The Age of Dryden. Richard Garnett
corollary from the Exclusion Bill is assumed to be a sufficient reductio ad absurdum of the latter. In the view of the majority of the nation, this was sound doctrine until the Revolution, which reduced Dryden’s poem from the rank of a powerful political manifesto to that of a brilliant exercise of fancy and dialectic. As such, it will never cease to please and to impress. The finest passages are, no doubt, those descriptive of character, whether carefully studied portraits or strokes against particular foibles imputed to the poet’s adversaries, such as this mock apology for the parsimonious kitchen of the Whig sheriff, Slingsby Bethel:
‘Such frugal virtue malice may accuse,
But sure ’twas necessary to the Jews:
For towns, once burnt, such magistrates require,
As dare not tempt God’s providence by fire.’
The elaborate and glowing characters of Achitophel (Shaftesbury) and Zimri (Buckingham) it is needless to transcribe, as they are universally known. It may be remarked that the character of the turbulent and adventurous Shaftesbury does not match very well with that of the Ulyssean Achitophel of Scripture, but Dryden has wisely drawn from what he had before his eyes.
The Medal, which we have seen reason for attributing to the suggestion of Charles II. himself, appeared in March, 1682. It is a bitter invective against Shaftesbury, its theme the medal which his partisans had very naturally struck upon the occasion of his acquittal in the preceding autumn. It is entirely in a serious vein, and wants the grace and urbanity of some parts of Absalom and Achitophel, but is no way inferior as a piece of strong, vehement satire. Shaftesbury’s conduct as a minister, before his breach with the Court, is thus described:
‘Behold him now exalted into trust;
His counsel’s oft convenient, seldom just:
Even in the most sincere advice he gave
He had a grudging still to be a knave.
The frauds he learned in his fanatic years
Made him uneasy in his lawful gears;
At best, as little honest as he could,
And, like white witches, mischievously good.’
The second part of Absalom and Achitophel appeared in November, 1682. It was mainly the work of Nahum Tate, who imitated his master’s versification with success, but has numerous touches from the pen of Dryden, who inserted a long passage of unparalleled satire against his adversaries, especially Settle and Shadwell:
‘Who by my means to all succeeding times
Shall live in spite of their own doggrel rhymes.’
The character of Shadwell (Og) is well known, but it is impossible to avoid quoting a portion of it:
‘The midwife laid her hand on his thick skull,
With this prophetic blessing – “Be thou dull;
Drink, swear and roar; forbear no lewd delight
Fit for thy bulk; do any thing but write.
Thou art of lasting make, like thoughtless men,
A strong nativity – but for the pen;
Eat opium, mingle arsenic in thy drink,
Still thou mayst live, avoiding pen and ink.”
I see, I see, ’tis counsel given in vain,
For treason, botch’d in rhyme, will be thy bane;
Rhyme is the rock on which thou art to wreck,
’Tis fatal to thy fame and to thy neck.
Why should thy metre good King David blast?
A psalm of his will surely be thy last.
Darest thou presume in verse to meet thy foes,
Thou, whom the penny pamphlet foil’d in prose?
Doeg, whom God for mankind’s mirth has made,
O’ertops thy talent in thy very trade;
Doeg, to thee, thy paintings are so coarse,
A poet is, though he’s the poet’s horse.
A double noose thou on thy neck dost pull,
For writing treason, and for writing dull.
To die for faction is a common evil,
But to be hang’d for nonsense is the devil.
Hadst thou the glories of thy king exprest,
Thy praises had been satire at the best;
But thou in clumsy verse, unlickt, unpointed,
Hast shamefully defiled the Lord’s anointed.
I will not rake the dunghill of thy crimes,
For who would read thy life that reads thy rhymes?
But of King David’s foes, be this the doom,
May all be like the young man Absolom;
And, for my foes, may this their blessing be,
To talk like Doeg, and to write like thee!’
Only a month before the appearance of this annihilating attack, Dryden had devoted an entire poem to Shadwell, who had justly provoked him by a scandalous libel. The title of MacFlecknoe is derived from an Irish priest and, with the exception of some good lines pointed out by Southey and Lamb, a bad poet, already satirized by Marvell. It is a vigorous attack, but not equal to the passage in Absalom and Achitophel, and chiefly memorable inasmuch as the machinery evidently suggested that of Pope’s Dunciad.
Dryden’s next poetical efforts, the dramatic excepted, were of quite another kind. Simultaneously with the second part of Absalom and Achitophel appeared Religio Laici, an argument for the faith of the Church of England as a juste milieu between Popery and Deism. In one respect this takes the highest place among the works of Dryden, for it is the most perfect example he has given of that reasoning in rhyme of which he was so great a master. There is not and could not be any originality in the reasonings themselves, but Pope’s famous couplet was never so finely illustrated, except by Pope himself:
‘True wit is nature to advantage drest;
What oft was thought, but ne’er so well exprest.’
At the same time the poetry hardly rises to the height which the theme might have justified. There is little to captivate or astonish, but perpetual admiration attends upon the masterly conduct of the argument, and the ease with which dry and difficult propositions melt and glide in harmonious verse. The execution is singularly equable; but perhaps hardly maintains the elevation of the fine exordium:
‘Dim as the borrow’d beams of moon and stars
To lonely, weary, wandering travellers,
Is reason to the soul: and as, on high,
Those rolling fires discover but the sky,
And as those nightly tapers disappear,
When day’s bright lord ascends our hemisphere;
So pale grows reason at religion’s sight,
So dies, and so dissolves in supernatural light.
Some few, whose lamp shone brighter, have been led
From cause to cause, to nature’s sacred head,
And found that one First Principle must be:
But what, or who, that universal He;
Whether some soul, encompassing this ball,
Unmade, unmoved; yet making, moving all;
Or various atoms’ interfering dance
Leap’d into form, the noble work of chance;