with an adverse name. He condescended indeed to a controversy with Settle', in which he perhaps may be considered rather as assaulting than repelling; and since Settle is sunk into oblivion his libel remains injurious only to himself. Among answers to criticks no poetical attacks or altercations 174 are to be included: they are, like other poems, effusions of genius, produced as much to obtain praise as to obviate censure. Dryden practised, and in these he excelled. These Of Collier, Blackmore, and Milbourne he has made mention 175 in the preface to his Fables. To the censure of Collier, whose remarks may be rather termed admonitions than criticisms, he makes little reply; being, at the age of sixty-eight, attentive to better things than the claps of a playhouse3. He complains of Collier's rudeness, and the horse-play of his raillery'; and asserts that 'in many places he has perverted by his glosses the meaning' of what he censures; but in other things he confesses that he is justly taxed, and says, with great calmness and candour, 'I have pleaded guilty to all thoughts or [and] expressions of mine that [which] can be truly accused [argued] of obscenity, immorality, or profaneness, and retract them. he be my enemy, let him triumph; if he be my friend, [as I have given him no personal occasion to be otherwise], he will be glad of my repentance 5. Yet, as our best dispositions are imperfect, he left standing in the same book a reflection on Collier of great asperity, and indeed of more asperity than wit". d If dictator from the plough.' Works, 5 If Dryden was a sincere Roman 'This is downright defiance of the Living God! Here you have the very essence and spirit of blasphemy, and the Holy Ghost brought in upon the most hideous occasion. I question whether the torments and despair of the damned dare venture at such flights as these. They are beyond description; I pray God they may not be beyond pardon too.' A Short View of the English Stage, 3rd ed. p. 184. 6 Works, xi. 243. Dryden's last Epilogue, written just before his death, begins (ib. viii. 502) : 176 Blackmore he represents as made his enemy by the poem of Absalom and Achitophel, which 'he thinks a little hard upon [on] his fanatick patrons [in London]'; and charges him with borrowing the plan of his Arthur from the preface to Juvenal, ' though he had,' says he, 'the baseness not to acknowledge his benefactor, but instead of it to traduce me in a libel.' 177 The libel in which Blackmore traduced him was a Satire upon Wit, in which, having lamented the exuberance of false wit and the deficiency of true, he proposes that all wit should be recoined before it is current, and appoints masters of assay who shall reject all that is light or debased. 178 ''Tis true, that when the coarse and worthless dross Is purg'd away, there will be mighty loss; Ev'n Congreve, Southern, manly Wycherley 3, What horrid stench will rise, what noisome fumes! Thus stands the passage in the last edition; but in the original 'But what remains will be so pure, 'twill bear Blackmore, finding the censure resented and the civility disre discover a writer who consults his passions more than his virtue; and it may be reasonably supposed that Dryden imputes his enmity to its true cause 5. always ready at the call of anger, whether just or not: a short extract will be sufficient: 'He pretends a [this] quarrel to me, that I have fallen foul upon [on] priesthood; if I have, I am only to ask pardon of good priests, and am afraid his share [part] of the reparation_will come to little. Let him be satisfied that he shall never [not] be able to force himself upon me for an adversary; I contemn him too much to enter into competition with him 1. 'As for the rest of those who have written against me they are such scoundrels that they deserve not the least notice to be taken of them. Blackmore and Milbourne are only distinguished from the crowd by being remembered to their infamy 2.' Dryden indeed discovered in many of his writings an affected 179 and absurd malignity to priests and priesthood 3, which naturally raised him many enemies, and which was sometimes as unseasonably resented as it was exerted. Trapp is angry that he calls the sacrificer in the Georgicks the 'holy butcher'; the translation is indeed ridiculous, but Trapp's anger arises from his zeal, not for the author, but the priest: as if any reproach of the follies of paganism could be extended to the preachers of truth 5. Dryden's dislike of the priesthood is imputed by Langbaine, 180 and I think by Brown, to a repulse which he suffered when he solicited ordination; but he denies, in the preface to his Fables, * Works, xi. 240. 2 Ib. xi. 244. 3 Johnson had in mind such passages as the following:-'Religion was first taught in verse, which the laziness or dulness of succeeding priesthood turned afterwards into prose.' 16. iii. 376. 'The cause of religion is but a modern motive to rebellion, invented by the Christian priesthood, refining on the heathen.' Ib. xiv. 148. In the Epistle to Motteux, l. 17, he defends himself: 'Nor, when accused by me, let them Their faults, and not their function, 'He calls the priest the holy butcher. If Mr. Dryden took delight in abusing priests and religion Virgil did not.' Trapp's Aeneis, 1718, Preface, p. 52. 'Or, by the holy butcher if he fell, The inspected entrails could no 210. ... 5 Collier, in his Short View, p. 103, says that Dryden, in Don Sebastian, 'strikes at the Bishops through the Mufti.. He knows the transition from one religion to another is natural, the application easy, and the audience but too well prepared.' 6 Ever since a certain worthy Bishop refused orders to a certain poet Mr. Dryden has declared open defiance against the whole clergy.' LANGBAINE, Dram. Poets, p. 171. For Brown's attack see Works, i. 358 n., and for Brown see ante, DRYDEN, 128. For other writings with the same charge see Malone's Dryden, i. 163. 181 182 that he ever designed to enter into the church'; and such a denial he would not have hazarded, if he could have been convicted of falsehood. Malevolence to the clergy is seldom at a great distance from irreverence of religion, and Dryden affords no exception to this observation. His writings exhibit many passages, which, with all the allowance that can be made for characters and occasions, are such as piety would not have admitted, and such as may vitiate light and unprincipled minds. But there is no reason for supposing that he disbelieved the religion which he disobeyed. He forgot his duty rather than disowned it. His tendency to profaneness is the effect of levity3, negligence, and loose conversation, with a desire of accommodating himself to the corruption of the times, by venturing to be wicked as far as he durst. When he professed himself a convert to Popery he did not pretend to have received any new conviction of the fundamental doctrines of Christianity. The persecution of criticks was not the worst of his vexations: he was much more disturbed by the importunities of want. His complaints of poverty are so frequently repeated, either with the dejection of weakness sinking in helpless misery, or the indignation of merit claiming its tribute from mankind, that it is impossible not to detest the age which could impose on such a man the necessity of such solicitations, or not to despise the man who could submit to such solicitations without necessity*. Whether by the world's neglect or his own imprudence I am 183 afraid that the greatest part of his life was passed in exigencies. Such outcries were surely never uttered but in severe pain. Of his supplies or his expences no probable estimate can now be made. Except the salary of the Laureat, to which king James added the office of Historiographer', perhaps with some additional emoluments, his whole revenue seems to have been casual 2; and it is well known that he seldom lives frugally who lives by chance. Hope is always liberal, and they that trust her promises make little scruple of revelling to-day on the profits of the morrow. Of his plays the profit was not great, and of the produce of 184 his other works very little intelligence can be had3. By discoursing with the late amiable Mr. Tonson I could not find that any memorials of the transactions between his predecessor and Dryden had been preserved, except the following papers 5: 'I do hereby promise to pay John Dryden, Esq., or order, on the 25th of March, 1699, the sum of two hundred and fifty guineas, in consideration of ten thousand verses, which the said and oppressed by fortune, without other support than the constancy and patience of a Christian.' Works, xiii. 320. I [The two appointments of Poet Laureate and Historiographer Royal were conferred on him by Charles II.] Ante, DRYDEN, 26 n. 2 See Appendix U. 3 In 1692 he asked 20 guineas for about 600 lines of a translation of Ovid. Works, xviii. 108. In 1693 Tonson wrote to him:-'All that I have for 50 guineas are but 1,446 lines [of Ovid].' Ib. p. 109. Two years later (during Montagu's great recoinage, Macaulay, Hist. vii. 259) he complained to Tonson that in some money received from him, 'besides the clipped money, there were at least 40 shillings brass.' Ib. p. 120. See also ib. p. 126. For the payment for his Virgil, see ante, DRY ners, but Richard took little part 5 |