The Age of Dryden

‘Oaths were not purposed, more than law,To keep the good and just in awe,But to confine the bad and sinful,Like moral cattle in a pinfold.’‘The Rabbins write, when any JewDid make to God or man a vowWhich afterward he found untowardAnd stubborn to be kept, or too hard;Any three other Jews of the nationMight free him from his obligation.And have not two saints power to useA greater privilege than three Jews?’‘Does not in Chancery every man swearWhat makes best for him in his answer?’‘He that imposes an oath makes it,Not he that for convenience takes it;Then how can any man be saidTo break an oath he never made?’‘That sinners may supply the placeOf suff’ring saints is a plain case.Justice gives sentence many timesOn one man for another’s crimes.Our brethren of New England useChoice malefactors to excuse,And hang the guiltless in their stead,Of whom the churches have less need:As lately ’t happened in a town,There liv’d a cobler, and but one,That out of doctrine could cut use,And mend men’s lives as well as shoes.This precious brother having slain,In times of peace, an Indian,(Not out of malice, but mere zeal,Because he was an infidel)The mighty TottipottymoySent to our elders an envoy;Complaining sorely of the breachOf league, held forth by brother Patch,Against the articles in forceBetween both churches, his and ours,For which he crav’d the saints to renderInto his hands, or hang th’ offender:But they maturely having weigh’dThey had no more but him o’ th’ trade,(A man that serv’d them in a doubleCapacity, to teach and cobble,)Resolv’d to spare him; yet to doThe Indian Hoghgan Moghgan tooImpartial justice, in his stead didHang an old weaver that was bed-rid.’

Hudibras, however, is but half convinced, or rather, doubts whether conviction can be brought to the minds of others. He bethinks himself of a middle course, and suggests that the whipping shall be inflicted by proxy, and that Ralpho shall be the proxy. To this Ralpho demurs, and an impending rupture is only averted by a new adventure, which seems invented for the purpose. When it is over Hudibras has profited by the interval of reflection to resolve to consult the wizard Sidrophel, who is apparently intended for Lilly. The scene affords Butler an opportunity of venting the dislike to physical science which he shared with so many other literary men, and to which he gave more definite expression in The Elephant in the Moon. The interview terminates in a scuffle, in which Hudibras overthrows Sidrophel, and, thinking he has killed him, makes off, leaving Ralpho, as he deems, to bear the brunt. The trusty squire, however, has already gone to the lady with the tale of Hudibras’s perjury, which insures the knight a warm reception. Here the action of the story ends, the remainder of the poem being chiefly occupied by ‘heroical epistles’ between the parties, which do not help it on, and by a digression on the downfall of the Rump, chiefly remarkable for allusions to politics of later date.

One of the most noticeable phenomena in Butler is, that after all this Cavalier poet is little of a Cavalier, and this assailant of Puritanism little of a Churchman. His loyalty is but hatred of anarchy, and his religion but hatred of cant. The genuineness of both these feelings is attested by the detached thoughts found among his papers; otherwise it might fairly have been doubted whether his motive for espousing the royalist cause had been any other than the infinitely greater scope which Puritanism and Republicanism offered to the shafts of a satirist. The follies of the Cavalier party proved that things may be absurd without being ridiculous; those of their opponents demonstrated that ridicule may justly attach to things not intrinsically absurd. It is clear, notwithstanding, from Butler’s prose remains, that he was constitutionally hostile to liberty in politics and to the inward light in religion, and that he obeyed his own sincere conviction in attacking them. But it is equally clear that his preference for monarchy was solely utilitarian, and that his preferences in religion were determined simply by taste. The ground of his acquiescence in the Church of England is thus frankly stated by himself in one of his detached thoughts:

‘Men ought to do in religion as they do in war. When a man of honour is overpowered, and must of necessity surrender himself up a prisoner, such are always wont to endeavour to do it to some person of command and quality, and not to a mere scoundrel. So, since all men are obliged to be of some church, it is more honourable, if there were nothing else in it, to be of that which has some reputation, than such a one as is contemptible, and justly despised by all the best of men.’

This is not the language of a very fervent churchman; and Butler’s royalism is like his religion, a pis aller. Nowhere does his aversion for Puritanism kindle into enthusiasm for its contrary, any more than his humour ever rises into poetry. In his verse he is a satirist; in his prose a sceptic; and his satire and his scepticism are alike rooted in a low opinion of human nature, and a disbelief that things can ever be much better than they are. He is a strong spirit, but of the earth, earthy. At the same time he is not one of the satirists who make their readers cynics; on the contrary, his hearty geniality puts the reader into good humour with mankind, and suggests that if there is not much to admire there is also but little to condemn. It is unnecessary to dilate on his peculiar merits, which are of universal notoriety. Few have enriched the language with so many familiar quotations; few have so much fancy along with a total absence of sentiment; few have been so fertile in odd rhymes and quaint illustrations and comparisons; few have so thoroughly combined the characters of wit and humorist.

In 1759 a quantity of MS. compositions of Butler’s, which had remained unpublished during his life, and had come into the possession of his friend Longueville, were edited by R. Thyer, librarian of the Chetham Library at Manchester. The most important, his characters in the manner of Theophrastus, and detached thoughts in prose, will be noticed along with the prose essayists. Of the metrical compositions, the most elaborate is The Elephant in the Moon, a satire on the appetite for marvels displayed by some of the members of the then infant Royal Society, which exists in two recensions, one in Hudibrastic, the other in heroic verse. The other pieces are also for the most part satirical, with a strong affinity to Hudibras, except where they parody the style of some poet of the day. They are always clever, sometimes very humorous and pointed, and, with Marvell’s satires, form a transition from the unpolished quaintness of Donne to the weight and splendour of Dryden. Butler in one instance appears a downright plagiarist; in another he would seem, were the thing possible, to have been copied by a later and more illustrious writer. In his satire against rhyme, he writes:

‘When I would praise an author, the untowardDamned sense says Virgil, but the rhyme says Howard.’

This is undoubtedly Boileau’s ‘La raison dit Virgile, et la rime Quinault.’ In Cat and Puss, on the other hand, an amusing parody of the rhyming tragedy of his day, he observes of the feline Lothario:

‘At once his passion was both false and true,And the more false, the more in earnest grew.’

Can Tennyson, who borrowed and improved so much, have been to Butler for

‘His honour rooted in dishonour stood,And faith unfaithful kept him falsely true’?

CHAPTER III.

LYRIC POETRY

It is entirely in keeping with the solid and terrestrial character of Restoration literature in general, that no description of poetry should manifest so grievous a lapse from the standard of the preceding age as the lyrical. The decline of the drama has attracted more attention, partly from the violent contrast of two schools which had hardly one principle or one method in common, partly because our own age had but imperfectly realized the exceeding wealth in song of the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods, until Mr. Arthur Bullen showed what unsuspected treasures of poetry were hidden in old music books. Whatever else an Elizabethan or Jacobean lyric may be, it is almost certain to be melodious. The average Restoration lyric is correct enough in scansion, but the melody is conventional, poor and thin. Here and there, and especially in Dryden, we are surprised by a fine exception; but as a rule the Restoration song is deficient alike in the simple spontaneity which inspired such pieces as Come live with me and be my love, and in the more intricate harmonies of its predecessors. It was as though a blight had suddenly fallen upon the nation, and men’s ears had become incapable of distinguishing between sweetness and smoothness. So, indeed, they had as respected the music of verse; but how little technical music, whether vocal or instrumental, was neglected, even in private circles, we may learn from Pepys’s Diary, and it is a remarkable proof how little this music and the music of poetry have to do with each other, that this age of degeneracy in the one produced the greatest of all English masters, Purcell, in the other; while the still more hopelessly unmelodious age of the first Georges was the age of Handel. Poetry makes melody, not melody poetry; and the only explanation is, that the age preceding that of the Restoration was poetical, and the Restoration age was prosaic. It could not well have been otherwise if, as all critics agree, the special literary mission of the Restoration period was to prune the luxuriance of English prose, and by introducing conciseness, perspicuity, and logical order, to render it a fit instrument for narrative, reasoning, and the despatch of business.

Such lyric as the age possessed is almost entirely comprehended in Dryden; for Marvell, of whom we must nevertheless speak, belongs in spirit to a former age. The songs in Dryden’s plays, to be mentioned shortly, prove that he was by no means destitute of spontaneous lyrical feeling; but he no doubt succeeded best when, having first penetrated himself with a theme sufficiently stirring to generate the enthusiastic mood which finds its natural expression in song, he sat down to frame a fitting accompaniment by the aid of all the resources of metrical art. The principal examples of this lyrical magnificence which he has given us are the elegy on Anne Killigrew and the two odes on St. Cecilia’s Day. Of the first of these two latter, Johnson says that ‘it is lost in the splendour of the second,’ and such is the fact; but had Dryden produced no other lyric, he would still have ranked as a fine lyrical poet. Of the second ode, better known as Alexander’s Feast, it is needless to say anything, for all readers of poetry have it by heart, and all recognize its claim to rank among the greatest odes in the language – the greatest, perhaps, until Wordsworth and Shelley wrote, and little, if at all, behind even them. Johnson, indeed, prefers the memorial ode on Anne Killigrew, and if all the stanzas equalled the first he would be right; but this is impossible; as he himself remarks, ‘An imperial crown cannot be one continued diamond.’ The inevitable falling off, nevertheless, would have been less apparent if Dryden had shown more judgment in the selection of his topics, or at least more tact in handling them. The morals of the age were, indeed, bad enough, as he well knew who had helped to make them so; but such frank treatment of a disagreeable theme jars exceedingly with an ode devoted to the celebration of chastity and virtue. Notwithstanding this flaw, the entire ode deserves Mr. Saintsbury’s eulogy, ‘As a piece of concerted music in verse it has not a superior.’ The hyperbolical praise of Anne Killigrew’s now forgotten poems is explained, and in some measure excused, by the fact that it was written to be prefixed to them. The first stanza, appropriate to thousands beside its ostensible subject, appeals to the general human heart, and indicates the high-water mark of Restoration poetry:

‘Thou youngest virgin-daughter of the skies,Made in the last promotion of the blest,Whose palms, new-plucked from Paradise,In spreading branches more sublimely rise,Rich with immortal green above the rest:Whether, adopted to some neighbouring star,Thou roll’st above us in thy wandering race,Or in procession fixed and regularMov’st with the heavens’ majestic pace;Or, called to more superior bliss,Thou tread’st with seraphims the vast abyss:Whatever happy region is thy place,Cease thy celestial song a little space;Thou wilt have time enough for hymns divine,Since Heaven’s eternal year is thine.Hear then a mortal Muse thy praise rehearseIn no ignoble verse;But such as thy own voice did practise here,When thy first fruits of Poesy were given,To make thyself a welcome inmate thereWhile yet a young probationerAnd candidate of heaven.’

The poet who so excelled in majestic artificial harmonies was also the one poet of his day who could occasionally sing as the bird sings. Dryden has never received sufficient praise for his songs, inasmuch as these are mostly hidden away in his dramas, and not always adapted for quotation. The following, with a manifest political meaning, is a good example of his simple ease and melody:

‘A choir of bright beauties in spring did appearTo choose a May-lady to govern the year;All the nymphs were in white, and the shepherds in green;The garland was given, and Phyllis was queen:But Phyllis refused it, and sighing did say,I’ll not wear a garland while Pan is away.‘While Pan and fair Syrinx are fled from our shore,The Graces are vanished, and Love is no more:The soft God of Pleasure that warmed our desires,Has broken his bow and extinguished his fires;

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He was an ungrateful son of his alma mater, having pointedly declared his preference for Oxford. Perhaps this disloyalty may be connected with the appearance at Cambridge of a pamphlet against him, in the form of a mock defence against “the censure of the Rota,” in the same year (1673).

Malone thinks that it was the translation of The History of the League, but Dryden can have hardly deemed country retirement necessary for a work of this nature.

It is perhaps worth remarking that, although not yet a Roman Catholic, Dryden in this name employs the orthography, not of the authorized English version, but of the Vulgate.

In his dedication to the second book of De Raptu Proserpinae, Claudian says:

‘Tu mea plectra moves,Antraque Musarum longo torpentia somnoExcutis et placito ducis ab ore sonos.’

Mr. Churton Collins, by a clerical error, prints Waller.

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