by Congreve to his dramatic works, accepted thanks for his intention of erecting him a monument, he lay long without distinction, till the Duke of Buckinghamshire gave him a tablet, inscribed only with the name of DRYDEN.* He married the Lady Elizabeth Howard, daughter to the Earl of Berkshire, with circumstances, according to the satire imputed to Lord Somers, not very honourable to either party. By her he had three sons, Charles, John, and Henry. Charles was usher of the palace to Pope Clement XI.; and visiting England in 1704, was drowned in an attempt to swim across the Thames at Windsor. John was author of a comedy called The Husband his own Cuckold. He is said to have died at Rome. 'Henry entered into some religious order. It is some proof of Dryden's sincerity in his second religion, that he taught it to his sons. A man conscious of hypocritical profession in himself is not likely to convert others; and as his sons were qualified in 1693 to appear among the translators of Juvenal, they must have been taught some religion before their father's change. Of the person of Dryden I know not any account; of his mind, the portrait which has been left by Congreve, who knew him with great familiarity, is such as adds our love of his manners to our admiration of his genius. "Mr. Dryden," says Congreve, "had personal qualities to challenge love and esteem from all who were truly acquainted with him. He was of a nature exceedingly humane and compassionate, ready to forgive injuries, and capable of a sincere reconciliation with those who had offended him. His friendship, where he professed it, went beyond his professions. He was of a very easy, of very pleasing access; but somewhat slow, and as it were diffident, in his advances to others: he had that in nature which abhorred intrusion into any society whatever. He was therefore less known, and consequently his character became more liable to misapprehensions and misrepresentations. He was very modest, and very easily to be discountenanced in his approaches to his equals or superiors. As his reading had been very extensive, so was he very happy in a memory tenacious of every thing that he had read. He was not more possessed of knowledge than he was, communicative of it; but then his communication was by no means pedantic, or imposed upon the conversation, but just such, and went so far as, by the natural turn of the conversation in which he was engaged, it was necessarily promoted or required. He was extremely ready and gentle in his correction of the errors of any writer who thought fit to consult him ; and full as ready and patient to admit the reprehensions of others in respect of his own oversights or mistakes." To this account of Congreve nothing can be objected but the fondness of friendship; and to have excited that fondness in such a mind is no small degree of praise. The disposition of Dryden, however, is shown in this character rather as it exhibited itself in cursory conversation, than as it operated on the more important parts of life. His placability and his friendship, indeed, were solid virtues; but courtesy and good-humour are often found with little real worth. Since Congreve, who knew him well, has told us no more, the rest must be "J. Dryden, natus Aug. 9, 1631; mortuus Maii 1, 1701. Johannes Sheffield, Dux Buckinghamiensis, fecit." collected as it can from other testimonies, and particularly from those notices which Dryden has very liberally given us of himself. The modesty which made him so slow to advance, and so easy to be repulsed, was certainly no suspicion of deficient merit, or unconsciousness of his own value: he appears to have known in its whole extent the dignity of his own character, and to have set a very high value on his own powers and performances. He probably did not offer his conversation, because he expected it to be solicited; and he retired from a cold reception not submissive but indignant, with such deference of his own greatness as made him unwilling to expose it to neglect or violation. His modesty was by no means inconsistent with ostentatiousness; he is diligent enough to remind the world of his merit, and expresses with very little scruple his high opinion of his own powers: but his self-commendations are read without scorn or indignation; we allow his claims, and love his frankness. Tradition, however, has not allowed that his confidence in himself exempted him from jealousy of others. He is accused of envy and insidiousness; and is particularly charged with inciting Creech to translate Horace, that he might lose the reputation which Lucretius had given him. Of this charge we immediately discover that it is merely conjectural the purpose was such as no man would confess; and a crime that admits no proof, why should we believe? He has been described as magisterially presiding over the younger writers, and assuming the distribution of poetical fame: but he who excels has a right to teach; and he whose judgment is incontestable may without usurpation examine and decide. Congreve represents him as ready to advise and instruct; but there is reason to believe that his communication was rather useful than entertaining. He declares of himself that he was saturnine, and not one of those whose sprightly sayings diverted company; and one of his censurers made him say, "Nor wine nor love could ever see me gay; To writing bred, I knew not what to say.' There are men whose powers operate only at leisure and in retirement, and whose intellectual vigour deserts them in conversation; whom merriment confuses, and objection disconcerts; whose bashfulness restrains their exertion, and suffers them not to speak till the time of speaking is past; or whose attention to their own character makes them unwilling to utter at hazard what has not been considered, and cannot be recalled. Of Dryden's sluggishness in conversation it is vain to search or to guess the cause. He certainly wanted neither sentiments nor language; his intellectual treasures were great, though they were locked up from his own use. "His thoughts," when he wrote, "flowed in upon him so fast, that his only care was which to choose and which to reject." Such rapidity of composition naturally promises a flow of talk; yet we must be content to believe what an enemy says of him, when he likewise says it of himself. But whatever was his character as a companion, it appears that he lived in familiarity with the highest persons of his time. It is related by Carte of the Duke of Ormond, that he used often to pass a night with Dryden, and those with whom Dryden consorted: who they were, Carte has not told; but certainly the convivial table at which Ormond sat was not surrounded with a plebeian society. He was, indeed, reproached with boasting of his familiarity with the great: and Horace will support him in the opinion, that to please superiors is not the lowest kind of merit. The merit of pleasing must, however, be estimated by the means. Favour is not always gained by good actions or laudable qualities. Caresses and preferments are often bestowed on the auxiliaries of vice, the procurers of pleasure, or the flatterers of vanity. Dryden has never been charged with any personal agency unworthy of a good character: he abetted vice and vanity only with his pen. One of his enemies has accused him of lewdness in his conversation: but if accusation without proof be credited, who shall be innocent? His works afford too many examples of dissolute licentiousness and abject adulation: but they were probably, like his merriment, artificial and constrained; the effects of study and meditation, and his trade rather than his pleasure. Of the mind that can trade in corruption, and can deliberately pollute itself with ideal wickedness for the sake of spreading the contagion in society, I wish not to conceal or excuse the depravity. Such degradation of the dignity of genius, such abuse of superlative abilities, cannot be contemplated but with grief and indignation. What consolation can be had, Dryden has afforded, by living to repent, and to testify his repentance. Of dramatic immorality he did not want examples among his predecessors, or companions among his contemporaries; but in the meanness and servility of hyperbolical adulation, I know not whether, since the days in which the Roman emperors were deified, he has been ever equalled, except by Aphra Behn in an address to Eleanor Gwyn. When once he has undertaken the task of praise, he no longer retains shame in himself nor supposes it in his patron. As many odoriferous bodies are observed to diffuse perfumes from year to year, without sensible diminution of bulk or weight, he appears never to have impoverished his mint of flattery by his expenses, however lavish. He had all the forms of excellence, intellectual and moral, combined in his mind with endless variation; and when he had scattered on the hero of the day the golden shower of wit and virtue, he had ready for him whom he wished to court on the morrow new wit and virtue with another stamp. Of this kind of meanness he never seems to decline the practice or lament the necessity: he considers the great as entitled to encomiastic homage; and brings praise rather as a tribute than a gift, more delighted with the fertility of his invention than mortified by the prostitution of his judgment. It is, indeed, not certain that on these occasions his judgment much rebelled against his interest. There are minds which easily sink into submission; that look on grandeur with undistinguishing reverence, and discover no defect where there is elevation of rank and affluence of riches. With his praises of others and of himself is always intermingled a strain of discontent and lamentation, a sullen growl of resentment, or a querulous murmur of distress. His works are under-valued, his merit is unrewarded, and "he has few thanks to pay his stars that he was born among Englishmen." To his critics he is sometimes contemptuous, sometimes resentful, and sometimes submissive. The writer who thinks his works formed for duration, mistakes his interest when he mentions his enemies. He degrades his own dignity by showing that he was affected by their censures; and gives lasting importance to names" which, left to themselves, would vanish from remembrance. From this principle Dryden did not often depart: his complaints are for the greater part general; he seldom pollutes his pages 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 critics, no poetical attacks or altercations are to be included; they are like other poems,-effusions of genius, produced as much to obtain praise as to obviate censure. These Dryden practised, and in these he excelled. Of Collier, Blackmore, and Milbourne, he has made mention in the preface of 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 playhouse. 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 expressions of mine that can be truly accused of obscenity, immorality, or profaneness, and retract them. If he be my enemy, let him triumph; if he be my friend, he will be glad of my repentance." 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. Blackmore he represents as made his enemy by the poem of Absalom and Achitophel, which, "he thinks a little hard upon his fanatic patrons ;" 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." 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 re-coined before it is current, and appoints masters of assay, who shall reject all that is light or debased. ""Tis true, that when the coarse and worthless dross Is purg'd away, there will be mighty loss: Ev'n Congreve, Southern, manly Wycherley, Into the melting-pot when Dryden comes, What horrid stench will rise, what noisome fumes! |
