in a number of poems not included in his works, and some of which, it may be hoped, are wrongly attributed to him. For a number of years Rochester obtained notoriety as, after Buckingham, the most dissolute character of a dissolute age; but at the same time a critic and a wit, potent to make or mar the fortunes of men of letters. ‘Sure,’ says Mr. Saintsbury, ‘to play some monkey trick or other on those who were unfortunate enough to be his intimates.’ Many a literary cabal was instigated by him, many a libel and lampoon flowed from his pen, among others, The Session of the Poets, correctly characterized by Johnson as ‘merciless insolence.’ Worn out by a life of excess, he died at thirty-three, and his penitence, largely due to the arguments and exhortations of Burnet, afforded the latter material for a narrative which Johnson, entirely opposed as he was to the author’s political and ecclesiastical principles, declares that ‘the critic ought to read for its elegance, the philosopher for its arguments, and the saint for its piety.’
Rochester’s acknowledged poems fall into two divisions of unequal merit. The lyrical and amatory are in general very insipid. The more serious pieces, especially when expressing the discomfort of a sated votary of pleasure, frequently want neither force nor weight. Four particularly fine lines, quoted without indication of authorship in Goethe’s Wahrheit und Dichtung, have frequently occasioned speculation as to their origin. They come from Rochester’s Satyr against Mankind, and read:
‘Then Old Age and Experience, hand in hand,
Lead him to Death, and make him understand,
After a search so painful and so long,
That all his life he has been in the wrong.’
Goldsmith’s ‘best-natured man, with the worst-natured muse,’ is purloined from Rochester, who is also the propounder of the paradox, ‘All men would be cowards if they durst.’ Some of his songs are not devoid of merit. After all, however, nothing of his is so well known as the anticipatory epitaph on Charles II., ascribed sometimes to him, sometimes to Buckingham, and very likely due to neither:
‘Here lies our mutton-eating king,
Whose word no man relies on;
Who never said a foolish thing,
And never did a wise one.’
Wentworth Dillon, Earl of Roscommon (1633? -1684), was a very different character, both as a man and as a poet. He is accused of no fault but a love of gaming, and the purity of his Muse merited the well-known eulogium:
‘In all Charles’s days
Roscommon only boasts unsullied bays.’
But he has nothing of the salt and savour of Rochester’s more serious poetry, and is at best an elegant versifier, who, in his only considerable original poem, the Essay on Translated Verse, thinks justly, reasons clearly, and expresses himself with considerable spirit when the subject requires. The most original feature of his literary character is his preference in a rhyming age for blank verse, which he enforces in theory, but is far from recommending by his practice. In his rhymed pieces he is a better versifier than poet, and in his blank verse the contrary. Milton’s eyes were just closed; Shakespeare and Fletcher were still acted; but the secret of beautiful versification, apart from rhyme, seems to have been entirely lost.
John Sheffield, Duke of Buckinghamshire (1649-1721).
Poetry afforded a subject for verse to another noble writer, John Sheffield, successively Earl of Mulgrave, Marquis of Normanby, and Duke of Buckinghamshire (1649-1721), who achieved real if moderate distinction as soldier, statesman, and scholar. As a poet his reputation rests entirely upon his Essay on Poetry, which contains many just thoughts expressed in pleasing numbers, although the author’s deference to the conventional dicta of criticism leads him into idolatry, not only of Homer and Virgil, but of Bossu. To have fostered the genius of Pope by judicious praise is the highest distinction of ‘Granville the polite and knowing Walsh.’ Congreve, to be treated more fully as a dramatist, stands somewhat higher than these as an inditer of heroic couplets; but a severer criticism must be passed, if any criticism is needed, upon Pomfret, Duke, Stepney, and the other versifiers of the day who have burrowed their way into the stock collections of poetry.
Andrew Marvell (1621-1678).
Andrew Marvell was a virtuous man whose good qualities contrast so forcibly with the characteristic failings of his age, that he appears by contrast even more virtuous than he actually was. His integrity made him the hero of legend, for, although the Court would no doubt have been glad to gain him, it is hardly credible that the prime minister should by the king’s order have personally waited upon him ‘up two pair of stairs in a little court in the Strand.’ But the apocryphal anecdote attests the real veneration inspired by his independence in a venal age. Born in the neighbourhood of Hull on March 31st, 1621, he studied at Cambridge, travelled for some years on the Continent, and settled down about 1650 as tutor to the daughter of Lord Fairfax. At this period he wrote his exquisite poem, The Garden, and other pieces of a similar character. He also wrote in 1650 the poem on Cromwell’s return from Ireland, which may have gained for him in 1653 the appointment of tutor to Cromwell’s ward, William Dutton. Other pieces of a like description followed, and in 1657 Marvell became joint Latin secretary with Milton, an office for which Milton had recommended him four years previously. His poem on the Protector’s death in the following year is justly declared by Mr. Firth to be ‘the only one distinguished by an accent of sincerity and personal affection.’ He was elected for Hull to Richard Cromwell’s Parliament, and continued to sit for the remainder of his life. He was the last Member of Parliament who received a salary from his constituents, to whose interests he in return attended so diligently that upwards of three hundred letters from him upon their concerns and general politics are extant in the Hull archives.
Marvell could scarcely be called a republican. He had been devoted to the Protectorate, and would probably have been easily reconciled to the Restoration if the government had been ably and honestly conducted. In wrath at the general maladministration he betook himself to satires, which circulated in manuscript. At first he attacked