ed to have written two p ays in each year, for several years, and in the compass of ten years the copious and vigorous invention of Fletcher enriched the theatre with more than thirty dramas.

On the death of Sir W. Davenant, in 1668, the poetical laurel which he had worn for thirty years, and which had descended to him at the death of Jonson, was now given to our author, after an interval of two years. The office of historiographer-royal was attached to it, which had become vacant by Howell's death: the salary was two hundred a year; the butt of Canary was not withheld, and the patent bore retrospect to the time when the office was vacated. The grant was honourably and elegantly be stowed.* 'To John Dryden, Master of Arts, in consideration of his many acceptable services theretofore done to his majesty, and from an observation of his learning and eminent abilities, and his great skill, and elegant style, both in verse and prose.'

Between the reopening of the theatres, in the beginning of 1667, and the middle of 1670, Dryden produced five original plays, and two in which he was assisted.

The Maiden Queen, which I have already noticed, was, without doubt, acted in 1666, and entered in the Stationers' register in 1667.

The Tempest was acted in 1667, as appears from the epilogue, though not printed till 1669. Sir W. Scott has justly expressed his sense of the injury which the Tempest has received in passing from the pure, the beautiful, and imaginative creations of Shakspeare, to the gross and tasteless alterations of Dryden and Davenant:† so has the delicacy of Raphael's Farnesian gal ery, and the bloom of Psyche's beauty vanished beneath the coarser varnish of C. Marat. How foolish and ill placed is the duel between Ferdinand and Hippolyto! how unseasonable and out of character the quarrel between the two sisters! how low and coarse the allusion in the speech of Prospero to Dorinda, and how puerile the conceit in the dialogue between Hippolyto and Dorinda !§ Not one additional

See Malone's Life of Dryden, p. 88. Pat. 22. Car. ii. p. 6. n. 6.

Scott supposes that Dryden had probably little more share in the alteration of this play than the care of adapting it to the stage. The prologue, he says, is one of the most masterly tributes ever paid at the shrine of Shakspeare.

1 Prosp. You must not trust them, child. No woman can come near them, but she feels a pain full nine months,' &c.

§ Dor. What is the soul? Hip. A small blue thing that runs about within us. Dor. Then have I seen it in a frosty morning, run smoking from my mouth,' &c. Davenant died before the publication of this piece, and his memory is celebrated in the preface.

beauty has been inserted, not one felicitous hint improved; but the profound skill and knowledge of nature, for which the original has been justly praised, has been lost sight of by the improvers, who have stripped the spiritual creation of Shakspeare of its sky-tinctured robes, and stifled the wild harmony of its notes in order that they might deck it in the artificial finery, and bestow on it the conventional manners of their grosser times, and their degraded theatre.

Sir Martin Marall was originally a translation from the French, by the Duke of Newcastle; it was presented to Dryden, and by him adapted to the stage. None of our author's pieces was more succesful; for it was acted thirty times at the theatre at Lincoln's Inn, and four times at court, in the course of two years; and when the new theatre was opened in Dorset Gardens, in 1671, the same comedy drew considerable audiences for three nights: Nokes's acting in Marall was a source of great attraction. This play is imitated from the French of Molière's L'Etourdi, which itself is an imitation of the Inavvertito of Beltrami ; it was published in Dryden's name in 1667,* and all that is diverting and clever in it belongs, it is supposed, rather to the poet than the peer. The success of the play would much depend, I think, on the cleverness of the actors, and the adaptation of their talents to the parts assigned them. Its defects seem to consist in the overcharged character of Sir Martin, which proba bly was so strongly coloured for the purpose of displaying Nokes's peculiar vein of drollery. Molière's character of Lelie is more thoughtless than foolish, more true to nature, and finished with a delicate and finer hand; the stupidity, in Dryden's comedy, has been exaggerated, and the humour of the play rendered more broad and coarse. The consequence of making Sir Martin despicable for his conceit and stupidity, prevented Mrs. Millicent's marrying him without shocking probability, yet her marriage with Warner is very inconsistent and unsatisfactory. This the greater skill and judgment of Molière has avoided. The character of the familiar, intriguing valet, unknown to English customs, proves its foreign origin. L'Amant Indiscret of Quinault has been used for that portion of the plot, which occasioned its being called the 'Feigned Innocence,' and which of course is not part of Molière's play. If the indecency could be expunged, an agreeable farce might now

Scott says, it was performed by the Duke of York's servants, probably at the desire of the Duke of Newcastle, as Dryden was engaged to write for the other house. It seems to have been acted in 1667, and was published, but without the author's name, in 1668.

be formed from the materials, no would a successor to Nokes's humour be sought in vain.

The Mock Astrologer was registered in November, 1668. This play is founded on the Feint Astrologue of the younger Corneille, which he imitated from the Astrologo Fingido of Calderon. The quarrelling scene between Wildblood and Jacintha is copied from the scene in the Depit Amoreux of Molière !* Sir W. Scott says, that the play is more lively than most of Dryden's comedies; Wildblood and Jacinth are far more pleasant than their prototypes, Celadon and Florimel, and the Spanish bustle of the plot is well calculated to fix the attention. The catastrophe, however, is too for cibly induced, and the improbabilities in the last scene are such as to require all the indulgence and good humour of the audience. To this play a very interesting prefacet on the merits of the older dramatists is attached and the remarks on their respective excellencies are made with knowledge and judgment.

The next play which the readiness and vigour of his genius threw out, was Tyrannic Love, or the Royal Martyr. It was written in seven weeks, and the entry was made in the stationers' books, July, 1669.

This has been with justice considered as one of Dryden's characteristic plays, exhibiting the chief features of the heroic system. The personages of the drama are placed in trying perplexities of situation, and amid extraordinary combinations of events; while the movement of the passions, and the progressive action of the story, are superseded by declamation, or entangled in argument. Sentiments are expressed in language bombastic and extravagant ;§

Projicit ampullas et sesquipedalia verba. Evelyn mentions this play' a foolish plot, and very profane; it affected one to see how much the stage was degenerated and polluted by these licen tious times. Memoirs, 19th June, 1668.

In this preface Dryden has defended himself against the charge of plagiarism brought against him. On this point he quotes the words of Charles II., who had only desired, that they, who accused Dryden of theft, would steal him such plays as Dryden's. Langbaine, it is well known, is very severe on this head, against our poet, but his bitterest accusations only come to this, that like all his predeces sors he took his plots from Novels, Romances, Chronicles, and Histories, as he could best find them, and that he was occasionally indebted to the foreign stage.

I Malone has fixed the first acting of this play to the end of 1665, or beginning of 1669. It was printed in 1670, and a revise edition came forth in 1672. § Maximin, in his dying moments says, Bring me Porphyrius and my Empress dead, I would brave heaven, in my cach hand a head. Again,

Look to it, Gods! for you the aggressors are,
Keep you your rain and sunshine in your skies,
And I'll keep back my flame and sacrifice.

yet the versification is melodious, the language poetical, the thoughts ingenious, and flashes of purer and nobler feeling occasionally appear; the tender description, it has been remarked, given by Felicia of her attachment to her children in infancy, is exquisitely beautiful.

In the autumn of 1669, and the spring of the next, Dryden produced the two parts of the Conquest of Granada,* though they were not published till 1672. The play was received with unbounded applause, and raised the poet it is said to a higher point in public esteem, than he reached thirty years after by his translation of Virgil and his fables; in fact the system itself was a favourite with the public, and he was acknowledged as its chief. With regard to the structure of this play. I shall observe, that the changes of fortune are too rapid and indecisive to be of interest. That the character and matchless prowess of Almanzor,t is so soon as certained, that we feel assured that victory will pass

from side to side with a constancy, which could only be commanded by an imaginary and invincible hero. The character of Boabdelin is contemptible, that of Lyndaraxa odious. The vacillations of Almanzor, between his ambition and his love, are almost ludicrous; while his extravagance of sentiment, and his prodigious

Your trade of heaven will soon be at a stand, And all your goods lie dead upon your hand. The dialogue of the spirits is ridiculed in the Re. hearsal.

• On a couplet in this play,

For as old Selim was not moved by thee, .. Neither will I by Selim's daughter be. the Duke of Buckingham presents the following lines, Poems, ii. p. 220.

A py, a padding, a pudding, a py, A py for me and a pudding for thee; A pudding for me and a py for thee, And a pudding py for thee and me. The character of Almanzor is the original of Drawcansir in the Rehearsal, into whose mouth parodies of Dryden's most extravagant flights have been put. Shaftesbury attempts to trace the applause bestowed on this play to what he calls the correspondence and relation between our royal theatre and popular circus, or bear garden. Misc. Reflections, M. 3.

egotism, place him at the head of all the heroes of romance. In this heroic kind of drama, the characters pass before us like moving pictures; we no more sympathize with them, than with the allegorical figures of Rubens. Their misfortunes draw no pity, their virtues claim no admiration, their feelings are often scarcely intelligible to us; they move, and think, and act, in a world of their own. Love, with them, is exalted to adoration; argument is sharpened into logic; passion becomes insanity; and valour is placed above the caprice of fortune, or the possibility of defeat, Macbeth, and Othello, and Lear, meet us with passions that we recognise in the mirror of life, with reflections of the forms of history, and the creations of nature; their tears are drawn from the same fountain as our own, their smiles come from feelings familiar to us, the wildness of their passion, and the majesty of their sorrow is all ours; but the character of Almanzor is altogether an artificial creation; he is a pasteboard hero of the opera stage; a being exorbitating or flying out from the common sphere of humanity, soaring in a region of his own, and never seen beyond the circle of romance. When such a character as this is introduced on the stage, one cannot help reflecting how small a scope is given to fiction in dramatic poetry; because the characters are measured to us, and defined by visible representation; not shaped from ideal models in our own mind, nor elevated by our imaginations in proportion to the magnitude of their actions. In such characters as Achilles and Alexander, no power of the poet or the actor could keep pace with the dema ds of the spectator's imagination, or hope to ascend to the level of our habitual associations. A learned and ingenious writer has expressed the impression which the sight of Achilles on the French stage made on him; a more farcical or ludicrous figure could scarcely present itself to the mind. than a pert, smart, dapper Frenchman, well rouged, curled, and powdered, with the gait of a dancing master, and the accent of a milliner, attempting to personate that tremendous warrior, the nodding of whose crest dismayed armies, and the sound of whose voice made even the war-horse tremble.t

* Sir Walter Scott's observations on this play may be read with advantage, his critical opinions, and his acute and excellent observations, are accompanied in his review of the different works of Dryden, with the utmost fairness and generosity, nor does he ever lose an opportunity to praise, where praise can be bestowed with propriety, vol. iv. p. 6. &c. In his multifarious criticisms, and acute observations in his edition of Dryden, he has been but once, and to one writer, unjust Why was that one, Samuel Johnson?

1 See P. Knight or Taste, p. 306.

Dryden's great success* and growing reputa tion now called out the latent jealousy of his rivals into an open attack upon his fame; but Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, certainly took a higher ground, when he brought out his celebrated farce of the Rehearsal, in order to cor rect the public taste by holding up the rhyming tragedies to ridicule. This, however, was a task to which Buckingham's unassisted talentst were not equal; he therefore called in Butler, a keen and willing adversary, Spratt, M. Clifford and others of lower fame, as contributors to his work. Johnson observes, that Waller is supposed to have added his assistance to that o Cowley, in the original draught of the Rehearsal. No less a period, it is said, than ten years, were employed by them in collecting their stores of ri dicule, and pointing their shafts of wit.

With transcribing of these, and translating those, With transmuting of rhyme, and transversing He hath dress'd up his farce with other men's clothes.'s

prose,

The original hero was Davenant, satirized under the name of Bilboa; it is said that at one time he was changed for Sir Robert Howard: but although Dryden's greater reputation and genius placed him at length on the pedestal designed for others; the change of the hero mar

⚫ Scott numbers at this time among Dryden's friends, independently of Charles, the Duke of Or mond. Thomas Lord Clifford, Duke of Newcastle, Lord Buckhurst, Sir C. Sedley, Earl of Rochester, in short all the great and gay who wished to maintain some character for literary taste: he enjoyed the affection and esteem of Cowley, Waller, Denham, Davenant (as subtle as Cowley, and more harmoni ous than Denham, who with a happier model would probably have excelled both.) Of all the men of genius at this period, whose immortality our age has admitted, Butler alone seems to have been the adversary of our author's reputation. Life, p. 113. 115.

Of this want of talent, says Scott, the reader may find sufficient proof in the extracts from his Grace's reflections upon Absalom and Achitophel, vol. ix. p. 273.

Leigh and Clifford, and other scribblers of less note, wrote notes and remarka on Dryden's Plays and Poems. Buckingham had early distinguished himself as an opponent of the rhyming plays, and had an active share in damning the United King. doms' of the Hon. Ed. Howard.

§ State Poems, vol. ii. p. 216.

'I come to his farce, which must needs well be done,

For Troy was no longer before it was won, Since 'tis more than ten years since the war was begun.'

As the brown paper patch on the nose, introdu ced in ridicule of poor Davenant's misfortune, with a black-eyed wench at Westminster, was retained, when the character was transferred to Dryden; Scott thinks that the Poet of the Rehearsal nay be considered, in some degree, as a Knight of the shire, represent ng all the authors of the day, and uniting in his person their several absurd peculiarities

red the consistency of the satire, as it after wards did that of the Dunciad: for the authors were unwilling to lose the strokes more successfully levelled against Davenant, while the poignancy of the satire was lost by diffusion, or rendered harmless by misapplication to its object. This farce was performed on the 7th of December, 1671, and published in the following year. It owed its success as much to the clever mimickry of the actors as to the author's wit. Dryden's dress, manner, and usual expressions, were all copied; and Lacy, the original Bayes, was instructed to speak after the manner of Dryden's recitation. The play met with a stormy reception at first. Lord Orrery, Sir R. Howard, and all the noble authors of heroic sentiments and sounding lines, were furious in their opposition but the appositeness of its satire, the humour of its burlesque, and the wit of its parody prevailed; and when once received, the success of the Rehearsal was unbounded. Dryden's Play of Marriage-a-la-Mode, was alluded to, though not acted nor printed till the subsequent year, but it probably had been shown about, as was the custom, in manuscript. In the distress of P. Prettyman, Leonidas is alluded to, as the author of the Key to the Rehear sal points out a parallel between them.

To this attack Dryden made no reply; indeed it is difficult to repel wit but with its own keen weapons. He owned, however, the cleverness and ability displayed in it. In the dedication to Juvenal, he says, 'I answered not the Rehearsal, because I knew that the author sate to himself when he drew the picture, and was the very Bayes of his own farce: because, also, I knew

that my betters were more concerned than I was in that satire; and, lastly, because Mr. Smith and Mr. Johnson, the main pillars of it, were two such languishing gentlemen in their conversation, that I could liken them to nothing but their own relations, those noble characters of men of wit and pleasure about town.' Dryden might have added, that under this appearance of indifference he veiled his resentment for a time; but that at length the character of Zimri in Absalom and Achitophel fully avenged his injured reputation, and he who had began the jest, was laughed at in his turn. These lines, as Dr. Warton observes, were intended as a payment in full for the bitter satire acted nine years before.

Although this clever attack did not effectually banish heroic nonsense in rhyme from the stage, it gave it a very powerful blow ;* Dryden was not, perhaps, reluctant to turn from a situation which it was difficult for him to retain; and to avoid either giving way to the clamour of his enemies, or persisting against the opinion of the public, he judiciously directed his attention to Comedy. In 1672, he produced his Marriagea-la-Mode, and the Assiguation, or Love in a Nunnery. The former was successful; Sir W. Scott says it is a Tragi-Comedy, or rather a Tragedy and Comedy, the plot and scenes of which are intermingled, for they have no natural connexion with each other. The state intrigue bears evident marks of hurry and inattention, and it is at least possible that Dryden originally intended it for the subject of a proper heroic play, but startled at the effect of Bucking. ham's satire, hastily added to it some comic scenes, either lying by him or composed on purpose. The higher, or tragic plot, is not only

London; and as Davenant and Dryden were the managers of the two theatres, perhaps there was a difficulty in bringing it forward, till Davenant's death. Scott's Life, p. 137.

It is incredible how much pains Buckingham took with one of the actors to teach him to speak some passages in Bayes's parts in the Rehearsal right. The vulgar notion of that play being hissed off the first night, is a mistake. Spence's Anecdotes, ed. Mal. p. 102. Bayes, when he is to write, is blooded and purget. This, as Lamotte relates himself to have heard, was the real custom of Dryden. Reh. act ii. sc. 1. Bayes, Why I'll tell you what I do. If I am to write familiar things, as Sonnets to Armida, and the like. I use steiced prunes only: but when I have a grand design in hand, I ever take physic and let blood; for when you would have pure swiftness of thought, and fiery dlights of finev, you must have a cure of the pensive part. In fine, you must purge the belly-Bayes is right, these things are of im portance; one poet, whom I knew, never could write but in leather breeches; another amiable and well known bard, the author of the Sabbath, always when he sat down to compose, put on his spurs. These are idiosyncrasies, belonging to the sons of Apollo.

dents are so perplexed and obscure, that it would have required much more action to detail them intelligibly; even the language has an abridged appearance, and favours the idea that the tragic intrigue was to have been extended into an heroic play, instead of occupying a spare corner in a comedy. But to make amends, the comic scenes are executed with spirit, and in a

The authors whose works were ridiculed were Sir William Barclay, Davenant, Sir William Killi grew, Sir R. Stapleton, James and Henry Howard, T. Porter, and Mrs. A. Behn.

See Scott's Life of Dryden, p. 143; and vol. iv p. 233, this play was first acted in 1673, in an old theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields, occupied by the king's company, after that in Drury Lane had been burnt, and during its rebuilding.

Is the ingenious editor of the Epistolary Curio. sities of the Herbert Family (1818) aware that she has made a slight mistake in giving the character of Zimri to Mulgrave, Duke of Buckinghamshire instead of Villiers, Duke of Buckingham? vol. ii. p

203.

style resembling those in the Maiden Queen.* They contain much witty and fashionable raillery, and the character of Melantha,† is pronounced by Cibber to exhibit the most complete system of female foppery that could possibly be crowded into the tortured form of a fine lady. It was admirably acted by Mrs. Montfort, afterwards Mrs. Verbruggen.

Our author was not so successful in the other piece, 'Love in a Nunnery,' which, by his own confession, was condemned. Ravenscroft, in his prologue to the Careless Lovers, alludes to the unfortunate fate of this play,

Ah! how severe your malice was that day, To damn at once the poet and the play. Scott considers that the causes of this failure are not readily to be assigned, and that it is needless to investigate the dislike of an audience who could give no reason for their capricious condemnation. Perhaps the absurd scene in which the prince pretends a fit of the colic had some share in the fate of the piece. To this I should add, that though in the two first acts there is much smart reparice, sparkling wit, and ingenious dialogue, yet there is no variety of incident, change of situation, or progress of action.

The love of a father and a son for the same ob'ect, must also produce an unpleasing effect upon the mind.

In the following year, (1673) he produced the

Cibber combined the comic scenes of these two plays into a Comedy called The Comical Lovers.' 1 See Cibber's Apology, p. 99: from a copy of verses in the Gent, Mag, vol. xv. p. 99, the excellence of the various performers may be learnt, by whom the piece was presented.

"What from her lips fantastic Montfort caught, And almost mov'd the thing the poet thought.

Or thou, or beauteous Woffington display
What Dryden's self with pleasure might survey,
E'en he before whose visionary eyes
Melantha rob'd in eve varying dyes,
Gay fancy's work appears, actor renown'd.
Like Roscius with theatric laurels crown'd,
Cibber will smile applause, and think again
Of Harte and Mohun, and all the female train,
Coxe. Marshall, Dryden's Reeve, Bet Slade, and
Charles's reign.'

1 This was justly ridiculed in the revised edition of the Rehearsal, where Bayes says,-I remember in a play of mine I set off a seene, i'gad, beyond expectation, only with a petticoat and the bellyache.' Smith. Aye, but Mr. Bayes, how could you contrive the belly-ache,' &c.

Dryden attacked a miserable scribbling plagiarist, called Edward Ravenscroft, in the prologue to this play, as he has less directly done in that of the Marriage-a la Mole. Hence the exquisite pleasure which Ravenscroft received at its failure, as appears in the prologue to his 'Careless Lovers. Of this gentleman's taste, Scott says, it may be held a satisfactory instance, that he deemed the tragedy of Titus Andronicus too mild and tame, and added some more inurders, rapes, and parricides, to make fit for representation he says,

tragedy of Ambcyna, which was planned and written in a month. It is in prose and blank verse, and was composed, the author says, to inflame the nation against the Dutch, with whom we were then at war. Even the most impartial and generous of critics has pronounced this play beneath criticism, and the very worst that our poet ever wrote.

In his Essay on Dramatic Poesy,* and in his epilogue to the Conquest of Granada, Dryden had pointed out the faults of the elder dramatists with less gentleness and reverence than was esteemed due to their great and established reputation. He also claimed the superiority of the plays of his own age, and of the heroic drama over those of the times of Elizabeth and James.

He censures the antiquated language, the defective plots, the irregular action of Shakspeare and Fletcher; and points his strongest arguments against the inelegant language and the low characters of Jonson. These he disad

vantageously contrasts with the productions of a theatre revived under the auspices of a gallant monarch and a fashionable court, where the solidity of English sense is united to the sportive raillery, the lightness, the ease, and the gayety of the French Drama. Scott thinks that

Like other poets, he'll not proudly scorn
To own, but that he winnow'd Shakspeare's corn;
So far was he from robbing him of's treasure,
That he did add his own, to make full measure.

This bold epilogue gave much offence, on account of the censure which it threw on the fathers of the stage. Rochester, among others, severely assailed it. Scott has observed how much the character and style of Shakspeare's and Dryden's dramas were influenced by the manners of the respective ages in which they lived, and the different audiences to whom they were addressed. The poor small theatres in which Shakspeare's and Jonson's plays were represented were filled with spectators, who though of the middle rank were proba bly worse educated than our more vulgar; but they came prepared with a tribute of tears, and laughter to bursts of passion or effusions of wit, though incapable of estimating the beauties derived from the gradual development of a story, well maintained characters, well arranged incidents, and the minute beauties of language. Dryden, on the other hand, wrote what was to pass before the judgment of a monarch and his courtiers, professed judges of dramatic criticism, and a formidable band of town critics, art therefore was not only a requisite qualification, but the principal attribute of the dramatic poet. An exhibition of nature, in the strength of her wildest energies, as in Lear and Othello; deep emotion, or sweet and simple pathos, would have found no correspondent feeling in the bosoms of the selfish, the witty, the affected, and the critical audience, who preferred the ingenious, romantic, and polished. Scott questions whether the age of Charles II. would have borne the introduction of Othello and Falstaff. The editor of Corneille boasts that the French poet,with all the genius of Shakspeare, had a more refined and gentlemanly feeling-Ce qu'un Seigneur est à l'égard d'un homme de peuple.

Scott's Life of Dryden, p. 152