KS
n
by

1837
SCIENTIA
ARTES
LIBRARY
VERITAS
OF THE
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN }
PLURIBUS UNUM
SQUAERIS PENINSULAM AMOENAME
CIRCUMSPICE
THIS BOOK
FORMS PART OF THE
ORIGINAL LIBRARY
OF THE
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
BOUGHT IN EUROPE
1838 TO 1839
BY
ASA GRAY
THE
CRITICAL AND MISCELLANEOUS
PROSE WORKS
OF
JOHN DRYDEN,
NOW FIRST COLLECTED:
WITH NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS;
AN ACCOUNT OF THE
LIFE AND WRITINGS OF THE AUTHOR,
GROUNDED ON
ORIGINAL AND AUTHENTICK DOCUMENTS;
AND
A COLLECTION OF HIS LETTERS,
THE GREATER PART OF WHICH HAS NEVER BEFORE
BEEN PUBLISHED.
BY EDMOND MALONE, ESQ.
VOL.I.. PART II.
LONDON:
PRINTED BY H.BALDWIN AND SON, NEW BRIDGE-ST.,
FOR T.CADELL, JUN. AND W. DAVIES, IN THE STRAND
M. DCCC.
20-119

THE CONTENTS.
VOL. I. PART I.
ADVERTISEMENT
LIFE OF DRYDEN
APPENDIX to the Life
Numb. I. Dryden's Patent
Page
…. i—xx
1
551
553
II. Contract concerning the FABLES,&c. 560
III. Russel's Bill of Charges for his
Funeral.
IV. Epitaph in Tichmarsh Church, on
Dryden and his Ancestors.
V. List of Persons, in whose Cabinets
Letters written by Dryden pro-
562
564
bably may be found
VOL. I. PART II.
LETTERS from Dryden to several Persons.
LETTER
I. To Madam Honor Dryden
II. To John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester
III. To the Rev. Dr. Busby
IV. To the same
V. To Laurence Hyde, Earl of Rochester.
VOL. I. PART II.
Aa
567
Page
3
6
13
15
19
:=
CONTENTS.
LETTER
VI. To Jacob Tonson
VII. From Jacob Tonson to Dryden
VIII. To Jacob Tonson..
IX. To John Dennis
X. To Jacob Tonson
XI. To the same
XII. To the same
Page
21
25
28
30
38
40
41
43
45
46
XIII. To the same
XIV. To the same
XV. To the sante
XVI. To the same
XVII. To the same
•
48
49
XVIII. To the same
50
XIX. To the same
51
XX. To the same
52
XXI. To the Author's sons at Rome
54
XXII. To Jacob Tonson
60
XXIII. To the same.
61
XXIV. To the same
62
XXV. To Mrs. Steward
XXVI. To Elmes Steward, Esq.
XXVII. To Mrs. Steward.
65
67
69
XXVIII. To the same
71
XXIX. To the same
73
XXX. To the same
76
XXXI. To the same
78
XXXII. To the same
83
XXXIII. To Samuel Pepys, Esq.
84
XXXIV. To Mrs. Steward .
86
XXXV. To the same
87
CONTENTS.
ill
LETTER
XXXVI. To the Right Honourable Charles
Montague
XXXVII. To Mrs. Steward.
XXXVIII. To Mrs. Elizabeth Thomas, Jun.
XXXIX. To the same
XL. To Mrs. Steward
XLI. To the same
•
Page
8838
101
104
XLII. To Mrs. Elizabeth Thomas, Jun. 108
XLIII. To Mrs. Steward.
XLIV. To the same
XLV. To the same
109
127
129
133
ADDITIONS and EMENDATIONS
PROLEGOMENA.
Dedication of THE RIVAL LADIES 10
Roger Boyle, Earl of Orrery
3
Preface to Sir Robert Howard's Plays.. 15
Dedication of the ESSAY OF DRAMATICK
POESY to Charles, Lord Buckhurst
25
ESSAY OF DRAMATICK POESY
33
Defence of the ESSAY OF DRAMATICK POESY 143
187
ESSAY OF HEROICK PLAYS
207
Preface to THMOеK ASTROLOGER
Defence of the Epilogue to the Second Part of
THE CONQUEST OF GRANADA
The Grounds of Criticism in Tragedy
Heads of an Answer to Rymer's Treatise on
the Tragedies of the last Age
Preface to THE WILD GALLANT
225
255
299
315
iv
CONTENTS.
f
Dedication of THE INDIAN EMPEROR to Anné
Scott, Duchess of Monmouth.
Preface to SECRET LOVE, OR THE MAIDEN
QUEEN
•
Preface to THE TEMPEST
Page
317
325
331
Dedication of THE MOCK ASTROLOGER to
William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle ... 335
Dedication of TYRANNICK LOVE, OR THE
ROYAL MARTYR, to James, Duke of Mon-
mouth
Preface to the same Play
Dedication of the First Part of THE CON-
QUEST OF GRANADA to James, Duke of
York
Dedication of MARRIAGE A-LA-MODE to
John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester
343
347
355
363
Dedication of THE ASSIGNATION to Sir Charles
Sidley, Baronet
371
Dedication of AMBOYNA to Thomas, Lord
Clifford of Chudleigh
379
Dedication of THE STATE OF INNOCENCE to
Mary of Este, Duchess of York.....
Preface to THE STATE OF INNOCENCE
Dedication of AURENG-ZEBE to John Sheffield,
Earl of Mulgrave
.. 385
395
415
CONTENTS.
VOL. II.
Dedication of ALL FOR LOVE to Thomas Os-
borne, Earl of Danby
Preface to ALL FOR LOVE
Dedication of LIMBERHAM to John, Lord
Vaughan
Preface to OEDIPUS
•
Dedication of TROILUS AND CRESSIDA to
Robert Spencer, Earl of Sunderland . .
Dedication of THE SPANISH FRIAR to John
Holles, Lord Houghton.
Dedication of THE DUKE OF GUISE to Lau.
rence Hyde, Earl of Rochester
Vindication of THE DUKE OF GUISE.
Preface to ALBION AND ALBANIUS
Dedication of DoN SEBASTIAN to Philp Sydney,
Earl of Leicester ..
Preface to DON SEBASTIAN
Dedication of AMPHITRYON 10 Sir William
Leveson Gower, Baronet
Dedication of KING ARTHUR to George Saville,
Marquis of Halifax
Dedication of CLEOMENES to Laurence Hyde,
Earl of Rochester
Preface to CLEOMENES
Dedication of LOVE TRIUMPHANT to James
Cecil, Earl of Salisbury
Page
1
13
31
39
43
53
63
69
151
171
183
197
203
217
225
235
Preface to THE HUSBAND HIS OWN CUCKOLD 243
vi
CONTENTS.
Dedication of ANNUS MIRABILIS to the Lord
Mayor and Aldermen of London.
Account of ANNUS MIRABILIS, addressed to
Sir Robert Howard
)
Preface to the Remarks on THE EMPRESS OF
MOROCCO
•
Extract from the Remarks .
Preface to ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL
Dedication of THE MEDAL to the Whigs
Preface to RELIGIO LAICI
Page
247
253
. 271
280
291
299
309
331
351
427
Dedication of PLUTARCH'S LIVES to James
Butler, the first Duke of Ormond.
The Life of PLUTARCH.
Dedication of the HISTORY OF THE LEAGUE
to King Charles II. ...
Postscript to THE HISTORY OF THE LEAGUE 437
Defence of Anne Hyde, Duchess of York.... 475
Preface to THE HIND AND THE PANTHER.. 533
Dedication of the Life of St. Francis Xavier
543
VOL. III.
Preface to the Translation of Ovid's Epistles
Preface to the SECOND MISCELLANY
Preface to Walsh's Dialogue concerning Women
Dedication of ELEONORA to James Bertie,
Earl of Abingdon
Character of St. Evremont
3
25
53
57
65
CONTENTS.
vii
Discourse on the ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF
SATIRE, addressed to Charles Sackville,
Earl of Dorset
Character of POLYBIUS
Dedication of the THIRD MISCELLANY to
Francis Radcliffe, Lord Radcliffe.
A PARALLEL OF POETRY AND PAINTING...
The Life of LUCIAN...
Dedication of Virgil's PASTORALS to Hugh,
Lord Clifford
Dedication of the GEORGICKS of Virgil to
Philip Stanhope, the second Earl of Chester-
field.
Page
71
227
269
291
353
391
.* 405
Discourse on EPICK POETRY; addressed to
John Sheffield, Marquis of Normanby
Postscript to the Translation of Virgil
Dedication of FABLES, ANCIENT AND MO-
DERN, to James Butler, the second Duke of
Ormond.
Preface to the FABLES
423
557
575
587
LETTERS
WRITTEN
BY JOHN DRYDEN
TO
SEVERAL PERSONS.
a
VOL. I. PART II.
b
t
When the Letters of Pope were originally printed, they
were divided into classes, under the names of his various
correspondents; those to Swift being all placed together, and
so of Mr. Cromwell, Wycherley, Addison, Steele, and the
rest: and the same method has been adopted, I think, inju-
diciously, in other similar publications. If the object were, to
do honour to each of those persons, by shewing the number
of letters which they received from Pope, or addressed to
him, this arrangement was unquestionably the best that could
have been observed. But to illustrate the history of the
Author himself, which is more interesting to the Reader
than that of any of his correspondents, all his letters, to
whomsoever written, in my opinion, ought to be arranged in
strict chronological order. The same topicks must necessa-
rily often recur in his correspondence with his various
friends; and his letters, thus arranged, will, by juxta-
position, throw mutual light on each other, and become a
history of his life and times; exhibiting, from week to week,
and from year to year, a view, not only of his occupations,
and studies, and printed works, but also of publick affairs
and private occurrences, during the period in which he lived.
The propriety and use of such an arrangement cannot be
more clearly shewn, than by a reference to Mr. Boswell's
most instructive and entertaining Life of Dr. Johnson;
which derives great advantage from the author's having
adopted this method.
On these grounds, I have arranged the following Letters
in the order of time in which they were written, or are sup-
posed to have been written, without regarding the persons to
whom they are addressed.
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
LETTER I.
TO THE FAIRE HANDS OF MADAME HONOR DRYDEN
THESE CRAVE ADMITTANCE.'
MADAME,
Camb. May. 23, 16[55].
If you have received the lines I sent
by the reverend Levite, I doubt not but they
have exceedingly wrought upon you; for beeing
so longe in a clergy-man's pocket, assuredly they
The lady to whom this letter is addressed, was our
author's first cousin ; one of the daughters of his uncle, Sir
John Dryden, the second Baronet of this family. See vol. i.
part i. pp. 24, 324. She probably was born about the year
1637, and died unmarried, some time after 1707. When
Dryden became eminent, she was doubtless proud of the
compliments here paid to her, and shewed this letter to
some of her friends. Lest the date should too nearly
discover her age, the two latter figures have been almost
obliterated, but the last numeral, when viewed through a
microscope, is manifestly a 5; and that the other nume-
ral, which, as being more material, was more carefully
defaced, was not a 4, but a 5 also, may be collected, not
only from the lady's age, (for in 1645, she was probably
not more than eight years old,) but from the time of our
author's admission and residence at Cambridge.
The seal, under which runs a piece of blue ribband, is
a crest of a demi-lion on a wreath, holding in his paws an
armillary sphere at the end of a stand,
4
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
have acquired more sanctity than theire authour
meant them. Alasse, Madame! for ought I
know, they may become a sermon ere they could
arrive at you; and believe it, haveing you for the
text, it could scarcely proove bad, if it light upon
one that could handle it indifferently. But I am
so miserable a preacher, that though I have so
sweet and copious a subject, I still fall short in my
expressions; and instead of an use of thanksgiving,
I am allways makeing one of comfort, that I may
one day againe have the happinesse to kisse your
faire hand; but that is a message I would not so
willingly do by letter, as by word of mouth.
This is a point, I must confesse, I could wil-
lingly dwell longer on; and in this case what
ever I say you may confidently take for gospell.
But I must hasten. And indeed, Madame,
(beloved I had almost sayd,) hee had need hasten
who treats of you; for to speake fully to every
part of your excellencyes, requires a longer houre
then most persons' have allotted them. But, in
a word, your selfe hath been the best expositor
upon the text of your own worth, in that admi-
rable comment you wrote upon it; I meane your
incomparable letter. By all that's good, (and you,
Madame, are a great part of my oath,) it hath put
2 The word parson (persona ecclesia,) (which, says
Blackstone," however it may be depreciated by familiar,
clownish, or indiscriminate use, is the most legal, most
beneficial, and most honourable title that a parish priest
can enjoy,") was formerly thus written. An hour, mea-
sured by an hourglass fixed at the side of the pulpit, was
the usual length of a sermon at this time.
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
5
mee so farre besides my selfe, that I have scarce
patience to write prose, and my pen is stealing
into verse every time I kisse your letter. I am
sure the poor paper smarts for my idolatry; which
by wearing it continually neere my brest, will at
last be burnt and martyrd in those flames of ado-
ration which it hath kindled in mee. But I for-
gett, Madame, what rarityes your letter came
fraught with, besides words. You are such a deity
that commands worship by provideing the sacri-
fice. You are pleasd, Madame, to force me
to write by sending me materialls, and compell me
to my greatest happinesse. Yet, though I highly
value your magnificent presente, pardon mee, if I
must tell the world they are imperfect emblems of
your beauty; for the white and red of waxe and
paper are but shaddowes of that vermillion and
snow in your lips and forehead; and the silver of
the inkehorne, if it presume to vye whitenesse with
your purer skinne, must confesse it selfe blacker
then the liquor it containes. What then do I
more then retrieve your own guifts, and present
you
with that paper, adulterated with blotts, which
you gave spotlesse?
For, since 'twas mine, the white hath lost its hiew,
To show 'twas n'ere it selfe, but whilst in you:
The virgin waxe hath blusht it selfe to red,
Since it with mee hath lost its may denhead.
You, fairest nymph, are waxe: oh! may you bee
As well in softnesse, as in purity!
ti.
3 See vol. i. part i. p. 25, n. 1.
6
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
1.
Till fate and your own happy choice reveale,
Whom you so farre shall blesse, to make your seale.
Fairest Valentine, the unfeigned wishe of your
humble votary,
LETTER II.
Jo. DRYDEN.
TO [JOHN WILMOT,] EARL OF ROCHester.
MY LORD,
Tuesday. [July, 1673.]³
I HAVE accused my selfe this month
together for not writing to you. I have called
my selfe by the names I deserved, of unmannerly
and ungratefull: I have been uneasy and taken up
the resolutions of a man who is betwixt Sin and
Repentance, convinc'd of what he ought to do,
and yet unable to do better.
unable to do better. At the last I deferred
it so long, that I almost grew hardened in the neg-
lect; and thought I had suffered so much in
your good opinion, that it was in vain to hope I
3 There is no date, except the day of the week, to this
letter, of which a copy is preserved in the Museum ; Mss.
Harl. 7003. The Dedication referred to must have been
that prefixed to Dryden's MARRIAGE A-LA-MODE, which
was entered in the Stationers' Books, March 18, 1672-3,
and probably published in the following month. Roches-
ter appears to have sent the poet a letter of thanks for his
Dedication, to which this reply was made some time.
afterwards. I have therefore affixed-July, 1673, as a
conjectural date to it. The second Dutch war was then
carrying on with great spirit.
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
7
could redeem it. So dangerous a thing it is to be
inclin'd to sloath, that I must confess once for all,
I was ready to quit all manner of obligations, and
to receive, as if it were my due, the most handsome
compliment, couch'd in the best language I have
read, and this too from my Lord of Rochester,
without shewing myself sensible of the favour.
If your Lordship could condescend so far to say
all those things to me, which I ought to have say'd
to you, it might reasonably be concluded, that
had enchanted me to believe those praises,
you
and that I owned them in my silence. 'Twas
this consideration that moved me at last to put off
my idleness. And now the shame of seeing my selfe
overpay'd so much for an ill Dedication, has made
me almost repent of my address. I find it is not
for me to contend any way with your Lordship,
who can write better on the meanest subject, then
I can on the best. I have only engaged my selfe in
a new debt, when I had hoped to cancell a part of
the old one; and should either have chosen some
other patron, whom it was in my power to have
obliged by speaking better of him then he deserv'd,
or have made your Lordship only a hearty Dedi-
cation of the respect and honour I had for you,
without giving you the occasion to conquer me, as
you have done, at my own weapon.
My only relief is, that what I have written is
publique, and I am so much my own friend as to
conceal your Lordship's letter; for that which
would have given vanity to any
other poet, has
only given me confusion.
8
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
You see, my Lord, how far you have push'd
me: I dare not own the honour you have done
me, for fear of shewing it to my own disadvantage.
You are that rerum natura of your own Lucretius;
Ipsa suis pollens opibus, nihil indiga nostri.4
You are above any incense I can give you, and
have all the happiness of an idle life, join'd with
the good-nature of an active. Your friends in
town are ready to envy the leisure you have given
your selfe in the country; though they know you
are only their steward, and that you treasure up
but so much health as you intend to spend on
them in winter. In the mean time you have
withdrawn your selfe from attendance, the curse of
courts; you may think on what you please, and
that as little as you please; for, in my opinion,
thinking it selfe is a kind of pain to a witty man:
he finds so much more in it to disquiet than to
please him. But I hope your Lordship will not
omitt the occasion of laughing at the great Duke
of B[uckingham], who is so uneasy to him selfe by
pursuing the honour of Lieutenant-General, which
flyes him, that he can enjoy nothing he possesses;
though at the same time he is so unfit to command
an army, that he is the only man in the three
nations, who does not know it: yet he still
picques himself, like his father, to find another
Isle of Rhe in Zealand; thinking this disappoint-
ment an injury to him, which is indeed a favour,
4 Lucret. lib. i. Lord Rochester has translated the
passage in which this line is found.
Dryden's Letters.
9
and will not be satisfied but with his own ruin and
with our's. "Tis a strange quality in a man, to love
idleness so well as to destroy his estate by it; and
yet at the same time to pursue so violently the
most toilsome and most unpleasant part of business.
These observations would soon run into lampoon,
if I had not forsworn that dangerous part of wit
not so much out of good-nature, but lest from the
inborn vanity of poets I should shew it to others,
and betray my selfe to a worse mischief than what I
do to my enemy. This has been lately the case
of Etherege; who translating a satyr of Boileau's,
and changing the French names for English, read
it so often, that it came to their ears who were con-
cern'd; and forced him to leave off the design,
e're it were half finish'd. Two of the verses I
remember:
5
I call a spade, a spade; Eaton, a bully ;
6
Frampton, a pimp; and brother-John, a cully.
5 The person meant was, I believe, Sir John Eaton, of
whom I know no more than that he was a writer of songs
in the time of Charles II. One of them is preserved in
Dryden's MISCELLANIES; and it is followed by another
written by Lord Rochester," In imitation of Sir John
Eaton's songs." He is perhaps the person mentioned by
Antony Hammond in some verses addressed to Walter
Moyle in 1693:
46
Eyton, whom vice becomes, of vigour full,
Foe to the godly, covetous, and dull.”
Perhaps Tregonwell Frampton, Keeper of the Royal
Stud at Newmarket; who was born in 1641, and died in
1727. Concerning Brother John I can form no conjecture.
10
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
But one of his friends imagin'd those names not
enough for the dignity of a satyr, and chang'd
them thus:
I call a spade, a spade; Dunbar," a bully;
8
9
Brounckard, a pimp; and Aubrey Vere, a cully.
7 Probably the grandson of Sir George Hume, created
Earl of Dunbar by James the first, in 1605. The title.
became extinct about the year 1689, for want of issue
male; and was attempted to be revived in this century by
the old Pretender, in the person of James Murray, elder
brother of William, the first Earl of Mansfield.
In two MS. lampoons dated 1687, formerly among the
MSS. at Bulstrode, one entitled "The Prophecy," the
other "A Catalogue of our most eminent Ninnies," the
Duchess of Monmouth is accused of being gallant with
Lord Feversham, and also with Stamford, Cornwallis, and
brawny Dunbar. In May 1688, she married Lord Corn-
wallis. The Catalogue of Ninnies was printed by Curll
in 1714, and ascribed to Charles, Earl of Dorset.-The
person in question is there called-strong Dunbar.
8 Henry Brouncker, younger brother of William,
Viscount Brouncker, first President of the Royal Society,
was of the bedchamber to the Duke of York, notorious
for having carried false orders to the master of his Royal
Highness's ship, to slacken sail, after the engagement
with the Dutch, in 1665; " which the Duke did not hear
of till some years after, when Brouncker's ill course of
life and his abominable actions had rendered him so odious,
that it was taken notice of in parliament; upon which he
was expelled the House of Commons, whereof he was a
member, as an infamous person; though his friend Co-
ventry adhered to him, and used many indirect arts to
have protected him, and afterwards procured him to have
more countenance from the King, than most men thought
he deserved; being a person throughout his whole life
DRYDEN'S LEtters.
11
Because I deal not in satyr, I have sent your
Lordship a Prologue and Epilogue' which I made
never notorious for any thing but the highest degree of
impudence, and stooping to the most infamous offices, and
playing very well at chess, which preferred him more than
the most virtuous qualities could have done."-Continua-
tion of the Life of Clarendon, p. 270. The words in
Italicks seem to be a periphrasis for the epithet here
applied to this person.
9 Aubery de Vere, the twentieth and last Earl of Ox-
ford, of that family. He was born February 7, 1627-8;
(Esc. 8. Car. p. 1. n. 3.) was a Knight of the Garter
Gentleman of the Bedchamber to Charles II.; Chief
Justice in Eyre; and Colonel of the first or royal regi-
ment of horse-guards, which to this day is denominated
from his title, the Oxford Blues. He died March 12,
1702-3, at the age of seventy-five. It is observable that
when a man has passed seventy years, his contemporaries
are very apt to magnify his age. The late General Ogle-
thorpe (who died July 1, 1785, at the age of 87,) was in the
latter part of his life usually called ten years older than he
was; and the twentieth Earl of Oxford has been always
represented as considerably above eighty when he died
but the document referred to in the beginning of this
note, which has been examined for the purpose of ascer-
taining the truth of the received account of his age, can-
not err.
This nobleman is said to have deluded a celebrated
actress by a fictitious marriage, aided by one of his domes-
ticks, who read the service, disguised in the habit of a
clergyman. According to the author of the MEMOIRS OF
GRAMMONT, the lady whom he deceived, was an actress
belonging to the Duke of York's company of comedians,
who, he says, was celebrated in the part of Roxana [in
THE RIVAL QUEENS]; but three other authors of Scan-
12
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
for our players, when they went down to Oxford.
I hear they have succeeded; and by the event
dalous Chronicles, Captain Smith, Madame Dunois, and
Edmund Curll, say, that the part in which she was distin-
guished, was Roxolana in Settle's IBRAHIM. Both these
parts were represented by Mrs. Marshall in 1677, when
THE RIVAL QUEENS and IBRAHIM were first performed;
but if the Earl of Oxford were ever guilty of such a base
deception, Mrs. Marshall could not have been the person
deluded, nor could that have been the time; for she was
an actress, not at the Duke's, but at the King's, theatre;
and in 1677, neither she nor any other woman could have
been deceived by such a ceremony in London, Lord Ox-
ford being then notoriously not a single man; having
about the year 1674 married his second wife, Diana, the
daughter of George Kirke, one of the Grooms of the Bed-
chamber to Charles II.-The person seduced probably
was Mrs. Frances Davenport, an eminent actress in the
Duke of York's company, who was celebrated for her
performance of the part of Roxolana in D'Avenant's SIEGE
OF RHODES, in 1662, and in another Roxolana in Lord
Orrery's MUSTAPHA, in 1665. She acted in Dryden's
MAIDEN QUEEN in 1668; but her name is not found in any
of the plays performed by the Duke of York's servants after
they removed to Dorset Gardens, in 1671; and Downes,
the prompter of that playhouse, mentions in his quaint
language, that she was, before that time, "by force of
love erept from the stage." The same writer says, Mrs.
Betterton succeeded her in the part of Roxolana. Mrs.
Marshall, on the other hand, continued to act at the
King's theatre for several years after this period.
Mrs. Davenport having probably been taken off the
stage by Lord Oxford, in 1669 or 1670, three or four
years before this letter was written, (1673,) and being
then in his possession, this adventure, and his attachment
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
13
Your Lordship will judge how easy 'tis to pass any
thing upon an University, and how gross flattery
the learned will endure. If your Lordship had
been in town, and I in the country, I durst not
have entertained you with three pages of a letter;
but I know they are very ill things which can be
tedious to a man who is fourscore miles from Co-
vent-Garden. 'Tis upon this confidence that I
dare almost promise to entertain you with a
thousand bagatelles every week, and not to be
serious in any part of my Letter but that wherein I
take leave to call myself your Lordship's
Most obedient servant,
JOHN DRYDEN.
LETTER III.
TO THE REV. DR. BUSBY.2
HONOUR'D SIR,
Wednesday Morning, [1682.]
We have, with much ado, recover'd my younger
sonn,' who came home extreamly sick of a violent
to her, may have been in Etherege's thoughts, when he
wrote these lines.
The Prologue and Epilogue alluded to, were probably
those spoken at Oxford by Mr. Hart, at the representa-
tion of the SILENT WOMAN, which are printed in the first
volume of Dryden's MISCELLANIES, 8vo. 1684, where
they are arranged immediately before another Prologue
spoken at Oxford in 1674.”
66
2 See vol. i. part i. p. 13, n. 9.
3 John, our author's second son, was admitted, a King's
14
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
cold, and, as he thinks him selfe, a chine-cough.
The truth is, his constitution is very tender;
yet his desire of learning, I hope, will inable him
to brush through the college. He is allwayes
gratefully acknowledging your fatherly kindnesse
to him; and very willing, to his poore power, to
do all things which may continue it. I have
no more to add, but only to wish the eldest may
also deserve some part of your good opinion, for I
believe him to be of vertuous and pious inclina-
tions; and for both, I dare assure you, that they
can promise to them selves no farther share of my
indulgence, then while they carry them selves with
that reverence to you, and that honesty to all
others, as becomes them. I am, Honour'd Sir,
Your most obedient Servant and Scholar,
JOHN DRYDEN.4
Scholar, into the college of Westminster, in 1682.-
Charles, the eldest, left it in the following year. On these
grounds, I have added 1682, above, as the conjectural
date of this letter.
4 The following letter to Dr. Busby, appears to have
been written by our author's wife, Lady Elizabeth Dry-
den, about the same time with the above.
HONNORED SIR,
Ascension Day, [1682.]
I HOPE I need use noe other argument to you in ex-
cuse of my sonn for not coming to church to Westmin-
ster then this, that he now lies at home, and thearfore.
cannot esilly goe soe far backwards and forwards. His
father and I will take care that he shall duely goe to
church heare, both on holydayes and Sundays, till he
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
15
SIR,
LETTER IV.
TO THE REV. DR. BUSBY.
[1682.]
IF I could have found in my selfe a fitting tem-
per to have waited upon you, I had done it the
day you dismissed my sonn+ from the college; for
he did the message; and by what I find from Mr.
Meredith, as it was delivered by you to him;
namely, that you desired to see me, and had
somewhat to say to me concerning him. I ob-
serv'd likewise somewhat of kindnesse in it, that
you sent him away that you might not have oc-
casion to correct him. I examin'd the business,
comes to be more nearly under your care in the college.
In the mean time, will you pleas to give me leave to ac-
cuse you of forgetting your prommis conserning my eldest
sonn; who, as you once assured me, was to have one
night in a weeke alowed him to be at home, in considi-
rasion both of his health and cleanliness. You know, Sir,
that prommises mayd to women, and espiceally mothers,
will never faill to be cald upon; and thearfore I will add
noe more but that I am, at this time, your remembrancer,
and allwayes, Honnord Sir,
Your humble Servant,
5 Probably his eldest son, Charles.
E. DRYDEN.
16
DRYDEN'S LETTERS,
and found it concern'd his having been Custos
foure or five dayes together. But if he admo-
nished, and was not believed, because other boyes
combined to discredit him with false witnesseing,
and to save them selves, perhaps his crime is not so
great. Another fault it seems he made, which was
going into one Hawkes his house, with some
others which you hapning to see, sent your
servant to know who they were, and he onely re-
turned you my sonn's name: so the rest escaped.
I have no fault to find with my sonn's punish-
ment; for that is, and ought to be, reserv'd to any
master, much more to you who have been his
father's. But your man was certainly to blame, to
name him onely; and 'tis onely my respect to you,
that I do not take notice of it to him. My first rash
resolutions were, to have brought things past any.
composure, by immediately sending for my sonn's
In the hall of the college of Westminster, when the
boys are at dinner, it is ex officio the place of the second
boy in the second election to keep order among the two
under elections; and if any word, after he has ordered
silence, be spoken, except in Latin, he says to the speaker,
tu es CUSTOS; and this term passes from the second
speaker to the third or more, till dinner is over. Who-
ever is then Custos, has an imposition.
It is highly probable, (adds the very respectable gentle-
man to whom I am indebted for this information,) that
there had formerly been a tessera or symbolum delivered
from boy to boy, as at some French schools now, and
that Custos meant Custos tesseræ, symboli, &c. ; but at
Westminster the symbol is totally unknown at present.
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
17
6
things out of college; but upon recollection, I
find I have a double tye upon me not to do it :
one, my obligations to you. for my education
another, my great tendernesse of doeing any thing
offensive to my Lord Bishop of Rochester, as cheife
governour of the college. It does not consist with
the honour I beare him and you, to go so precipi-
tately to worke; no, not so much as to have any
difference with you, if it can possibly be avoyded.
Yet, as my sonn stands now, I cannot see with
what credit he can be elected; for, being but sixth,
and (as you are pleased to judge) not deserving
that neither, I know not whether he may not go
immediately to Cambridge, as well as one of his
own election went to Oxford this yeare' by your
consent. I will say nothing of my second sonn,
but that, after you had been pleased to advise me
to waite on my Lord Bishop for his favour, I found
he might have had the first place, if you had not
opposed it; and I likewise found at the election,
" Dr. John Dolben, who was translated from Roches-
ter to York, in August, 1683. Our author, in the Post-
script to his Translation of Virgil, has mentioned the
kindness of the Archbishop's son, Gilbert Dolben, Esq.
in giving him the various editions of that author.
7 The person meant was Robert Morgan, who was
elected with Charles Dryden into the college of Westmin-
ster in 1680, and is the only one of those then admitted,
who was elected to Oxford in 1682. That circumstance,
therefore, ascertains the year when this letter was written.
VOL. I. PART II.
C
18
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
that by the pains you had taken with him, he in
some sort deserved it.
I hope, Sir, when you have given your selfe the
trouble to read thus farr, you, who are a prudent
man, will consider, that none complaine, but they
desire to be reconciled at the same time: there is
no mild expostulation at least, which does not in-
timate a kindness and respect in him who makes it.
Be pleas'd, if there be no merit on my side, to
make it your own act of grace to be what you
were formerly to my sonn. I have done some-
thing, so far to conquer my own spirit as to ask it:
and, indeed, I know not with what face to go to
my Lord Bishop, and to tell him I am takeing
away both my sonns; for though I shall tell him
no occasion, it will looke like a disrespect to my
old Master, of which I will not be guilty, if it be
possible. I shall add no more, but hope I shall
be so satisfyed with a favourable answer from you,
which I promise to my selfe from your goodnesse
and moderation, that I shall still have occasion to
continue,
Sir,
Your most obliged humble Servant,
JOHN DRYDEN.*
The Letters to Dr. Busby have been already made
publick; but are here printed from the originals, which
have been obligingly communicated by Mr. John Ni-
chols, author of the History of Leicestershire.
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
19
LETTER V.
[TO LAURENCE HYDE, EARL OF ROCHESTER.']
MY LORD,
[Perhaps, August, 1683.]
I KNOW not whether my Lord Sunderland
has interceded with your Lordship for half a yeare
of my salary; but I have two other advocates, my
extreme wants, even almost to arresting, and my
ill health, which cannot be repaired without im-
mediate retireing into the country. A quarter's
allowance is but the Jesuites' powder to my disease;
the fitt will return a fortnight hence.
If I durst,
I would plead a little merit, and some hazards of
my life from the common enemyes; my refuseing
advantages offered by them, and neglecting my
beneficiall studyes, for the King's service: but I
only thinke I merit not to sterve. I never ap-
ply'd myselfe to any interest contrary to your Lord-
ship's; and on some occasions, perhaps not known
9 This letter is printed from a copy transmitted some
years ago by Mr. John Elderton to the editor of the Gen-
tleman's Magazine. Mr. Elderton supposed that it was
written in 1673-4; but Butler being spoken of as dead,
that could not be the date; for that poet died in Septem-
ber, 1680. The superscription has not been preserved;
but it was doubtless addressed to Laurence Hyde, (second
son of Lord Clarendon,) who was made First Commis-
sioner of the Treasury in 1679, and continued Prime
Minister till Sept. 1684. He was created Lord Hyde in
April, 1681, and Earl of Rochester in Nov. 1682. Early
in 1683, our author dedicated to him THE Duke of
GUISE; and in 1692, his CLEOMENES.
20
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
I
to you, have not been unserviceable to the memory
and reputation of my Lord, your father.' After
this, my Lord, my conscience assures me I may
write boldly, though I cannot speake to you.
I have three sonns growing to man's estate ;
breed them all up to learning, beyond my fortune;
but they are too hopefull to be neglected, though
I want. Be pleased to looke on me with an eye
of compassion: some small employment would
render my condition
condition easy.
easy. The King is not un
satisfied of me; the Duke has often promised me
his assistance; and your Lordship is the conduit
through which their favours passe: either in the
Customes, or the Appeals of the Excise, or some
other way, meanes cannot be wanting, if you
please to have the will. "Tis enough for one age
to have neglected Mr. Cowley, and sterv'd Mr.
Butler; but neither of them had the happiness
to live till your Lordship's ministry. In the
meane time, be pleased to give me a gracious and
speedy answer to my present request of halfe a
yeare's pention for my necessityes. I am going
to write somewhat by his Majesty's command,'
1
2
Edward, Earl of Clarendon. The work or passages
here alluded to, I have not been able to discover.
2 The place which our author here solicits, (worth only
£.200. a year,) was the first office that Addison obtained,
which he used to call "the little thing given me by Lord
Halifax." Locke also, after the Revolution, was a Com-
missioner of Appeals.
3 Probably THE HISTORY OF THE LEAGUE, which
was entered on the Stationers' Books early in 1684, and
is there said to have been " Englished by his Majesties
express command."
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
21
and cannot stirr into the country for my health
and studies, till I secure my family from want.
You have many petitions of this nature, and
cannot satisfy all; but I hope, from your goodness,
to be made an exception to your general rules,*
because I am, with all sincerity,
Your Lordship's
Most obedient humble Servant,
JOHN DRYDEN.
LETTER VI.
TO MR. JACOB TONSON.4
MR. TONSON,
Monday Morning. [Sept. 1684.]
your
THE two melons you sent I received before
letter, which came foure houres after: I tasted one
of them, which was too good to need an excuse;
the other is yet untouch'd. You have written
* This application was successful. See vol. ii. p. 223.
4 This letter was probably written in August or Sep-
tember, 1684; the recent loss which the Duke of Ormond
is said to have sustained, being, I conceive, that of his
wife, who died July 21, 1684. The Duke went to Ire-
land, as Lord Lieutenant, in the following month, and
remained there till February in the ensuing year. Other
circumstances mentioned agree with this date. The His-
tory of the League was published July 31, 1684, as ap-
pears from the London Gazette, No. 1951. Michaelmas
is spoken of, as approaching; and our author was now
employed in preparing the second volume of his MISCEL-
LANIES, which appeared in Jan. 1684-5, or soon afterwards.
22
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
diverse things which gave me great satisfaction
particularly that the History of the League is com-
mended: and I hope the onely thing I fear'd in it,
is not found out. Take it all together, and I dare
say without vanity, 'tis the best translation of any
History in English, though I cannot say 'tis the best
History; but that is no fault of mine. I am glad
my Lord Duke of Ormond has one : I did not for-
get him; but I thought his sorrows were too fresh
upon him to receive a present of that nature. For
my Lord Roscommon's ESSAY,' I am of your opi-
nion that you should reprint it, and that you may
safely venture on a thousand more. In my verses
before it, pray let the printer mend his errour, and
let the line stand thus:
That heer his conqu'ring ancestors were nurs'd; *
6
Charles his copy is all true. The other faults my
Lord Roscommon will mend in the booke, or Mr.
Chetwood for him, if my Lord be gone for
Ireland; of which, pray send me word.
7
Your opinion of the Miscellanyes is likewise
mine: I will for once lay by the RELIGIO LAICI,8
5 The first edition of Lord Roscommon's " Essay on
Translated Verse," appeared in 1684, and a second edition
was published by Jacob Tonson in 4to. probably about
Christmas, in the same year, though it is dated 1685.
That nobleman died in January, 1684-5.
*In the first edition it stood,
"That here his conqu'ring ancestors was nurs’d.”
• Latin Verses by Charles Dryden, prefixed to Lord
Roscommon's Essay.
7 Knightly Chetwood, concerning whom see vol. iii.
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
23
till another time. But I must also add, that since
we are to have nothing but new, I am resolv'd we
will have nothing but good, whomever we dis-
oblige. You will have of mine, four Odes of Ho-
race, which I have already translated; another small
translation of forty lines from Lucretius; the whole
story of Nisus and Eurialus, both in the fifth and
the ninth of Virgil's Eneids: and I care not who
translates them beside me, for let him be friend or
foe, I will please myself, and not give off in con-
sideration of any man.
There will be forty lines
more of Virgil in another place, to answer those of
Lucretius I meane those very lines which Mon-
tagne has compar'd in those two poets; and Homer
shall sleep on for me, I will not now meddle with
him. And for the Act which remains of the
Opera,' I believe I shall have no leysure to mind
it, after I have done what I proposed: for my
business here is to unweary my selfe, after my
studyes, not to drudge.
I am very glad you have pay'd Mr. Jones,
because he has carry'd him selfe so gentlemanlike
to me; and, if ever it lyes in my power, I will re-
quite it. I desire to know whether the Duke's
P. 547. He was much attached to Lord Roscommon,
and wrote his Life.
8 As it was determined to insert nothing but what was
new in the Second Miscellany, RELIGIO LAICI Could not
be admitted; for it had been published in 1682.
These translations accordingly appeared in the SE-
COND MISCELLANY.
I
Probably ALBION and ALBANIUS, which was after-
wards completed and ready to be performed in Feb. 1684-5.
24
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
2
House are makeing cloaths and putting things in a
readiness for the singing Opera, to be play'd imme-
diately after Michaelmasse. For the actors in the
two playes' which are to be acted of mine this win-
ter, I had spoken with Mr. Betterton by chance at
the Coffee-house the afternoon before I came away;
and I believe that the persons were all agreed on, to
be just the same you mention'd; onely Octavia was
to be Mrs. Butler, in case Mrs. Cooke were not on
the stage and I know not whether Mrs. Percivall,
who is a comedian, will do well for Benzayda.
I came hither for health, and had a kind of
hectique feavour for a fortnight of the time: I
am now much better. Poore Jack* is not yet re-
cover'd of an intermitting feavour, of which this
is the twelfth day; but he mends, and now begins
to eat flesh: to add to this, my man with over-
care of him, is fallen ill too, of the same distem-
per; so that I am deep in doctors, 'pothecaries, and
nurses: but though many in this country fall sick
of feavours, few or none dye. Your friend, Charles,
continues well. If you have any extraordinary
newes, I should be glad to heare it. I will answer
Mr. Butler's letter next week; for it requires no
hast.
I am Yours, JOHN DRYDEN.
2 I
suppose, the Opera of KING ARTHUR, to which
ALBION AND ALBANIUS was originally intended to have
been a prelude. See vol. ii. p. 164. Both these pieces
were performed, at different times, at the Queen's Theatre
in Dorset Garden, as it was then denominated; though,
from old habit, our author here calls it the Duke's House.
3 ALL FOR LOVE, and THE CONQUEST OF GRANADA,
* His second son,
+ His eldest son.
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
25
LETTER VII.
FROM JACOB TONSON TO JOHN DRYDEN, ESQ.
SIR,
[Probably written in Jan. or Feb. 1692-3.]*
I HAVE here returned ye Ovid, wch I read wth a
great deal of pleasure, and think nothing can be
more entertaining; but by this letter you find I
am not soe well satisfied as perhaps you might
think. I hope at ye same time the matter of fact
I lay down in this letter will appear grounds for it,
and wch I beg you wou'd concider of; and then I
believe I shall at least bee excused.
You may please, Sr, to remember that upon my
first proposal about y 3 Missellany, I offer'd
fifty pounds, and talk'd of several authours, without
naming Ovid. You ask'd if it shou'd not be
guynneas, and said I shou'd not repent it; upon
wch I imediately comply'd, and left it wholy to you
what, and for y° quantity too: and I declare it
was the farthest in yⓇ world from my thoughts that
by leaving it to you I shoud have the less. Thus
the case stood, when you went into Essex. After
I came out of Northamptonshire I wrote to you,
and reseived a Letter dated Monday Oct. 3ª, 92,
4 The THIRD MISCELLANY, to which this letter seems
to relate, was published in July, 1693. I suspect, when
this letter was written, it had not yet appeared.
26
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
from wch letter I now write word for word what
followes :
"I am translating about six hundred lines, or
"somewhat less, of ye first book of the Meta-
"morphoses. If I cannot get my price, wch shall
"be twenty guynneas, I will translate the whole
"book; wch coming out before the whole transla-
"tion will spoyl Tate's undertakings. 'Tis one of
"the best I have ever made, and very pleasant.
46
This, wth Heroe and Leander, and the piece of
"Homer, (or, if it be not enough, I will add more,)
"will make a good part of a Missellany."
Those, S', are ye very words, and ye onely ones
in that letter relating to that affair; and ye monday
following you came to town.-After your arrivall
you shew'd Mr. Motteaux what you had done, (wh
he told me was to ye end of ye Story of Daphnis,)
[Daphne,] and demanded, as you mention'd in your
letter, twenty guyneas, wch that bookseller refus'd.
Now, S', I the rather believe there was just soe
much done, by reason y number of lines you men-
tion in yo' letter agrees wh y quantity of lines that
soe much of y' first book makes; wch upon counting
ye Ovid I find to be in y Lattin 566, in yª Eng-
lish 759; and ye Bookseller told me there was
noe more demanded of him for it.-Now, S', what
I entreat you wou'd please to consider of is this:
that it is reasonable for me to expect at least as
much favour from you as a strange bookseller;
and I will never believe yt it can be in yo' nature
to use one ye worse for leaveing it to you; and
DRYDEN'S Letters.
27
if the matter of fact as I state it be true, (and
upon my word what I mention I can shew you in
yo' letter,) then pray, S', consider how much dearer
I pay then you offered it to ye other bookseller;
for he might have had to y° end of y Story of
Daphnis for 20 guynneas, wch is in yo' trans-
lation
And then suppose 20 guyneas more
for the same number
759 lines;
759 lines,
1518 lines ;
that makes for 40 guyneas
and all that I have for fifty guyneas are but 1446;
soe that, if I have noe more, I pay 10 guyneas above
40, and have 72 lines less for fifty, in proportion,
than the other bookseller shou'd have had for 40, at
y rate you offered him ye first part. This is, Sir,
what I shall take as a great favour if you please to
think of. I had intentions of letting you know
this before; but till I had paid y money, I would
not ask to see y° book, nor count the lines, least it
shou'd look like a design of not keeping my word.
When you have looked over y rest of what you
have already translated, I desire you would send it;
and I own y' if you don't think fit to add something
more, I must submit: 'tis wholly at yo' choice, for
I left it intirely to you; but I believe you cannot
imagine I expected soe little; for you were pleased
to use me much kindlyer in Juvenall, wh is not
reckon'd soe easy to translate as Ovid. S', I hum-
bly beg yo' pardon for this long letter, and upon
my word I had rather have yo' good will than any
28
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
man's alive; and, whatever you are pleas'd to doe,
will alway acknowledge my self, S',
Yo' most obliged humble Servt,
J. TONSON.
LETTER VIII.
TO MR. JACOB TONSON."
MR. TONSON,
August 30. [1693.]
I AM much asham'd of my self, that I am so
much behind-hand with you in kindness. Above
all things I am sensible of your good nature, in
bearing me company to this place, wherein, besides
the cost, you must needs neglect your own business;
but I will endeavour to make you some amends;
and therefore I desire you to command me some-
thing for your service. I am sure you thought my
Lord Radclyffe" wou'd have done something: I
ghess'd more truly, that he cou'd not; but I was too
far ingag'd to desist; though I was tempted to it, by
the melancholique prospect I had of it. I have
5 The author was at this time in Northamptonshire.
The particular place from which he writes, is not easily
ascertained. It is not Oundle, nor Tichmarsh; nor was
he at Canons-Ashby; for he was not on good terms with
his kinsman, Sir Robert Driden.
The original has no date but August 30th; but the year
is ascertained by the reference to the THIRD MISCEL-
LANY, which was published in July, 1693.
6 To whom the THIRD MISCELLANY is dedicated.-
Some account of him may be found in vol. iii. p. 269.
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
29
translated six hundred lines of Ovid; but I be-
lieve I shall not compasse his 772 lines under nine
hundred or more of mine. This time I cannot
write to my wife, because he who is to carry my
letter to Oundle, will not stay till I can write
another. Pray, Sir, let her know that I am well;
and for feare the few damsins shoud be all gone,
desire her to buy me a sieve-full, to preserve
whole, and not in mash.
I intend to come up at least a week before Mi-
chaelmass; for Sir Matthew is gone abroad, I
suspect a wooeing, and his caleche is gone with
him so that I have been but thrice at Tichmarsh,
of which you were with me once.
This dissap-
pointment makes the place wearysome to me,
which otherwise wou'd be pleasant.
8
About a fortnight ago I had an intimation from
a friend by letter, that one of the Secretaryes, I
suppose Trenchard, had inform'd the Queen, that
I had abus'd her Government, (those were the
words) in my Epistle to my Lord Radcliffe; and
that thereupon, she had commanded her Histo-
riographer, Rymer, to fall upon my playes; which
he assures me is now doeing. I doubt not his
malice, from a former hint you gave me ; and if he
be employ'd, I am confident 'tis of his own seeking;
who, you know, has spoken slightly of me in his last
7 I have not been able to discover who was the person
here meant. Our author writes perhaps from his house.
8 Sir John Trenchard, who was made one of the Se-
cretaries of State, March 23, 1691-2, and held that office
till his death, in April, 1695.
30
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
critique: and that gave me occasion to snarl
againe.' In your next, let me know what you can
learn of this matter. I am Mr. Congreve's true
lover, and desire you to tell him, how kindly I take
his often remembrances of me: I wish him all
prosperity, and hope I shall never loose his affec-
tion; nor yours, Sir, as being
Your most faithfull,
And much obliged Servant,
I had all your Letters.
JOHN DRYDEN.
Sir Matthew had your book, when he came
home last; and desir'd me to give you his ac-
knowledgments.
LETTER IX.
TO MR. JOHN DENNIS.
[Probably, March, 1693-4.]
MY DEAR MR. DENNIS,
WHEN I read a letter so full of my commenda-
tions as your last, I cannot but consider you as
2
9 " A short View of Tragedy," published (as appears
from the Gentleman's Journal, by P. Motteux,) in Dec.
1692. The date in the titlepage is, 1693.
2
'In the dedication to Lord Radcliffe. See vol. iii.
a The Letter referred to was as follows:
<< DEAR SIR,
TO MR. DRYDEN.
p. 269.
"You may see already by this presumptuous greeting,
that encouragement gives as much assurance to friendship,
as it imparts to love. You may see too, that a friend may
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
31
the master of a vast treasure, who having more
than enough for yourself, are forc'd to ebb out
sometimes proceed to acknowledge. affection, by the very
same degrees by which a lover declares his passion.
This last at first confesses esteem, yet owns no passion
but admiration. But as soon as he is animated by one
kind expression, his look, his style, and his very soul are
altered. But as sovereign beauties know very well, that
he who confesses he esteems and admires them, implies.
that he loves them, or is inclin'd to love them; a person of
Mr. Dryden's exalted genius, can discern very well, that
when we esteem him highly, 'tis respect restrains us, if we
say no more. For where great esteem is without affec-
tion, 'tis often attended with envy, if not with hate ;
which passions detract even when they commend, and
silence is their highest panegyrick. 'Tis indeed impos-
sible, that I should refuse to love a man, who has so often
given me all the pleasure that the most insatiable mind can
desire: when at any time I have been dejected by disap-
pointments, or tormented by cruel passions, the recourse
to your verses has calm'd my soul, or rais'd it to transports
which made it contemn tranquillity. But though you
have so often given me all the pleasure I was able to bear,
I have reason to complain of you on this account, that
you have confined my delight to a narrower compass.
Suckling, Cowley, and Denham, who formerly ravish'd
me in every part of them, now appear tasteless to me in
most; and Waller himself, with all his gallantry, and ali
that admirable art of his turns, appears three quarters
prose to me. Thus 'tis plain, that your Muse has done me
an injury; but she has made me amends for it. For she
is like those extraordinary women, who, besides the re-
gularity of their charming features, besides their engaging
wit, have secret, unaccountable, enchanting graces;
32
DRYDEN'S LEtters.
upon your friends. You have indeed the best
right to give them, since you have them in pro-
which though they have been long and often enjoy'd,
make them always new and always desirable.-I return
you my hearty thanks for your most obliging letter. I
had been very unreasonable, if I had repin'd that the fa-
vour arriv'd no sooner. 'Tis allowable to grumble at the
delaying a payment; but to murmur at the deferring a
benefit, is to be impudently ungrateful beforehand. The
commendations which you give me, exceedingly sooth my
vanity. For you with a breath can bestow or confirm
reputation; a whole numberless people proclaims the
praise which you give, and the judgments of three mighty
kingdoms appear to depend upon yours. The people
gave me some little applause before; but to whom, when
they are in the humour, will they not give it ; and to whom,
when they are froward, will they not refuse it? Reputa-
tion with them depends upon chance, unless they are
guided by those above them. They are but the keepers,
as it were, of the lottery which Fortune sets up for renown;
which Fame is bound to attend with her trumpet,
upon
and sound when men draw the prizes. Thus I had rather
have your approbation than the applause of Fame. Her
commendation argues good luck, but Mr. Dryden's im-
plies desert. Whatever low opinion I have hitherto had
of my self, I have so great a value for your judgment,
that, for the sake of that, I shall be willing henceforward
to believe that I am not wholly desertless; but that you
may find me still more supportable, I shall endeavour to
compensate whatever I want in those glittering qualities,
by which the world is dazled, with truth, with faith, and
with zeal to serve you; qualities which for their rarity,
might be objects of wonder, but that men dare not appear
to admire them, because their admiration would manifestly
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
33
priety; but they are no more mine when I receive
them, than the light of the moon can be allowed
to be her own, who shines but by the reflexion of
her brother. Your own poetry is a more powerful
example, to prove that the modern writers may
enter into comparison with the ancients, than any
which Perrault could produce in France; yet nei-
ther he, nor you, who are a better critick, can
persuade me, that there is any room left for a solid
commendation at this time of day, at least for me.
If I undertake the translation of Virgil, the
little which I can perform will shew at least, that
no man is fit to write after him, in a barbarous
,modern tongue. Neither will his machines be of
any service to a christian poet. We see how
ineffectually they have been try'd by Tasso, and
by Ariosto. 'Tis using them too dully, if we only
make devils of his gods: as if, for example, I
would raise a storm, and make use of Æolus, with
this only difference of calling him Prince of the
air; what invention of mine would there be in
declare their want of them. Thus, Sir, let me assure you
that though you are acquainted with several gentlemen,
whose eloquence and wit may capacitate them to offer
their service with more address to you, yet no one can
declare himself, with greater chearfulness, or with
greater fidelity, or with more profound respect than
my self.
March 3, [1693-4-]
Sir,
Your most, &c.
JOHN DENNIS.
VOL. I. PART II.
d
34
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
this? or who would not see Virgil thorough me;
only the same trick play'd over again by a bung-
ling juggler? Boileau has well observed, that it is
an easie matter in a christian poem, for God to
bring the Devil to reason. I think I have given
a better hint for new machines in my preface to
Juvenal; where I have particularly recommended
two subjects, one of King Arthur's conquest of the
Saxons, and the other of the Black Prince in his
conquest of Spain. But the Guardian Angels of
monarchys and kingdoms are not to be touch'd
by every hand: a man must be deeply conversant
in the Platonick philosophy, to deal with them; and
therefore I may reasonably expect that no poet of,
our age will presume to handle those machines,
for fear of discovering his own ignorance; or if he
should, he might perhaps be ingrateful enough
not to own me for his benefactour.'
After I have confess'd thus much of our modern
heroick poetry, I cannot but conclude with Mr.
Rymer, that our English comedy is far beyond
any thing of the Ancients: and notwithstanding
our irregularities, so is our tragedy.+ Shakspeare
had a genius for it; and we know, in spite of Mr.
Rymer, that genius alone is a greater virtue (if I may
3 Dryden here seems to have had a presentiment of
what afterwards happened. See vol. iii. p. 647.
4 Our author has maintained the same opinion in the
Dedication of the THIRD MISCELLANY; and so, I have
no doubt, Aristotle would have decided, had he lived in
our time.
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
35
so call it) than all other qualifications put together.
You see what success this learned critick has found
in the world, after his blaspheming Shakspeare."
Almost all the faults which he has discover'd are
truly there; yet who will read Mr. Rymer, or not
read Shakspeare? For my own part I reverence
Mr. Rymer's learning, but I detest his ill-nature
and his arrogance. I indeed, and such as I, have
reason to be afraid of him, but Shakspeare has
not.
There is another part of poetry, in which the
English stand almost upon an equal foot with the
Ancients; and it is that which we call Pindarique;
introduced, but not perfected, by our famous Mr.
Cowley: and of this, Sir, you are certainly one of
the greatest masters. You have the sublimity of
sense as well as sound, and know how far the bold-
ness of a poet may lawfully extend. I could wish
you would cultivate this kind of Ode; and reduce
it either to the same measures which Pindar used,
or give new measures of your own. For, as it
is, it looks like a vast tract of land newly disco-
ver'd: the soil is wonderfully fruitful, but unma-
nur'd; overstock'd with inhabitants, but almost
all savages, without laws, arts, arms, or policy.
I remember, poor Nat. Lee, who was then upon
the verge of madness, yet made a sober and a witty
answer to a bad poet, who told him, It was an easie
thing to write like a madman: No, said he, it is
In his Short View of Tragedy, 8vo. 1693.
36
DRYDEN'S LETTERS,
very difficult to write like a madman, but it is a very
easie matter to write like a fool. Otway and he are
safe by death from all attacks, but we poor poets
militant (to use Mr. Cowley's expression) are at the
mercy of wretched scribblers: and when they
cannot fasten upon our verses, they fall upon our
morals, our principles of state and religion. For
my principles of religion, I will not justifie them to
you: I know yours are far different. For the
same reason I shall say nothing of my principles of
state. I believe
I believe you in yours follow the dictates
of your reason, as I in mine do those of my con-
science. If I thought my self in an errour, I would
retract it. I am sure that I suffer for them; and
Milton makes even the Devil say, that no creature
is in love with pain. For my morals betwixt man
and man, I am not to be my own judge. I ap-
peal to the world, if I have deceiv'd or defrauded
any man: and for my private conversation, they
who see me every day can be the best witnesses,
whether or no it be blameless and inoffensive.
Hitherto I have no reason to complain that men
of either party shun my company. I have never
been an impudent beggar at the doors of noblemen:
visits have indeed been too rare to be unac-
ceptable; and but just enough to testifie my grati-
tude for their bounty, which I have frequently
received, but always unasked, as themselves will
witness.
my
I have written more than I needed to you on
this subject; for I dare say you justifie me to your
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
37
self. As for that which I first intended for the
principal subject of this letter, which is my friend's
passion and his design of marriage, on better con-
sideration I have chang'd my mind: for having
had the honour to see my dear friend Wycherly's
letter to him on that occasion, I find nothing to be
added or amended. But as well as I love Mr.
Wycherly, I confess I love my self so well, that
I will not shew how much I am inferiour to him
in wit and judgment, by undertaking any thing
after him. There is Moses and the Prophets in
his council. Jupiter and Juno, as the poets tell
us, made Tiresias their umpire in a certain merry
dispute, which fell out in heaven betwixt them.
Tiresias, you know, had been of both sexes, and
therefore was a proper judge; our friend Mr.
Wycherly is full as competent an arbitrator: he
has been a bachelor, and marry'd man, and is now
a widower. Virgil says of Ceneus,
Nunc vir, nunc fæmina, Ceneus,
Rursus et in veterem fato revoluta figuram.
Yet I suppose he will not give any large com-
mendations to his middle state: nor as the sailer
said, will be fond after a shipwrack to put to sea
again. If my friend will adventure after this, I can
but wish him a good wind, as being his, and,
My dear Mr. Dennis,
Your most affectionate
and most faithful Servant,
JOHN DRYDEN.
38
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
LETTER X.
TO MR. JACOB TONSON.
Wednesday morning.
[Probably written in April, 1695.6]
MR. TONSON,
'Tis now three dayes since I have ended the
fourth Eneid; and I am this morning beginning to
transcribe it; as you may do afterwards; for I am
willing some few of my friends may see it, and
shall give leave to you, to shew your transcription
to some others, whose names I will tell you. The
paying Ned Sheldon the fifty pounds put me upon
this speed; but I intend not so much to overtoil
myself, after the sixth book is ended. If the
second subscriptions rise,' I will take so much the
6 Scarcely any of the letters to Tonson have the date
of the year; and it is only from circumstances that we can
form any probable conjecture concerning the time when
they were written. I am therefore by no means sure
that I have in every instance arranged them rightly.
As Dryden began his translation of Virgil in the middle of
1694, and here says that he had finished the fourth Æneid,
I suppose this letter to have been written in April or
May, 1695.-The payment for each Eneid appears to
have been fifty pounds.
7 From an advertisement in the London Gazette, No.
3559, Dec. 21, 1699, relative to Collier's "Great Historical
Dictionary," it appears to have been the practice to fix a
day, after which no subscription for a book should be re-
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
39
more time, because the profit will incourage me
the more; if not, I must make the more hast; yet
allways with as much care as I am able. But
however, I will not fail in my paines of translating
the sixth Eneid with the same exactness as I have
performed the fourth: because that book is my
greatest favourite. You know money is now very
scrupulously receiv'd: in the last which you did
me the favour to change for my wife, besides the
clip'd money, there were at least forty shillings
brass. You may, if you please, come to me at the
Coffee-house this afternoon, or at farthest to-mor-
row, that we may take care together, where and
when I may receive the fifty pounds and the
guinneys; which must be some time this week.
I am your Servant,
JOHN DRYDEN,
I have written to my Lord Lawderdail, for his
decorations.8
ceived at the price originally proposed; those who sub-
scribed after that day being obliged to pay an advanced
price, of which notice was given in the proposals. Non-
subscribers, probably, paid still more. Perhaps something
of this sort is here alluded to.
* See the next Note.
40
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
?
་
LETTER XI.
TO MR. JACOB TONSON.
Saturday, June the 8th. [f. 1695.]
MR. TONSON,
'Tis now high time for me to think of my
second subscriptions: for the more time I have
for collecting them, the larger they are like to be.
I have now been idle just a fortnight; and there-
fore might have call'd sooner on you, for the
remainder of the first subscriptions. And besides,
Mr. Aston will be goeing into Cheshire a week
hence, who is my onely help, and to whom you
are onely beholding for makeing the bargain be-
twixt us, which is so much to my loss; but I
repent nothing of it that is pass'd, but that I do not
find myself capable of translating so great an
authour, and therefore feare to lose my own
credit, and to hazard your profit, which it wou'd
grieve me if you shoud loose, by your too good opi-.
nion of my abilities. I expected to have heard of
you this week, according to the intimation you gave
me of it; but that failing, I must defer it no
9 The first subscribers to our author's translation of
Virgil, paid five guineas each. Two of these I suspect
Tonson retained, to defray the expence of the copper-
plates; each of which was dedicated to a subscriber, and
decorated with his arms. The second subscription was,
I believe, two guineas, and perhaps was an after-thought.
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
41
longer than till the ensueing week, because Mr.
Aston will afterwards be gone, if not sooner.
2
Be pleased to send me word what day will be
most convenient to you; and be ready with the
price of paper, and of the books. No matter for
any dinner; for that is a charge to you, and I care
not for it. Mr. Congreve may be with us, as a
common friend; for as you know him for yours,
I make not the least doubt, but he is much more
mine: send an immediate answer, and you shall
find me ready to do all things wch become
Your Servant,
JOHN DRYDEN.
LETTER XII.
TO MR. JACOB TONSON.
Wednesday, the 13th of 7ber [f. 1695.]
MY GOOD FRIEND,.
THIS is onely to acquaint you, that I have taken
my place in the Oundle coach for Tuesday next;
This seems to relate only to the additional number
of copies, which were to be printed (probably on small
paper,) for the second subscribers. The copies on large
paper were, I suppose, appropriated to the subscribers of
five guineas.
2 It was formerly the custom to settle all agreements
between authors and booksellers, (as well as various other
contracts,) at taverns; and the bargain was never con-
cluded without either a whet or a dinner. In some of
42
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
and hope to be at London on Wednesday night.
I had not confidence enough to hope Mr.
Southern and Mr. Congreve woud have given me
the favour of their company for the last foure
miles; but since they will be so kind to a friend
of theirs, who so truely loves both them and you,
I will please myself with expecting it, if the wea-
ther be not so bad as to hinder them.
I assure you I lay up your last kindnesses to me
in my heart; and the less I say of them, I charge
them to account so much the more; being very
sensible that I have not hitherto deserv'd them.
Haveing been obliged to sit up all last night al-
most, out of civility to strangers, who were be-
nighted, and to resign my bed to them, I am
sleepy all this day: and if I had not taken a very
lusty pike³ that day, they must have gone supper-
less to bed, foure ladyes and two gentlemen; for
Mr. Dudley and I were alone, with but one man,
and no mayd, in the house.-This time I cannot
write to my wife; do me the favour to let her
know I receiv'd her letter, am well, and hope to
be with her on Wednesday next, at night. No
more but that
I am very much
Your Friend and Servant,
JOHN DRYDEN.
the city taverns, several dozens of wine were often con-
sumed in a morning in half-pint whets.
3 Our author's love of fishing has already been noticed.
Sce vol. i. part i. p. 520.
DRYDEN'S Letters.
13
LETTER XIII.
TO MR. JACOB TONSON.
MR. TONSON,
October the 29th. [f. 1695.]
4
SOME kind of intercourse must be carryed on
betwixt us, while I am translating Virgil. There-
fore I give you notice, that I have done the sea-
venth Eneid in the country; and intend some few
days hence, to go upon the eight: when that is
finish'd, I expect fifty pounds in good silver; not
such as I have had formerly. I am not oblig'd to
take gold,' neither will I; nor stay for it beyond
four and twenty houres after it is due. I thank
you for the civility of your last letter in the coun-
try; but the thirty shillings upon every book
remains with me. You always intended I should
get nothing by the second subscriptions, as I found
from first to last. And your promise to Mr. Con-
greve, that you had found a way for my benefit,
4 At Burleigh, the seat of John, the fifth Earl of
Exeter.
5 Both the gold and silver coin were at this time much
depreciated; and remained in that state till a new coinage
took place, under the care of Charles Montague, then
Chancellor of the Exchequer. It appears from a subse-
quent letter, that, before the new coinage, the value of
a guinea was fluctuating and uncertain.
44
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
which was an encouragement to my paines, came
at last, for me to desire Sir Godfrey Kneller and
Mr. Closterman to gather for me. I then told
Mr. Congreve, that I knew you too well to be-
lieve you meant me any kindness: and he pro-
mised me to believe accordingly of
you, if you
did not. But this is past; and you shall have
your bargain, if I live and have my health. You
may send me word what you have done in my
business with the Earl of Derby and I must
have a place for the Duke of Devonshyre." Some
of your friends will be glad to take back their
three guinneys." The Countess of Macclesfield
gave her money to Will Plowden before Christ
mas; but he remember'd it not, and payd it not in.
Mr. Aston tells me, my Lord Derby expects but
one book. I find, my Lord Chesterfield and my
Lord Petre are both left out; but my Lady Mac-
clesfield must have a place, if I can possibly :
and Will Plowden shall pay you in three guinneys,
if I can obtain so much favour from you. I desire
g
Among the subscribers to the plates, one of which the
author wished to be decorated with the Duke's arms, and
dedicated to him. The engraving prefixed to the Third
Eneid was inscribed to the Earl of Derby; but the name
of the Duke of Devonshire does not appear in either the
first or second List of Subscribers.
7 On receiving back three guineas, they would be
placed in the List of Second Subscribers.
8 The engraving prefixed to the Twelfth Æneid is
inscribed to Philip, Earl of Chesterfield; but neither
Lord Petre, nor Lady Macclesfield, has a place.
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
45
neither excuses nor reasons from you: for I am
but too well satisfy'd already. The Notes and
Prefaces shall be short; because you shall get the
more by saving paper.
JOHN DRYDEN.
LETTER XIV.
TO MR. JACOB TONSON.
MR. TONSON,
Friday Night. [f. Dec. 1695.]
MEETING Sir Robert Howard at the play-house
this morning, and asking him how he lik'd my
seaventh Eneid, he told me you had not brought
it. He goes out of town to-morrow, being Sattur-
day, after dinner. I desire you not to fail of
carrying my manuscript for him to read in the
country; and desire him to bring it up with him,
when he comes next to town. I doubt you have
not yet been with my Lord Chesterfield, and am
in pain about it.
Yours
JOHN DRYDEN.
When you have leysure, I shou'd be glad to see
how Mr. Congreve and you have worded my pro-
positions for Virgil. When my sonne's play' is
› Perhaps the propositions for the second subscription.
See Letter xi.
THE HUSBAND HIS OWN CUCKOLD, written by our
author's second son, John, and published in July, 1696.
46
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
acted, I intend to translate again, if my health
continue. Some time next week let me heare from
you, concerning the Propositions.
SIR,
LETTER XV.
TO MR. JACOB TONSON.
Friday forenoon. [f. Feb. 1695-6.]
I RECEIV'D your letter very kindly, because
indeed I expected none; but thought you as very
a tradesman as Bentley,' who has curs'd our Virgil
so heartily. I shall loose enough by your bill upon
Mr. Knight; for after having taken it all in silver,
and not in half-crowns neither, but shillings and
sixpences, none of the money will go; for which
reason I have sent it all back again, and as the
less loss will receive it in guinneys at 29 shillings
each. 'Tis troublesome to be a looser, but it was
my own fault to accept it this way, which I did to
avoyd more trouble.
I am not sorry that you will not allow any thing
towards the Notes; for to make them good, wou'd
have cost me half a yeare's time at least. Those
I write shall be only marginall, to help the un-
learned, who understand not the poeticall fables.
The Prefaces, as I intend them, will be somewhat
more learned. It wou'd require seaven yeares to
2 Richard Bentley, a bookseller and printer, who lived
n Russel Street, Covent Garden.
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
47
I
translate Virgil exactly. But I promise you once
more to do my best in the four remaining books,
as. I have hitherto done in the foregoing.-Upon
triall I find all of your trade are sharpers, and you
not more than others; therefore I have not wholly
left you.
Mr. Aston does not blame you for
getting as good a bargain as you cou'd, though I
cou'd have gott an hundred pounds more and
you might have spared almost all your trouble, if
you had thought fit to publish the proposalls for
the first subscriptions; for I have guinneas offer'd
me every day, if there had been room;' I believe,
modestly speaking, I have refus'd already 25.
mislike nothing in your letter therefore, but onely
your upbraiding me with the publique encourage-
ment, and my own reputation concern'd in the
notes; when I assure you I cou'd not make them
Get
to my mind in less than half a year's time.
the first half of Virgil transcribed as soon as pos-
sibly you can; that I may put the notes to it; and
you may have the other four books which lye
ready for you, when you bring the former; that
the press may stay as little as possibly it can. My
Lord Chesterfield has been to visite me, but I
durst say nothing of Virgil to him, for feare there
shou'd be no void place for him: if there be, let
me know; and tell me whether you have made
room for the Duke of Devonshire. Haveing no
silver by me, I desire my Lord Derby's money,
deducting your own.
And let it be good, if you
› See p. 40, n. 9.
+ See p. 44. n. 6.
48
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
desire to oblige me, who am not your enemy, and
may be your friend,
JOHN DRYDEN.
Let me heare from you as speedily as you can.
LETTER XVI.
TO MR. JACOB TONSON.
May 26th [1696.]
SEND word, if you please, Sir, what is the most
you will give for my sonn's play,' that I may take
the fairest chapman, as I am bound to do for his
benefit and if you have any silver which will go,
my wife will be glad of it. I lost thirty shillings
or more by the last payment of fifty pounds,
wch
you made at Mr. Knights."
Yours,
J. DRYDEN.
Sir Ro: Howard' writt me word, that if I cou'd
make any advantage by being paid in clipp'd mo-
ney, he woud change it in the Exchequer.
s See p. 45, n. 1. It was printed for Jacob Tonson,
and published in 1696.
Sir Robert Howard had been appointed Auditor of
the Exchequer, in 1673, and held that office till his death.
? Probably a goldsmith, and well known afterwards as
the Cashier of the South-sea Company.
Dryden's Letters.
49
LETTER XVII.
TO MR. JACOB TONSON.
Thursday Morning. [f. Aug. 1696.]
MR. TONSON,
8
7
I HAD yesterday morning two watches sent me
by Mr. Tompion, which I am to send my sonnes
this week. I cou'd not persuade him to take
gold at any rate: but he will take a goldsmiths
bill for two and twenty pounds, which is their
price. I desire you wou'd give him such a bill,
and abate it out of the next fifty pounds which
you are to pay me, when Virgil is finish'd. Ten
Eneids are finish'd, and the ninth and tenth
written out in my own hand. You may have
them with the eight, which is in a foul copy,
when you please to call for them, and to bring
those which are transcrib'd. Mr. Tompion's
man will be with me at four o'clock in the after-
noon, and bring the watches, and must be payd
at sight. I desire you therefore to procure a
goldsmiths bill, and let me have it before that
houre, and send an answer by my boy.
Yours,
JOHN DRYDEN.
7 The celebrated watchmaker, who was originally a
jacksmith.
8 They were at this time at Rome.
VOL. I. PART II.
50
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
LETTER XVIII.
TO MR. JACOB TONSON.
Wednesday afternoon.
From the Coffee-house. Nov. 25th.
MR. TONSON,
I HAVE the remainder of my Northamptonshyre
rents come up this weeke, and desire the favour
of you to receive them for me, from the carrier
of Tocester, who lodges at the Castle in Smith-
field. I suppose it is the same man from whom
you lately receiv'd them for my wife. Any time
before ten o'clock to-morrow morning will serve
the turne. If I were not deepely ingaged in my
studyes, which will be finish'd in a day or two,
I wou'd not put you to this trouble. I have in-
clos'd my tenant's letter to me, for you to shew
the carrier, and to testify the summ, which is
sixteen pounds and about tenn shillings; which
the letter sets down. Pray, Sir, give in an acquit-
tance for so much receiv'd, as I suppose you did
last time.
I am,
Your very faithfull Servant,
JOHN DRYDEN.
The only circumstance mentioned in this letter,
on which a conjecture concerning the year when it was
written can be grounded, is the writer's intimation that
his studies would be finished in a day or two; which per-
haps relates to the conclusion of his Virgil. I have
therefore supposed it to be written in 1696.
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
51
SIR,
LETTER XIX.
TO MR. JACOB TONSON.
[f. Fan. 1696-7.]
1
all
ACCORDING to my promise, I have sent you
that is properly yours of my translation.' I desire, as
you offer'd, that it shou'd be transcribed in a legible
hand; and then sent back to me, for the last re-
view. As for some notes on the margins, they are
not every where; and when they are, are imper-
fect; so that you ought not to transcribe them,
till I make them compleat. I feare you can
scarcely make any thing of my foul copy; but it
is the best I have. You see, my hand fails me, and
therefore I write so short a letter. What I wrote
yesterday was too sharp; but I doubt it is all true.
Your boy's coming upon so unseasonable a visit,
you
were frighted for yourself, discomposed
as if
me.
2
'The translation perhaps was sent to the press, when the
first eight books of the Eneid were finished. This letter
probably accompanied the last two books: for the ninth
and tenth had been previously sent. See p. 49. The work
having been published early in July, 1697, I have assigned
January, 1696-7, as a probable date to it.
2 This letter does not appear. It could not be the
sharp letter already printed, which has been numbered
xiii., because, when that was written, only seven books of
the Æneid were translated.
52
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
Transcribe on very large paper, and leave a very
large margin.
Send your boy for the foul copies, and he shall
have them; for it will not satisfy me to send them
by my own servant.
I cannot yet find the first sheet of the first
Eneid. If it be lost, I will translate it over againe:*
but perhaps it may be amongst the loose papers.
The fourth and ninth Eclogues, which I have sent,
are corrected in my wife's printed Miscellany.³
A
LETTER XX.
TO MR. JACOB TONSON.
Tuesday morning, July the 6th, 1697.
MR. TONSON,
4
I DESIRE you wou'd let Mr. Pate know, I can
print no more names of his subscribers than I have
money for, before I print their names. He has
* These few words furnish a strong proof of the equa-
bility of Dryden's temper.
3 I suppose Lady Elizabeth Dryden's copy of the firs
part of his Miscellany, published in 1684, which con
tained a translation of the Eclogues of Virgil.
+ This person in the last age was frequently called “the
learned tradesman."" Sir Andrew Fountaine," (says
Swift, in his JOURNAL, Oct. 6, 1710,)" came this morn-
ing, and caught me writing in bed. I went into the City
with him, and we dined at the Chop-house, with Will Pate,
the learned woollen-draper: then we sauntered at China-
shops and booksellers; went to the tavern, and drank two
1
Dryden's LETTERS.
53
out of the
my acknowledgment of ten guineas receiv'd from
him; and, as I told you, I owe him for above three
yards of fine cloath: let him reckon for it; and
then there will remain the rest for me,
ten more names wch he has given in. If he has
not money by him, let him blott out as many of
his names as he thinks good; and print onely
those for which he pays or strikes off, in adjusting
the accounts betwixt me and him. This is so
reasonable on both sides, that he cannot refuse it;
but I wou'd have things ended now, because I am
pints of white wine," &c. Mr. William Pate was educated
at Trinity Hall in Cambridge, where he took the degree of
B. C. L. He died in 1746, and was buried at Lee, in
Kent, where the following epitaph is inscribed upon his
tombstone:
Hic jacent reliquiæ
GULIELMI PATE,
Viri
Propter ingenii fœcunditatem
Et literarum peritiam
Haud minus eximii,
Quam ob morum urbanitatem suavitatemque,
Dilecti.
Hunc lapidem,
Sequenti apopthegmate aureo incisum,
Tumulo imponi jussit :
Epicharnian illud teneto,
Nervos atque artus esse sapientiæ
NON TEMERE CREDERE.
Obiit nono die Decembris,
Anno ætatis suæ octogesimo;
Æræ Christianæ
M DCC XLVI.
54
DRYDEN'S LEtters.
to deal with a draper, who is of my own perswa-
sion,' and to whom I have promis'd my custome.
JOHN DRYDEN.
Yours,
I have sent to my tailour, and he sends me
word, that I had three yards and half elle of
cloath from Mr. Pate: I desire he wou'd make his
price; and deduct so much as it comes to, and
make even for the rest with ready money; as also
that he would send word, what the name was, for
whom Sam Atkins left him to make account for.
LETTER XXI."
TO HIS SONS AT ROME.
DEAR SONS,
T
Sept. the 3d, our style, [1697.]
BEING now at Sir William Bowyer's" in the
country, I cannot write at large, because I find
my self somewhat indisposed with a cold, and am
5 Our author, it should be remembered, at this time,
was a Roman Catholick.
"The original of this letter is preserved in the Lambeth
Library, No. 933; GIBSON'S PAPERS, vol. i. p. 56. It
was kindly imparted to the publick by the Reverend
Dr. Vyse, who furnished Dr. Johnson with a transcript
of it.
7 At Denham-Court in Buckinghamshire. Sir William
Bowyer married a kinswoman of Lady Elizabeth Dryden;
Frances, daughter of Charles, Lord Cranbourne, eldest
son of William, the second Earl of Salisbury.
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
55
thick of hearing, rather worse than I was in town.
I am glad to find, by your letter of July 26th,
your style, that you are both in health; but won-
der you should think me so negligent as to forget
to give you an account of the ship in which your
parcel is to come. I have written to you two or
three letters concerning it, which I have sent by
safe hands, as I told you; and doubt not but you
have them before this can arrive to you. Being
out of town, I have forgotten the ship's name,
which your mother will enquire, and put it into
her letter, which is joined with mine. But the
master's name I remember: he is called Mr. Ralph
Thorp; the ship is bound to Leghorn, consigned
to Mr. Peter and Mr. Tho. Ball, merchants. I
am of your opinion, that by Tonson's means
almost all our letters have miscarried for this last
year. But, however, he has missed of his design
in the dedication, though he had prepared the
book for it; for in every figure of Eneas he has
caused him to be drawn like King William, with
a hooked nose. 8
After my return to town, I intend to alter a play
* The translation of Virgil. See p. 57, n. 9.
• In MS. Harl. p. 35, in the Museum, are the follow-
ing verses, occasioned by this circumstance:
• To be published in the next edition of Dryden's Virgil.
"Old Jacob by deep judgment sway'd,
"To please the wise beholders,
"Has placed old Nassau's hook-nosed head
"On poor Æneas' shoulders.
56
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
of Sir Robert Howard's, written long since, and
lately put by him into my hands: 'tis called THE
CONQUEST OF CHINA BY THE TARTARS. It will
cost me six weeks' study, with the probable benefit
of an hundred pounds. In the mean time I am
writing a Song for St. Cecilia's Feast, who, you
know, is the patroness of musick. This is trou-
blesome, and no way beneficial; but I could not
deny the Stewards of the Feast, who came in a
body to me to desire that kindness, one of them
being Mr. Bridgman, whose parents are your
mother's friends. I hope to send you thirty gui-
neas between Michaelmass and Christmass, of
which I will give you an account when I come to
town. I remember the counsel you give me in
your letter; but dissembling, though lawful in
some cases, is not my talent; yet, for your sake,
I will struggle with the plain openness of my na-
ture, and keep-in my just resentments against that
"To make the parallel hold tack,
"Methinks there's little lacking;
One took his father pick-a-pack,
“And t'other sent his packing."
The disagreeable repetition of the word old in the third
line might have been easily avoided, by substituting the
word great; but the writer's principles would not allow
him to give William this epithet.-In fact, neither he nor
Tonson was old at the period alluded to; though some
years afterwards (when these lines were probably written,)
the latter was so called, to distinguish him from his
nephew, the younger Jacob Tonson.
DRYDEN'S Letters.
57
degenerate order. In the mean time, I flatter not
my self with any manner of hopes, but do my duty,
and suffer for God's sake; being assured, before-
hand, never to be rewarded, though the times
should alter.-Towards the latter end of this
month, September, Charles will begin to recover
his perfect health, according to his Nativity, which,
casting it my self, I am sure is true; and all things
hitherto have happened accordingly to the very
time that I predicted them: I hope at the same
time to recover more health, according to my age.
Remember me to poor Harry, whose prayers I
earnestly desire. My Virgil succeeds in the world
beyond its desert or my expectation. You know,
the profits might have been more; but neither
my conscience nor my honour would suffer me to
take them: but I never can repent of my con-
stancy, since I am thoroughly persuaded of the
justice of the cause for which I suffer. It has
pleased GOD to raise up many friends to me
amongst my enemies, though they who ought to
have been my friends are negligent of me.
called to dinner, and cannot go on with
letter, which I desire you to excuse; and am
Your most affectionate father,
JOHN DRYDEN.
I am
this
"This probably alludes to the proposition which ap-
pears to have been made to him, concerning the dedica-
tion of his Virgil to King William; for which a valuable
pecuniary reward might have been expected.
58
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
Superscribed,
Al Illustrissimo Sige.
Carlo Dryden,
Camariere d'Honore A. S. S.
Franca per Mantoua.
In Roma.
To this Letter Lady Elizabeth Dryden subjoined,
on the same paper, the following Postscript:
My dear sons, I sent your Letter emediately to
your father, after I had read it, as you will find
by his. I have not room to say much, having
writ former Letters to you, datted the 27 of Au-
gust, your father being then out of Town: he
writes me word-he is much at woon as to his
health, and his defnese is not wosce, but much as
he was when he was heare. He expresses a great
desire to see my dear Charlles: and trully I see
noe reason why you should not both come toge-
ther, to be a comfort to woon another and to us
both, if the King of France includ Ingland in
the peace;' for doe but Gust make shift to live
wheare you are, and soe I hope you may doe
heare; for I will Leaf noe] Ston unturn'd to help
my belov'd sonns. If I cane, I will send this
Letter by the same way it came ;* that is, it was
brought me from woon Mr. Galowway, who cor-
responds with Roszie; I payd woon and Sixpence
you
The Peace of Ryswick, which was proclaimed at
London, in the following month, October 19, 1697, Q. S.
*She means, I suppose,-by the same way her son's
letter came to her.
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
59
for it, and do offer to pay him what he demandes,
so that he would take ceare the [packet] might
come safe to your handes. I long tell I heare my
deare Charlles is better. I have only room to tell
you the names of the Merchantes your parcell
went in: you are to demmand them of Mr. Robert
Ball and Thommas Ball in Lindovino in Livorno.
You are not to pay any charges for the Box, for
the Port of London; if the have demanded any of
you, send word to me what it is; for otherwayes
wee shall pay twice for them; and this Mr. Walke-
son telles me, with his service to you both. Far-
well, my deare children: GOD Almighty keep you
in his protection, for that is the wishes and prayers
of your most affec: Mother, that sends her bles-
singe to you all; not forgetting my Sonn Harry,
whose prayers I defire* for a Comfortable Meetinge.
I hope I may have some better thinges against you
come, than what is sent you in that box; there
being nothing Considurabell but my deare Jackes
play, who I desire in his next to me to give me
a true account how my deare Sonn Charlles is head
dus; for I cane be at noe rest tell I heare he is better,
or rather thourely well, which I dally pray for.
* His father had also particularly desired his son
Harry's prayers. Perhaps he was at this time intended
for holy orders, though he afterwards became an officer in
the Pope's Guards. See vol. i. part i. p. 426.
+ The education of ladies was in general so much
neglected in the last age, that Lady Elizabeth Dryden's or-
thography, however strange, was not singular. A former
letter, however, written by her to Dr. Busby, of which I
60
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
LETTER XXII.
TO MR. JACOB TONSON.
MR. TONSON,
[f. Dec. 1697.]
I THANK you heartily for the sherry; it was as
you sayd, the best of the kind I ever dranke. I
have found the catalogue you desire, of the Sub-
scribers' names, you left with me; and have sent
them to you inclosed. Remember in the copy of
verses for St. Cecilia, to alter the name of Lais,
which is twice there, for Thais: those two ladyes
were contemporaryes, which causd that small mis-
take. I wish you coud tell me how to send my
sonns our Virgil, which you gave me; and should
be glad if you coud put me in a way of remitting
thirty guineas to Rome; which I woud pay heer,
for my sonns to have the vallue there, according
as the exchange goes. Any time this fortnight
will be soon enough to send the money: the
book I know will require a longer space, because
ships go not for Italy every day.
I am
Your humble Servant,
{
JOHN DRYDEN.
I hear, Tom Brown is comeing out vpon me.
have seen the original, is not disfigured by the odd spel-
ling which we find here;
corrected by our author:
in the country.
but that Letter was probably
when this was written, he was
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
61
LETTER XXIII.
TO MR. JACOB TONSON.
MR. TONSON,
Wednesday. [f. Dec. 1697.]
2
I HAVE broken off my studies from THE CON-
QUEST OF CHINA, to review Virgil, and bestow'd
nine entire days upon him. You may have the
printed copy you sent me to-morrow morning, if
you will come for it yourself; for the printer is a
beast, and understands nothing I can say to him
of correcting the press.-Dr. Chetwood claims
my promise of the Ode on St. Cecilia's Day;
which I desire you to send to him (according to
the parliament phrase) forthwith. My wife says
you have broken your promise, about the picture,³
and desires it speedily: the rest I will tell you
when you come.
Yours,
JOHN DRYDEN.
≈ See vol. iii. p. 547, n.
3 I know not to what picture our author alludes: per-
haps a portrait of himself, which Tonson had promised to
present to Lady Elizabeth Dryden.
4
62
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
LETTER XXIV.
TO MR. JACOB TONSON.
MR. TONSON,
[f. Dec. 1697.]
You were no sooner gone, but I felt in my
pocket, and found my Lady Chudleigh's verses;
which this afternoon I gave Mr. Walsh to read in
the Coffee-house. His opinion is the same with
mine, that they are better than any which are
printed before the book: so thinks also Mr.
Wycherly. I have them by me; but do not send
them, till I heare from my Lord Clifford, whether
my Lady will put her name to them or not: there-
fore I desire they may be printed last of all the
copyes, and of all the book. I have also written
this day to Mr. Chetwood, and let him know,
S
4 Mary, the daughter of Richard Leigh, of Winslade,
in the county of Devon, Esq. She was the wife of Sir
George Chudleigh, of Ashton, in the same county, Bart,
and died in the year 1710.
The copies of commendatory verses prefixed to the
translation of Virgil. That work appears to have been
at this time sent to the press, for the second edition, which
was published in 1698: on which ground I have affixed
the conjectural date above. Lady Chudleigh's verses
were, however, not printed before our author's work, but
appeared afterwards in a Collection of her Poems, of
which the second edition was published in 8vo. in 1709.
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
63
that the book is immediately going to the press
again. My opinion is, that the printer shou'd
begin with the first Pastoral, and print on to the
end of the Georgiques, or farther, if occasion be,
till Dr. Chetwood corrects his preface," which he
writes me word is printed very false. You cannot
take too great care of the printing this edition
exactly after my amendments; for a fault of that
nature will disoblige me eternally.
8
I am glad to heare from all hands, that my
Ode' is esteem'd the best of all my poetry, by
all the town: I thought so my self when I writ it;
but being old, I mistrusted my own judgment.
I hope it has done you service, and will do more.
You told me not, but the town says you are print-
ing Ovid de Arte Amandi. I know my transla-
tion is very uncorrect; but at the same time I
know, nobody else can do it better, with all their
paines. If there be any loose papers left in the
Virgil I gave you this morning, look for them, and
send them back by my man: I miss not any yet;
but 'tis possible some may be left, because I
gave you the book in a hurry. I vow to GOD, if
Everingham takes not care of this impression, he
shall never print any thing of mine heerafter: for
I will write on, since I find I can.
• The Preface to the Pastorals, which has been errone-
ously attributed to Walsh.
7 The Ode for St. Cecilia's Day.
* Our author only translated the first book.
64
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
sonn.
9
I desire you to make sure of the three pounds of
snuff, the same of which I had one pound from
you. When you send it any morning, I will pay
for it all together. But this is not the business of
this letter. When you were heer, I intended to
have sent an answer to poor Charles his letter;
but I had not then the letter which my chirur-
geon promis'd me, of his advice, to prevent a
rupture, which he fears. Now I have the surgeon's
answer, which I have inclos'd in my letter to my
This is a business of the greatest conse-
quence in the world: for you know how I love
Charles; and therefore I write to you with all the
earnestness of a father, that you will procure Mr.
Francia' to inclose it in his packet this week: for a
week lost may be my sonn's ruine; whom I intend
to send for next summer, without his brother, as
I have written him word: and if it please God
that I must dye of over-study, I cannot spend my
life better, than in saving his. I vallue not any
price for a double letter: let me know it, and
it shall be payd; for I dare not trust it by the post:
being satisfy'd by experience, that Ferrand will do
by this, as he did by two letters which I sent my
sonns, about my dedicating to the King:' of which
1
•
9 His son Charles had probably been much hurt by a
dangerous fall at Rome. In a former Letter, his mother
inquires particularly about his head. See also vol. i. part i.
PP. 411, 417.
I
Probably the Genoese Resident at that time.
2 See p. 57. n. 9.
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
65
they received neither. If you cannot go your self,
then send a note to Signior Francia, as earnestly
as you can write it, to beg that it may go this day,
I meane Friday. I need not tell you, how much
herein you will oblige
Your Friend and Servant,
J. D.
MADAM,
LETTER XXV.
3
TO MRS. STEWARD.³
Saturday, Octob. 1st-98.
You have done me the honour to invite so
often, that it would look like want of respect to
3 This lady, who was not less distinguished for her
talents and accomplishments than her beauty and virtues,
having been both a painter and a poetess, was the eldest
surviving daughter of John Creed, of Oundle, Esq.,
(Secretary to Charles II. for the affairs of Tangier,) by
Elizabeth Pickering, his wife, who was the only daughter
of Sir Gilbert Pickering, Baronet, our author's cousin-
german; of whom, and of his amiable daughter, Mrs.
Creed, a full account has already been given. See vol. i.
part i. pp. 28-43, 340-342. Her eldest son, Richard
Creed, as we have seen, fell in the battle of Blenheim,
and was honoured with a monument in Westminster-
Abbey. Her eldest daughter, Elizabeth, was born in the
year 1672, and in 1692 married Elmes Steward, of Cot-
terstock, in the county of Northampton, Esq.; where
they principally resided. By this gentleman, who is said
to have preferred field-sports to any productions of the
VOL. I. PART II.
f
66
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
refuse it any longer. How can you be so good to
an old decrepid man, who can entertain you with
no discours which is worthy of your good sense,
and who can onely be a trouble to you in all the
time he stays at Cotterstock. Yet I will obey
your commands as far as possibly I can, and give
you the inconvenience you are pleas'd to desire:
at least for the few days which I can spare from
other necessary business, which requires me at
Tichmarsh. Therefore, if you please to send
your coach on Tuesday next by eleven a clock in
the morning, I hope to wait on you before dinner.
There is onely one more trouble, which I am
almost asham'd to name. I am obliged to visit
my Cousin Dryden of Chesterton,' some time
next week, who is nine miles from hence, and
4
Muses, she had three children; Elizabeth, who became
the wife of Thomas Gwillim, Esq., of Old Court, in
the parish of Whitchurch, near Ross in Herefordshire;
Anne, who died unmarried; and Jemima, who married
Elmes Spinckes, of Aldwinckle, Esq. Mrs. Steward, who
survived her husband above thirty years, in the latter part
of her life became blind, in which melancholy state she
died at the house of her son-in-law, Mr. Gwillim, at the
age of seventy-one, Jan. 17, 1742-3; and a monument
was erected to her memory in the church of Whitchurch.
The Hall of Cotterstock House was painted in fresco
by her, in a very masterly style, and she drew several
portraits of her friends in Northamptonshire. Her own
portrait, painted by herself, is in the possession of her
kinswoman, Mrs. Ord, of Queen Anne Street.
4 Where our author probably was at this time.
5 See vol. i. part i. p. 321, n. 6; and p. 323–326,
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
67
only five from you. If it be with your conveni-
ence to spare me your coach thether for a day, the
rest of my time till Monday is at your service;
and I am sorry for my own sake it cannot be any
longer, this year, because I have some visits after
my return hether, which I cannot avoyd. But if
it please GOD to give me life and health, I may
give you occasion another time to repent of your
kindness, by makeing you weary of my company.
My sonn kisses your hand. Be pleas'd to give his
humble service to my Cousin Steward, and mine,
Madam,
Your most obedient, oblig'd Servant,
who am,
For my Honour'd Cousine,"
These.
Mrs. Steward, att Cotterstock,
JOHN DRYDEN.
LETTER XXVI.
TO ELMES STEWARD, ESQ.
[Probably, Nov. 20, 1698.]*
MY HONOUR'D COUSIN,
I SHOU'D have receiv'd your letter with too
much satisfaction, if it had not been allay'd with
6 Our author, in addressing his female relations, gene-
rally writes Cousine, following the French mode.
7 It should seem from the subsequent letter that Dryden.
after having spent a few days with his friends at Cotter-
stock, and dispatched his business at Tichmarsh, returned
68
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
8
the bad news of my cousin your wife's indispo-
sition; which yet I hope will not continue. I am
sure, if care and love will contribute to her health,
she will want neither from so tender a husband as
you are and indeed you are both worthy of each
other. You have been pleas'd, each of you, to be
kind to my sonn and me, your poor relations,
without any merit on our side, unless you will let
our gratitude pass for our desert. And now you
are pleas'd to invite another trouble on your self,
which our bad company may possibly draw upon
you next year, if I have life and health to come
into Northamptonshyre; and that you will please
not to make so much a stranger of me another
time.—I intend my wife shall tast the plover you
did me the favour to send me.
If either your
lady or you shall at any time honour me with a
letter, my house is in Gerard-street, the fifth door
on the left hand, comeing from Newport-street. I
pray GoD I may hear better news of both your
healths, and of my good cousin Creed's," and my
cousin Dorothy,' than I have had while I was in
to Cotterstock, and passed four or five weeks there: and
this letter seems to have been written after his return to
Tichmarsh, just as he was setting out for London, and in
consequence of a present of some wild fowl.
8 His eldest son, Charles, who returned from Italy to
England about the middle of the year 1698.
9 Mrs. Steward's father, Mr. John Creed, who appears
from the next Letter to have been indisposed at this time.
He died in 1701, and was buried at Tichmarsh.
'Miss, or in the language of that day, Mistress, Dorothy
Creed, second daughter of John Creed, Esq., and sister
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
69
this country. I shall languish till you send me
word; and I assure you I write this without poe-
try, who am, from the bottome of my heart,
My honour'd Cousin's most obliged,
Humble Servant,
JOHN DRYDEN.
My sonn and I kiss my Cousin Steward's hand,
and give our service to your sister and pretty Miss
Betty.
For my Honour'd Cousin,
Elmes Steward, Esq., Att Cotterstock.
MADAM,
LETTER XXVII.
TO MRS. STEWARD.
Nov. 23d, 1698.
To take acknowledgments of favours for favours
done you, is onely yours. I am always on the re-
ceiving hand; and you who have been pleas'd to
be troubled so long with my bad company, in stead
of forgiveing, which is all I could expect, will
turn it to a kindness on my side. If your house
be often so molested, you will have reason to be
weary of it, before the ending of the year: and
wish Cotterstock were planted in a desart, an hun-
dred miles off from any poet.-After I had lost the
to Mrs. Steward. Miss, however, which about twenty
years before was only applied to women of the town, was
at this time used in speaking of very young girls. So
below," pretty Miss Betty," (afterwards Mrs. Gwillim);
who was then under six years old.
70
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
happiness of your company, I could expect no
other than the loss of my health, which follow'd,
according to the proverb, that misfortunes seldome
come alone. I had no woman to visite * but the
parson's wife; and she, who was intended by
nature as a help meet for a deaf husband, was
somewhat of the loudest for my conversation; and
for other things, I will say no more then that
she is just your contrary, and an epitome of her
own country. My journey to London was yet
more unpleasant than my abode at Tichmarsh ;
for the coach was crowded up with an old woman,
fatter than any of my hostesses on the rode. - Her
weight made the horses travel very heavily; but,
to give them a breathing time, she would often
stop us, and plead some necessity of nature, *
and tell us we were all flesh and blood: but she
did this so frequently, that at last we conspir'd
against her; and that she might not be inconve-
nienc'd by staying in the coach, turn'd her out in
a very dirty place, where she was to wade
up to
the ankles, before she cou'd reach the next hedge.
When I was ridd of her, I came sick home, and
kept my house for three weeks together; but,
* At Tichmarsh, after his return from Cotterstock.
2 The reader who may here be disposed to charge our
author with indelicacy, should consider, that the manners.
of the last age were much grosser, or, shall I say-
simpler, than they are at present; and that even in the
highest circles, and in the company of the most elegant
women, many things were said, without giving offence
to the most fastidious, which would now be thought
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
71
by advice of my Doctour, takeing twice the bitter
draught, with sena in it, and looseing at least twelve
ounces of blood, by cupping on my neck, I am
just well enough to go abroad in the afternoon;
but am much afflicted that I have you a compa-
nion of my sickness: though I 'scap'd with one
cold fit of an ague, and yours, I feare, is an inter-
mitting feavour. Since I heard nothing of your
father, whom I left ill, I hope he is recover'd of
his reall sickness, and that your sister is well of
hers, which was onely in imagination. My wife
and sonn return you their most humble service,
and I give mine to my cousin Steward.-Madam,
Your most obliged and
most obedient Servant,
JOHN DRYDEN.
[The superscription has not been preserved.]
LETTER XXVIII
MADAM,
TO MRS. STEWARD.
Dec. 12th. -98.
ALL my letters being nothing but acknowledg-
ments of your favours to me, 'tis no wonder if they
indelicate and improper. When Shakspeare wrote the
scene between Hamlet and Ophelia, in which he has been
accused of coarseness and indelicacy, there are very good
grounds for believing that he only made the Prince of
Denmark talk to the daughter of Polonius in the same
style in which his patron, Lord Southampton, addressed
the fair Mrs. Vernon, whom he married.
72
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
are all alike for they can but express the same
thing, I being eternally the receiver, and you the
giver. I wish it were in my power to turn the
skale on the other hand, that I might see how
you, who have so excellent a wit, cou'd thank on
your side. Not to name my self or my wife, my
sonn Charles is the great commender of your last
receiv'd present: who being of late somewhat
indispos'd, uses to send for some of the same sort,
which we call heer marrow-puddings, for his
suppers; but the tast of yours has so spoyl'd his
markets heer, that there is not the least compa-
rison betwixt them. You are not of an age to be
a Sybill, and yet I think you are a Prophetess; for
the direction on your basket was for him; and he
is likely to enjoy the greatest part of them: for I
always think the young are more worthy than the
old; especially since you are one of the former
sort, and that he mends upon your
upon your medicine.—
I am very glad to hear my cousin, your father, is
comeing or come to town; perhaps this ayr may
be as beneficiall to him as it has been to me: but
you tell me nothing of your own health, and I
fear Cotterstock' is too agueish for this season.-
My wife and sonn give you their most humble
thanks and service; as I do mine to my cousin
Steward; and am, Madam,
Your most oblig'd obedient Servant,
JOHN DRYDEN.
5 Cotterstock is situated near the river Nyne, and, I
believe, in a low wet country.
DRYDEN'S LEtters.
73
For Mrs. Steward,
Att Cotterstock, near Oundle,
in the county of Northton, These.
To be left with the Postmaster of Oundle.
LETTER XXIX.
MADAM,
TO MRS. STEWARD.
Candlemas-Day, 1698 [-9.]
OLD men are not so insensible of beauty, as it
may be, you young ladies think. For my own
part, I must needs acknowledge that your fair
eyes* had made me your slave before I receiv'd
your fine presents. Your letter puts me out of
doubt that they have lost nothing of their lustre,
because it was written with your own hand; and
not heareing of a feavour or an ague, I will please
my self with the thoughts that they have wholly
left you. I wou'd also flatter my self with the
hopes of waiting on you at Cotterstock some time
next summer; but my want of health may per-
haps hinder me. But if I am well enough to
travell as farr northward as Northamptonshyre,
you are sure of a guest, who has been too well
us'd, not to trouble you again.
* Mrs. Steward was at this time but twenty-seven, and
very handsome. Soon after the Revolution, she was
esteemed one of the finest women that appeared at Queen
Mary's Court.
74
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
My sonn, of whom you have done me the
favour to enquire, mends of his indisposition very
slowly; the ayr of England not agreeing with
him hetherto so well as that of Italy. The Bath
is propos'd by the Doctours, both to him and
me: but we have not yet resolv'd absolutely on
that journey; for that city is so closs and so ill
situated, that perhaps the ayr may do us more
harm than the waters can do us good: for which
reason we intend to try them heer first; and if we
find not the good effect which is promis'd of
them, we will save our selves the pains of goeing
thether. In the mean time, betwixt my intervalls
of physique and other remedies which I am useing
for my gravell, I am still drudgeing on always a
poet, and never a good one. I pass my time
sometimes with Ovid, and sometimes with our old
English poet, Chaucer; translateing such stories as
best please my fancy; and intend besides them to
add somewhat of my own: so that it is not impos-
sible, but ere the summer be pass'd, I may come
4 Here, it is observable, our author speaks of himself
with that modesty, which was natural to him, and truly
part of his character. It was only among the Criticks in
Coffee-houses, or in his letters to his bookseller, or when
he was decried and run down by his adversaries, that he
considered it necessary to keep up a proper port, and not
to abate a jot of his poetical pretensions. In those cases,
he seems to have thought it fair to follow the example,
and adopt the language, of Horace,-Sume superbiam
quæsitam meritis. See vol. i. part i. p. 477.
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
75
S
down to you with a volume in my hand, like a
dog out of the water, with a duck in his mouth.
As for the rarities you promise, if beggars might
be choosers, a part of a chine of honest bacon
wou'd please my appetite more than all the mar-
row puddings; for I like them better plain; hav-
ing a very vulgar stomach.-My wife and your
Cousin, Charles, give you their most humble
service, and thanks for your remembrance of them.
I present my own to my worthy Cousin, your
husband, and am, with all respect,
For
Madam,
Your most obliged Servant,
JOHN DRYDEN.
Mrs. Stewart, alt Cotterstock
near Oundle, in Northamptonshyre,
These.
To be left with the Postmaster of Oundle.
In Bridges's HISTORY OF NORTHAMPTONSHIRE,
vol. ii. p. 438, the following passage is found. The
author is speaking of Cotterstock :
66
Mr. Steward hath here a good estate, and a seat built
by Mr. Norton. At this house Mr. Dryden wrote his
FABLES, and spent the two last summers of his life."
We here see, how lightly traditional stories run round
the world. On examination, I believe, they will very ge-
nerally be found, like this account, to be compounded of
truth and falsehood. In the autumn of the year 1698,
Dryden made an excursion from Tichmarsh to Cotter-
stock, and appears to have passed a few weeks there;
70
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
MADAM,
LETTER XXX.
TO MRS. STEWARD.
Thursday, Feb. 9th.—98 [-9].
For this time I must follow a bad example,
and send you a shorter letter than your short one:
you were hinder'd by dancers, and I am forc'd to
dance attendance all this afternoon after a trouble-
some business, so soon as I have written this, and
seal'd it. Onely I can assure you that your father
and mother and all your relations are in health, or
were yesterday, when I sent to enquire of their
welfare.-On Tuesday night we had a violent
wind, which blew down three of my chimneys,
and dismantled all one side of my house, by
throwing down the tiles. My neighbours, and in-
deed all the town, suffer'd more or less; and some
were kill'd. The great trees in St. James's Park
are many of them torn up from the roots; as they
were before Oliver Cromwell's death," and the
and in 1699 he spent full six weeks at the same house.
Perhaps in that time he wrote two or three hundred verses
of the volume afterwards published with the title of
FABLES; but that probably was the utmost; for he him-
self has told us, that in his visits to the country his object
was, to unweary himself, not to drudge.
6 In a small MS. Common-place book written by
Archbishop Sancroft, (in the Bodleian Library, 64. Z.
p. 125,) is the following entry :
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
77
late Queen's but your father had no damage.-I
sent my man for the present you design'd me; but
he return'd empty-handed; for there was no such
::
Sep. 3, 1658. The blustring tyrant, OLIVER, in a
whirlwind left the world; dying, as he had lived, in a
storm-buried at a greater charge than the greatest Eng-
lish Kings in the peaceablest times."
Sancroft knew him well, and has painted him in his
true colours, in an admirable covert satire, published
anonymously in 1652, under the title of MODERN PO-
CIES, taken from Machiavel, Borgia, and other choise Au-
thors, by an eye-witnesse.
The storm that preceded Cromwell's death is men-
tioned by several historians, and has been recorded in
verse by Waller: but it is not equally well known that
the death of another blusterer was attended with the same
circumstance.
"On the other side (says Dr. Tanner, afterwards
Bishop of St. Asaph,) is a coeval note of an old MS.
belonging to our cathedral, [Norwich] at the odd exit of
the great Cardinal Wolsey, not mentioned, I think, in
Cavendish, or any of the Historians; much like OLIVER'S
wind.
"Ad finem Annalium Bartholomæi Cotton, MS. in
Bibl. Eccl. Cath. Norvic. habetur hæc notitia.
Anno Xti 1530, nocte immediate sequente quartum
diem Novembris, vehemens ventus quasi per totam An-
gliam accidebat; et die proximé sequente, quinto sc. die
ejusdem mensis, circa horam primam post meridiem,
captus erat Dns Thomas Wolsye, Cardinalis, in ædibus
suis de Cahowe [1. Cawood] infra diocesin suam Ebora-
censem; et postea in itinere suo versus Londiniam vigiliâ
Sti Andreæ prox. sequente apud Leycestriam moriebatur:
quo die ventus quasi Gehennalis tunc fere per totam
Angliam re-accidebat; cujus vehementiâ apud Leystoff
78
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
man as Carter, a carrier, inning at the Bear and
Ragged Staff in Smithfield, nor any one there
ever heard of such a person; by which I ghess
that some body has deceiv'd you with a counter-
feited name. Yet my obligations are the same;
and the favour shall be always own'd by,
Madam,
Your most humble Servant,
and Kinsman,
For Mrs. Stewart, 7
JOHN DRYDEN.
Alt Cotterstock neare Oundle, &c.
LETTER XXXI.
TO MRS. STEWARD.
March the 4th. 1698 [-9].
MADAM,
I HAVE reason to be pleas'd with writeing to you,
because you are daily giveing me occasions to be
infra dioc. Norwicensem, et alibi in diversis locis infra
regnum Angliæ, multæ naves perierunt." Letter from
Archdeacon Tanner to Dr. Arthur Charlett, August 11,
1709. Mss. Ballard. in Bibl. Bodl. iv. 52.
7 Our author sometimes spells his kinswoman's name
Steward, and at others Stewart. I have followed the
former mode, her husband's name being so written in the
London Gazette, when he was appointed Sheriff of the
county of Northampton; and Mrs. Steward, I have been
informed, always adhered to that orthography.
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
79
8
pleas'd. The present which you made me this
week, I have receiv'd; and it will be part of the
treat I am to make to three of my friends about
Tuesday next: my cousin Driden, of Chesterton,
having been also pleas'd to add to it a turkey
hen with eggs, and a good young goose; besides
a very kind letter, and the news of his own good
health, which I vallue more than all the rest; he
being so noble a benefactor to a poor and so un-
undeserveing a kinsman, and one of another per-
suasion in matters of religion. Your enquiry of
his welfare, and sending also mine, have at once
oblig'd both him and me. I hope my good
cousin Stewart will often visite him, especially
before hunting goes out," to be a comfort to him
in his sorrow for the loss of his deare brother,'
who was a most extrordinary well-natur'd man,
and much my friend. Exercise, I know, is my
cousin Driden's life, and the oftner he goes out
will be the better for his health.-We poor Catho-
liques daily expect a most severe Proclamation
to come out against us; and at the same time are
2
2
John Driden, Esq. his cousin-german.
› See our author's Epistle to this gentleman:
With crowds attended of your ancient race,
You seek the champagne sports or sylvan chace," &c.
Probably Bevil Driden, who died about this time.
This severe Proclamation appeared in the London
Gazette, No. 3476, Monday, March 6, 1698-9. It
enjoined all Popish Recusants to remove to their respective
places of abode; or if they had none, to the dwellings of
80
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
satisfyed that the King is very unwilling to perse-
cute us, considering us to be but an handfull, and
those disarm'd; but the Archbishop of Canterbury
is our heavy enemy, and heavy indeed he is in all
respects. ³
3
This day was play'd a reviv'd comedy of Mr.
Congreve's, call'd THE DOUBLE DEALER, which
was never very takeing. In the play-bill was
printed-"Written by Mr. Congreve; with severall
expressions omitted." What kind of expressions
those were, you may easily ghess, if you have seen
the Monday's Gazette, wherein is the King's order
for the reformation of the stage : but the printing
:
4
their fathers or mothers; and not to remove five miles
from thence and it charged the Lord-Mayor of London,
and all other Justices of Peace, to put the statute 1 Wil-
liam and Mary, c. 9. for amoving papists ten miles from
London and Westminster, into execution, by tendering
them the declaration therein mentioned; and also another
Act of William and Mary, for disarming papists.
3 Dr. Thomas Tennison, who succeeded to the See of
Canterbury in 1694, on the death of Tillotson. He is
thus sarcastically described by William Shippen, in Fac-
TION DISPLAYED, a poem written a few years afterwards:
"A pause ensued, till PATRIARCHO's grace
"Was pleas'd to rear his huge unwieldy mass ;
"A mass unanimated with a soul,
"Or else he'd ne'er be made so vile a tool:
"He'd ne'er his apostolick charge profane,
"And atheists' and fanaticks' cause maintain.
"At length, as from the hollow of an oak,
"The bulky Primate yawn'd, and silence broke :
" I much approve," &c.
DRYDEN'S LEtters.
81
an authour's name in a play-bill is a new manner
of proceeding, at least in England.-When any
So also Edmund Smith, in his elegant Ode,-CHAR-
LETTUS PERCIVALLO SUO:
"Scribe securus, quid agit Senatus,
Quid caput stertit grave Lambethanum,
Quid comes Guilford, quid habent novorum
"Dawksque Dyerque.'
Yet Tennison's Review of Bacon's writings, which was
published about twenty years before the date of this letter,
is a judicious and useful tract, and ought to be prefixed
to every edition of his works, instead of Mallet's florid and
empty Life of that great philosopher.
4 The London Gazette, No. 3474, Monday, Feb. 27,
1698-9, contains the Order alluded to:
CC
His Majesty has been pleased to command that the
following Order should be sent to both Playhouses:
His Majesty being informed that, notwithstanding an
Order made the 4th of June, 1697, by the Earl of Sun-
derland, then Lord Chamberlain of his Majesties Hous-
hold, to prevent the profaneness and immorality of the
Stage, several plays have lately been acted, containing
expressions contrary to religion and good manners: And
whereas the Master of the Revels has represented, that, in
contempt of the said Order, the Actors do often neglect
to leave out such profane and indecent expressions as he
has thought proper to be omitted: These are therefore
to signify his Majesties pleasure, that you do not hereafter
presume to act any thing in any play, contrary to religion
and good manners, as you shall answer it at your utmost
peril.-Given under my hand this 18th of February, 1698,
in the eleventh year of his Majesties reign.
"PERE. BERTIE.
"An Order has been likewise sent by his Majesties
VOL. I. PART II.
0Q
82
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
papers of verses in manuscript, which are worth
your reading, come abroad, you shall be sure of
them; because, being a poetess yourself,* you like
those entertainments. I am still drudging at a
book of Miscellanyes,' which I hope will be well
enough; if otherwise, threescore and seven may
6
command, to the Master of the Revels, not to licence
any plays containing expressions contrary to religion and
good manners; and to give notice to the Lord Chamber-
lain of his Majesties Houshold, or in his absence, to the
Vice-Chamberlain, if the players presume to act any
thing which he has struck out.'
* To this accomplished lady may be applied the fol-
lowing spirited lines in our author's Ode on Mrs. Anne
Killigrew, who, like her, cultivated the sister-arts of Poesy
and Painting:
"Born to the spacious empire of the Nine,
"One would have thought, she should have been content
"To manage well that mighty government;
"But what can young ambitious souls confine?
"To the next realm she stretch'd her sway,
“For PAINTURE near adjoining lay,
"A plenteous province and alluring prey.
*
*
*
*
*
"Thus nothing to her genius was deny'd;
But, like a ball of fire the further thrown,
"Still with a greater blaze she shone,
"And her bright soul broke out on every side."
Poetry seldom affords an image more happily illustrative
than this. Our author evidently had a sky-rocket in his
thoughts; which he has dignified, by avoiding the common
and familiar term.
5 His FABLes.
• Our author here refers to his last birth-day in 1698,
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
83
be pardon'd. Charles is not yet so well recover'd
as I wish him; but I may say, without vanity,
that his virtue and sobriety have made him much
belov'd in all companies. Both he and his mother
give you their most humble acknowledgments of
your rememb'ring them. Be pleas'd to give mine
to my Cousin Stewart, who am both his and your
Most obliged obedient Servant,
JOHN DRYDEN.
You may see I was in hast, by writeing on the
wrong side of the paper.
For Mrs. Steward, etc. ut supra.
MADAM,
LETTER XXXII.
TO MRS. STEWARD.
Tuesday, July the 11th, [1699.]
As I cannot accuse my self to have receiv'd any
letters from you without answer, so on
answer, so on the other
side I am oblig'd to believe it, because you say it.
'Tis true, I have had so many fitts of sickness, and
so much other unpleasant business, that I may
possibly have receiv'd those favours, and deferr'd
my acknowledgment till I forgot to thank you for
them. However it be, I cannot but confess that ne-
ver was any unanswering man so civilly reproach'd
when he was sixty-seven, complete. He was at this
time in his sixty-eighth year.
84
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
by a fair lady.-I presum'd to send you word by
your sisters of the trouble I intended you this
summer, and added a petition, that you would
please to order some small beer to be brew'd for
me without hops, or with a very inconsiderable
quantity; because I lost my health last year by
drinking bitter beer at Tichmarsh. It may per-
haps be sour, but I like it not the worse, if it be
small enough. What els I have to request, is
onely the favour of your coach, to meet me at
Oundle, and to convey me to you: of which I
shall not fail to give you timely notice. My
humble service attends my Cousin Stewart and
your relations at Oundle. My wife and sonn
desire the same favour; and I am particularly,
Madam,
Your most obedient Servant,
For Mrs. Stewart, etc.
JOHN DRYDEN.
LETTER XXXIII.
TO SAMUEL PEPYS, ESQ.
PADRON MIO,
July the 14th, 1699.
I REMEMBER, last year, when I had the honour
of dineing with you, you were pleas'd to recommend
* Dorothy and Jemima Creed; the latter of whom
died, Feb. 23, 1705-6, and was buried at Tichmarsh.
The original of this Letter is in the Pepysian Library,
bequeathed, together with his prints and manuscripts,
to Magdalen College, in Cambridge, by the gentleman
:
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
85
to me the character of Chaucer's GOOD PARSON.
Any desire of yours is a command to me; and
accordingly I have put it into my English, with such
additions and alterations as I thought fit. Having
translated as many Fables from Ovid, and as many
Novills from Boccace and Tales from Chaucer, as
will make an indifferent large volume in folio, I in-
tend them for the press in Michaelmass term next.
In the mean time my PARSON desires the favour of
being known to you, and promises, if you find any
fault in his character, he will reform it. When-
ever you please, he shall wait on you, and for the
to whom it is addressed; who was Secretary to the Ad-
miralty in the reign of Charles II. and James II. "He
first," says Granger, (BIOGR. HIST. iv. 322) reduced the
affairs of the Admiralty to order and method; and that
method was so just, as to have been a standing model to
his successors in that important office. His MEMOIRS
relating to the Navy is a well written piece; and his
copious collection of manuscripts, now remaining with
the rest of his library at Magdalen College in Cambridge,
is an invaluable treasure of naval knowledge. He was
far from being a mere man of business: his conversation
and address had been greatly refined by travel. He tho-
roughly understood and practised musick; was a judge of
painting, sculpture, and architecture; and had more than
a superficial knowledge in history and philosophy. His
fame among the Virtuosi was such, that he was thought
to be a very proper person to be placed at the head of the
Royal Society, of which he was some time [1685, 1686,]
President. His Prints have been already mentioned.
His Collection of English Ballads, in five large folio vo-
lumes, begun by Mr. Selden, and carried down to 1700,
is one of his singular curiosities.-Ob. 26 May, 1703.”
86
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
safer conveyance, I will carry him in my pocket;
who am
My Padrons most obedient Servant,
For Samuel Pepys, Esq.
JOHN DRYDEN.?
Att his house in York-street, These.
LETTER XXXIV.
MADAM,
TO MRS. STEWARD.
Saturday, Aug. 5th, 1699.
THIS is only a word, to threaten you with a
troublesome guest, next week: I have taken places
for my self and my sonn, in the Oundle coach,
which sets out on Thursday next the tenth of this
9 To this Letter Mr. Pepys wrote the following An-
swer:
44 SIR,
Friday, July 14, 1699.
"You truly have obliged mee; and possibly in saying
so, I am more in earnest then you can readily think; as
verily hopeing from this your copy of one GOOD PArson,
to fancy some amends made mee for the hourly offence I
beare with from the sight of soe many lewd originalls.
"I shall with great pleasure attend you on this occa-
sion, when ere you'l permit it; unless you would have
the kindness to double it to mee, by suffering my coach
to wayte on you (and who you can gayne mee ye same
favour from) hither, to a cold chicken and a sallade, any
noone after Sunday, as being just stepping into the ayre
I am most respectfully
for 2 days..
"Your honord and obedat Servant,
S. P.
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
87
present August; and hope to wait on a fair lady
at Cotterstock on Friday the eleventh. If you
please to let your coach come to Oundle, I shall
save my cousin Creed the trouble of hers. All
heer are your most humble servants, and par-
ticularly an old Cripple, who calls him self
Your most obliged Kinsman
and Admirer,
For Mrs. Stewart, Att
JOHN DRYDEN.
Cotterstock near Oundle,
in Northamptonsh. These.
To be left with the Postmaster of Oundle.
LETTER XXXV.
MADAM,
TO MRS. STEWARD.
Sept. 28th, 1699.
YOUR goodness to me will make you sollicitous
of my welfare since I left Cotterstock. My jour-
ney has in general been as happy as it cou'd be,
without the satisfaction and honour of your com-
pany. 'Tis true the Master of the stage-coach has
not been over civill to me: for he turn'd us out
of the road at the first step, and made us go to
Pilton; there we took in a fair young lady of
eighteen, and her brother, a young gentleman
they are related to the Treshams, but not of that
name: thence we drove to Higham, where we had
an old serving-woman, and a young fine mayd:
88
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
-
we din'd at Bletso, and lay at Silso, six miles
beyond Bedford. There we put out the old
woman, and took in Councellour Jennings his
daughter; her father goeing along in the Kittering
coach or rideing by it, with other company. We
all din'd at Hatfield together, and came to town
safe at seaven in the evening, We had a young
Doctour, who rode by our coach, and seem'd to
have a smickering' to our young lady of Pilton,
and ever rode before to get dinner in a readiness.
My sonn, Charles, knew him formerly a Jacobite ;
and now going over to Antigoo, with Colonel
Codrington, haveing been formerly in the West
Indies. Which of our two young ladies was the
handsomer, I know not. My sonn lik'd the
Councellour's daughter best: I thought they were
both equall. But not goeing to Tichmarsh Grove,
and afterwards by Catworth, I miss'd my two
couple of rabbets, which my Cousin, your father,
had given me to carry with me, and cou'd not see
my
sister by the way: I was likewise disappointed
of Mr. Cole's Ribadavia wine:' but I am almost
resolv'd to sue the Stage Coach, for putting me six
I
2
To smicker, though omitted by Dr. Johnson, is found
in Kersey's Dictionary, 1708; where it is interpreted-
“To look amorously or wantonly.”
2 Christopher Codrington, the noble benefactor of All-
Souls College, who was appointed Governor of the Ca-
ribbee Islands, about two months before; May 20, 1699.
In the neighbourhood of the town of Ribadavia, in
Spain, the best Spanish wine is supposed to be produced.
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
89
or seaven miles out of the way, which he cannot
justify.
Be pleas'd to accept my acknowledgment of
all
your favours, and my Cousin Stuart's; and by
employing my sonn and me in any thing you
desire to have done, give us occasion to take our
revenge* on our kind relations both at Oundle and
Cotterstock. Be pleas'd, your father, your mo-
ther, your two fair sisters, and your brother,+ may
find my sonn's service and mine made acceptable
to them by your delivery; and believe me to be
with all manner of gratitude, give me leave to add,
all manner of adoration,
Madam,
Your most obliged obedient Servant,
JOHN DRYDEN.
For Mrs. Stuart, Att
Cotterstock near Oundle,
In Northtonshire,
These.
To be left with the Postmaster
of Oundle.
* Our author has, I think, elsewhere used this expres
sion. It is a mere Gallicism, but perhaps may be excused;
for I know not that our language affords any precise
equivalent to it.
4 Colonel John Creed, whose gallantry at the battle
of Blenheim has been already mentioned. See vol. i.
part i. p. 340, n. He died at Oundle, Nov. 21, 1751,
aged 73, and was buried in the church of Tichmarsh.
90
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
1
LETTER XXXVI.
J
TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE CHARLES MONTAGUE."
SIR,
6
[Octob. 1699.]
THESE Verses had waited on you with the
former, but that they wanted that correction which
I have given them, that they may the better
endure the sight of so great a judge and poet. I
am now in feare that I have purg'd them out of
their spirit; as our Master Busby us'd to whip a
boy so long, till he made him a confirm'd block-
head. My Cousin Driden saw them in the coun-
try; and the greatest exception he made to them
5 The superscription of this letter is wanting; but that
it was addressed to Mr. Montague, is ascertained by the
words-" From Mr. Dryden," being indorsed on it, in
that gentleman's handwriting. Charles Montague, (after-
wards Earl of Halifax,) was at this time First Lord of the
Treasury, and Chancellor of the Exchequer; the latter
of which offices he had held from the year 1694.-The
date is supplied by the subsequent letter.
Pope, in his character of Montague, in the Epistle to
Arbuthnot, has asserted, that our author alone, of all the
poetical tribe," escaped his judging eye:" but we here
find that he was mistaken.
"The Verses addressed to his kinsman, John Driden,
of Chesterton, Esq.-The former poem which had been
submitted to Mr. Montague, was that addressed to Mary,
Duchess of Ormond. It may be found at the end of
vol. iii. They were both inserted in the volume of
FABLES, which was then printing. See the next letter,
į
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
91
was, a satire against the Dutch valour in the last
war. He desir'd me to omit it, (to use his own
words) out of the respect he had to his Sovereign.
I obey'd his commands, and left onely the praises,
which I think are due to the gallantry of my own
countrymen. In the description which I haveė
made of a Parliament-man,' I think I have not
only drawn the features of my worthy kinsman,
but have also given my own opinion of what an
Englishman in Parliament ought to be; and
deliver it as a memorial of my own principles to
all posterity. I have consulted the judgment of
my unbyass'd friends, who have some of them the
honour to be known to you; and they think there
is nothing which can justly give offence in that
part of the poem. I say not this, to cast a blind
on your judgment, (which I cou'd not do, if I
indeavour'd it,) but to assure you, that nothing
relateing to the publique shall stand without your
permission; for it were to want common sence to
desire your patronage, and resolve to disoblige
you: And as I will not hazard my hopes of your
protection, by refusing to obey you in any thing
which I can perform with my conscience or my
honour, so I am very confident you will never
impose any other terms on me. My thoughts
at present are fix'd on Homer: and by my trans-
"Beginning thus:
"A patriot both the King and Country serves,
Prerogative and privilege preserves," &c.
92
DRYDEN'S Letters.
lation of the first Iliad, I find him a poet more
according to my genius than Virgil, and conse-
quently hope I may do him more justice, in his
fiery way of writeing; which, as it is liable to more
faults, so it is capable of more beauties than the
exactness and sobriety of Virgil. Since 'tis for
my country's honour as well as for my own, that I
am willing to undertake this task, I despair not of
being encourag'd in it by your favour, who am,
Sir,
8
Your most obedient Servant,
JOHN DRYDEN,
MADAM,
LETTER XXXVII.
TO MRS. STEWARD.
Nov. 7th, [1699.]
EVEN your expostulations are pleasing to me;
for though they shew you angry, yet they are
not without many expressions of your kindness;
and therefore I am proud to be so chidden. Yet
I cannot so farr abandon my own defence, as to
confess any idleness or forgetfulness on my part.
What has hind'red me from writeing to you, was
neither ill health, nor a worse thing, ingratitude;
but a flood of little businesses, which yet are
⁹ We find nearly the same sentiment in the Preface to
the FABLES.
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
93
:
necessary to my subsistance, and of which I hop'd
to have given you a good account before this
time but the Court rather speaks kindly of me,
than does any thing for me, though they promise
largely; and perhaps they think I will advance as
they go backward, in which they will be much
deceiv'd: for I can never go an inch beyond my
conscience and my honour. If they will consider
me as a man who has done my best to improve the
language, and especially the poetry, and will be
content with my acquiescence under the present
Government, and forbearing satire on it, that I
can promise, because I can perform it: but I can
neither take the oaths, nor forsake my religion :
because I know not what church to go to, if I
leave the Catholique; they are all so divided
amongst them selves in matters of faith, necessary
to salvation, and, yet all assumeing the name of
Protestants. May God be pleas'd to open your
eyes, as he has open'd mine! Truth is but one;
and they who have once heard of it, can plead no
excuse, if they do not embrace it. But these are
things too serious for a trifling letter.
If you desire to hear any thing more of my
affairs, the Earl of Dorsett and your Cousin
Montague have both seen the two poems, to the
Duchess of Ormond, and my worthy Cousin
Driden; and are of opinion that I never writt
better. My other friends are divided in their
judgments, which to preferr; but the greater part
are for those to my dear kinsman; which I have
94
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
corrected with so much care, that they will now be
worthy of his sight, and do neither of us any
dishonour after our death.
There is this day to be acted a new tragedy,
made by Mr. Hopkins,' and, as I believe, in rhime.
He has formerly written a play in verse, call'd
BOADICEA, which you fair ladyes lik'd; and is a
poet who writes good verses without knowing how
or why; I mean, he writes naturally well, without
art, or learning, or good sence. Congreve is ill of
the gout at Barnet Wells. I have had the honour
of a visite from the Earl of Dorsett, and din'd with
him.-Matters in Scotland are in a high ferment,'
1
9 FRIENDSHIP IMPROVED, a tragedy, written by Charles
Hopkins, the son of Dr. Ezekiel Hopkins, Bishop of
Derry in Ireland. He was bred for some years in the
College of Dublin, from which he was removed to
Queen's College, in Cambridge, where he took the degree
of B. A. in 1688. His first tragedy, PYRRHUS, KING
OF EPIRUS, was exhibited in 1695; BOADICEA, in 1697.
He died in 1700, in the 36th year of his age.
A Scottish Company of Adventurers, in 1698, had
attempted to make a settlement for the purposes of com-
merce, on the coast of Darien, in America. In conse-
quence of representations from the Spaniards, who were
jealous of the new settlers, and of this project being dis-
agreeable to the Dutch and English merchants, King
William had sent orders to the Governours of the Colo-
nies to issue proclamations forbidding his subjects in
America to give any assistance to the Adventurers. The
Company, after their miscarriage, sought relief by an
address to the King; which not meeting with a favourable
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
95
2
and next door to a breach betwixt the two na-
tions; but they say from Court, that France and
we are hand and glove. 'Tis thought, the King
will endeavour to keep up a standing army, and
make the stirr in Scotland his pretence for it: my
Cousin Driden, and the Country Party, I sup-
pose, will be against it; for when a spirit is rais'd,
'tis hard conjuring him down again. You see I
am dull by my writeing news; but it may be, my
Cousin Creed' may be glad to hear what I believe
is true, though not very pleasing. I hope he
recovers health in the country, by his staying so
long in it. My service to my Cousin Stuart and
all at Oundle. I am, faire Cousine,
Your most obedient Servant,
JOHN DRYDEN.
For Mrs. Stuart, Att
Cotterstock near Oundle,
In Northamptonshyre,
These.
To be left at the Posthouse
in Oundle.
answer, the whole Scottish nation was thrown into a high
ferment, and about the end of the year 1699 seemed ripe
for a general revolt.
2 Mr. John Driden, of Chesterton, at this time repre-
presented the County of Huntingdon in parliament.
3 Mrs. Steward's father, Mr. John Creed, of Oundle.
鹭
​96
DRYDEN'S LETTERS,
LETTER XXXVIII.
TO MRS. ELIZABETH THOMAS, JUN.“
MADAM,
Nov. 12, 1699.
The letter you were pleas'd to direct for me, to
be left at the Coffee-house last summer, was a
great honour; and your verses' were, I thought,
too good to be a woman's: some of my friends, to
whom I read them, were of the same opinion.
"Tis not over-gallant, I must confess, to say this
of the fair sex ; but most certain it is, that they
▲ Of this lady a full account has already been given.
See vol. i. part i. p. 348-355. This and the two fol-
lowing Letters were printed by Curl in the second
volume of Pope's LITERARY CORRESPONDENCE, 8vo.
1735, from copies furnished by her. He has not there
affixed any date either to this or the next Letter; but
prefixed to the Life of Mrs. Thomas, under the title of
CORINNA, ("Memoirs of Pylades and Corinna, 8vo.
1731,) is a short extract from that before us, dated Nov.
12, 1699. With her usual disregard of truth, it is there
represented to have been addressed to her in Great
Russel-street, Bloomsbury; though the Letter itself shews
that the writer knew no more of her place of residence,
than that she lived somewhere near St. Giles's; and Curll
has ascertained her residence not to have been then in
Russel-street.
s" A Pastoral Elegy to the memory of the Hon. Cecilia
Bew," published afterwards in the Poems of Mrs. Thomas,
8vo. 1727.
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
97
generally write with more softness than strength.
On the contrary, you want neither vigour in your
thoughts, nor force in your expressions, nor har-
mony in your numbers; and methinks I find much
of Orinda in your manner; to whom I had the
honour to be related, and also to be known. But
I continued not a day in the ignorance of the
person to whom I was oblig'd; for, if you remem-
ber, you brought the verses to a bookseller's shop,
and enquir'd there, how they might be sent to
me. There happen'd to be in the same shop a
gentleman, who heareing you speak of me, and
seeing a paper in your hand, imagin'd it was a libel
against me, and had you watch'd by his servant,
till he knew both your name, and where you liv'd,
of which he sent me word immediately. Though
I have lost his Letter, yet I remember
you live
some where about St. Giles's,' and are an only
daughter. You must have pass'd your time in
reading much better books than mine; or other-
wise you cou'd not have arriv'd to so much know-
ledge as I find you have. But whether Sylph or
Nymph, I know not: those fine creatures, as your
6 Mrs. Catharine Philips, a poetess of the last age, who
received from her contemporaries the most extravagant
praises, and is now nearly forgotten. She died in her
thirty-fourth year, June 22, 1664. Her husband was
probably a relation of Sir Richard Philipps, Baronet, who
married our author's aunt.
? She lived with her mother, Mrs. Elizabeth Thomas.
(as we learn from Curll,) in Dyot-street, St, Giles's.
VOL. I. PART II.
h
Uor M
98
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
8
author, Count Gabalis, assures us, have a mind to
be christen'd, and since you do me the favour to
desire a name from me, take that of CORINNA, if
you please; I mean not the lady with whom Ovid
was in love, but the famous Theban poetess, who
overcame Pindar five times, as historians tell us.
I would have call'd you SAPHO, but that I hear
you are handsomer. Since you find I am not
altogether a stranger to you, be pleas'd to make
me happier by a better knowledge of you; and
in stead of so many unjust praises which you give
me, think me only worthy of being,
Madam,
Your most humble Servant,
and Admirer,
JOHN DRYDEN.
* In the " History of the Rosicrucian Doctrine of
Spirits," from which Pope borrowed the machinery of
THE RAPE OF THE LOCK. Le Comte de Gabalis was a
fictitious name; the real author being the Abbé de Vil-
He was
lars, whose family name was Montfaucon.
assassinated by one of his relations, on the road from
Paris to Lyons, in 1675. His book appeared in 1670.-
I do not, however, find there any such passage, as that
here alluded to. The only one that bears any kind of
resemblance to it, is in p. 17 of the English translation,
(for I have not the original by me,) where it is said, that
these inhabitants of the elements have a desire to unite
themselves to mankind.-I suspect that the words--
"have a mind to be christen'd-" relate, not to the
Comte de Gabalis, but to Mrs. Thomas; and that a pre-
ceding sentence was inadvertently omitted by the original
publisher of this letter.
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
99
t
LETTER XXXIX.
TO MRS. ELIZABETH THOMAS, JÚN.9
MADAM,
[Nov. 1699.]
THE great desire which I observe in you to write
well, and those good parts which God Almighty
and Nature have bestow'd on you, make me not
to doubt, that by application to study, and the
9 In printing this letter I have followed a transcript
which I made some years ago from the original. It is
preserved in a small volume in the Bodleian Library,
consisting chiefly of Pope's original Letters to Henry
Cromwell, which Mrs. Thomas sold to Curll, the book-
seller, who published them unfaithfully. It afterwards.
fell into the hands of Dr. Richard Rawlinson, by whom
it was bequeathed to that Library.
In the same volume is the copy of a Letter signed
Jon. Dryden, addressed to Mrs. Elizabeth Cleaver, at Dr.
Du Moulin's, Canterbury; dated Nov. 24, 1679; giving
an account of the death of "dear Lady Clifford :" but I
do not believe it to have been written by our author,
because in all his letters that I have seen, he writes either
his Christian name at length, or the initial letter of it, or
the first two letters (Jo.); and he had a kinsman, Jona-
than Dryden, fellow of Trinity College in Cambridge,
who has thus subscribed his name (Jon. Dryden) to an`
original letter addressed to Dr. Busby, preserved in the
British Museum. The letter on the death of Lady
Clifford is of very little value.
Uor M
100
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
1
I
reading of the best authors, you may be absolute
mistress of poetry. 'Tis an unprofitable art, to
those who profess it; but you, who write only for
your diversion, may pass your hours with pleasure
in it, and without prejudice; always avoiding (as
I know you will,) the licence which Mrs. Behn'
allow'd her self, of writeing loosely, and giveing, if
may have leave to say so, some scandall to the
modesty of her sex. I confess, I am the last man
who ought, in justice, to arraign her, who have
been my self too much a libertine in most of my
poems; which I shou'd be well contented I had
time either to purge, or to see them fairly burn'd.
But this I need not say to you, who are too well
born, and too well principled, to fall into that mire.
In the mean time, I would advise you not to
trust too much to Virgil's PASTORALS; for as ex-
cellent as they are, yet Theocritus is far before
him, both in softness of thought, and simplicity
of expression. Mr. Creech has translated that
1 Mrs. Thomas had mentioned, in her letter to Dryden,
that in her verses she had made Mrs. Behn her model.
She meant, she says, to imitate only her numbers.
2 Dr. Johnson differed from our author on this subject,
preferring the Pastorals of Virgil to those of Theocritus.
"Virgil," says that great critick, "wrote, when there had
been a larger influx of knowledge into the world, than
when Theocritus lived. Theocritus does not abound in
description, though living in a beautiful country: the
manners painted are coarse and gross. Virgil has much
more description, more sentiment, more of nature, and
more of art." Boswell's Life of Johnson, iv. 2. third edit.
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
101
Greek poet, which I have not read in English. If
you have any considerable faults, they consist
chiefly in the choice of words, and the placeing
them so as to make the verse run smoothly; but
I am at present so taken up with my own studies,
that I have not leisure to descend to particulars;
being, in the mean time, the fair Corinna's
Most humble and most
faithful Servant,
JOHN DRYDEN.
P. S. I keep your two copies,' till you want
them, and are pleas'd to send for them.
LETTER XL.
TO MRS. STEWARD.
Saturday, Nov. 26th. [1699.]
AFTER a long expectation, Madam, at length
your happy letter came to your servant, who
almost despair'd of it. The onely comfort I had,
was, my hopes of seeing you, and that you de-
3 The Pastoral Elegy already mentioned, and "THE
TRIPLE LEAGUE, written in imitation of Mrs. Behn,"
and inserted afterwards in Mrs. Thomas's Poems. She
had sent these two papers of verses to our author, (who
was then unknown to her,) with a letter requesting that
he would peruse and correct them.
102
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
fer'd writeing, because you wou'd surprise me
with your presence, and beare your relations com-
pany to town.-Your neighbour, Mr. Price, has
given me an apprehension that my cousin, your
father, is in some danger of being made Sheriff
the following yeare; but I hope 'tis a jealousy
without ground, and that the warm season only
keeps him in the country.-If you come up next
week, you will be entertain'd with a new tragedy,
which the authour of it, one Mr. Dennis, cryes up
at an excessive rate; and Colonel Codrington,
who has seen it, prepares the world to give it loud
applauses. 'Tis called IPHIGENIA, and imitated
from Euripides, an old Greek poet. This is to be
acted at Betterton's house; and another play of
the same name is very shortly to come on the
stage in Drury-Lane.-I was lately to visite the
Duchess of Norfolk; and she speaks of
you with
much affection and respect. Your cousin Mon-
tague," after the present session of parliament, will
4
4 See p. 88. n. 2. Colonel Codrington wrote the
Epilogue to it.
5 Mary, the daughter of Henry Mordaunt, the second
Earl of Peterborough, and wife of Thomas the seventh
Duke of Norfolk, who at this time was soliciting to be
divorced from her by Act of Parliament, for criminal
conversation with Sir John Germaine. See vol. i. part i.
P. 415, n. The Duke of Norfolk was a distant relation
of our poet's wife.
The Right Hon. Charles Montague, who on the 2d
of June 1699, had been deprived of the office of Chan-
cellor of the Exchequer; and a few days before this
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
103
:
8
be created Earl of Bristoll," and I hope is much
my friend but I doubt I am in no condition of
having a kindness done, haveing the Chancellour
my enemy; and not being capable of renounceing
the cause for which I have so long suffer'd.-My
Cousin Driden of Chesterton is in town, and lodges
with my brother in Westminster. My sonn has
seen him, and was very kindly receiv'd by him.—
Let this letter stand for nothing, because it has
nothing but news in it, and has so little of the
main business, which is to assure my fair Cousine
how much I am her admirer, and her
Most devoted Servant,
JOHN DRYDEN.
letter was written, (Nov. 15) was removed from the
Treasury, of which he was then one of the Lords Com-
missioners; not First Lord, as erroneously stated in Beat-
son's POLITICAL INDEX, i. 242. Mrs. Creed, (Mrs. Stew-
ard's mother,) and Mr. Montague, were second cousins.
7 Such, it appears, was the rumour of the day. He
did not, however, obtain either the title of Bristol, or a
peerage, at that time; but about a year afterwards, on the
13th of December, 1700, he was created Baron of Halifax,
and soon after the accession of George I. was made an
Earl, with the same title.
8 Lord Somers.-Does not this passage
add some sup-
port to what has been suggested in our author's Life,
(vol. i. p. i. p. 165,) that a part of Dryden's SATIRE TO
HIS MUSE was written in his younger days by this great
man ?
9 Erasmus Dryden, who lived in King's-street, West-
minster, and was a grocer. In Dec. 1710, he succeeded
to the title of Baronet.
104
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
F
I write no recommendations of service to our
friends at Oundle, because I suppose they are
leaveing that place; but I wish my Cousin Stuart a
boy, as like Miss Jem:* as he and you can make
him. My wife and sonn are never forgetfull of
their acknowledgments to you both.
For Mrs. Stuart, Att
Cotterstock near Oundle,
in the County of Northton, These.
To be left at the Posthouse
in Oundle.
LETTER XLI.
MADAM,
TO MRS. STEWARD.
Thursday, Dec. the 14th, 1699.
WHEN I have either too much business, or want
of health, to write to you, I count my time is lost,
or at least my conscience accuses me that I spend
it ill. At this time my head is full of cares, and
my body ill at ease. My book is printing, and
2
* Jemima, Mrs. Steward's youngest daughter, probably
then four or five years old. Hence Miss Jem. See
68, n.9.
p.
This friendly wish was not crowned with success.
Mrs. Steward had three daughters, but never bore a son.
FABLES, ANCIENT AND MODERN.
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
105
my
3
#
bookseller makes no hast. I had last night
at bed-time an unwelcome fit of vomiting; and
my sonn, Charles, lyes sick upon his bed with the
colique, which has been violent upon him for
almost a week. With all this, I cannot but
remember that you accus'd me of barbarity, I
hope, in jeast onely, for mistaking one Sheriff for
another, which proceeded from my want of heareing
well. I am heartily sorry that a chargeable office
is fallen on my Cousin Stuart. But my Cousin
Driden comforts me, that it must have come one
time or other, like the small-pox; and better have
it young, than old. I hope it will leave no great
marks behind it, and that your fortune will no more
feel it than your beauty, by the addition of a year's
wearing. My cousine, your mother, was heer
yesterday, to see my wife, though I had not the
happiness to be at home.-Both the IPHIGENIAS
have been play'd with bad success; and being
3 In the latter part of the last century, the vowel (e)
seems by general agreement to have been ejected from
certain classes of verbs and substantives; as if the pro-
portion of consonants to vowels were not already too
great in our language. On this ground, they wrote
mov'd, prov'd, tast, hast, plac'd, oblig'd, &c.; but this
unsightly practice has for these last fifty years been very
properly discontinued, at least in most printed works.
4 Elmes Steward, Esq., was appointed Sheriff of the
county of Northampton in Nov. 1699.
5 Dennis's IPHIGENIA was performed at the Theatre
in Little Lincoln's Fields; and ACHILLES, or IPHI-
106
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
,
both acted one against the other in the same
week, clash'd together, like two rotten ships
which cou'd not endure the shock, and sunk to
rights. The King's Proclamation against vice and
GENIA IN AULIS, written by Abel Boyer, and (if we are
to believe the author) corrected by Dryden, was acted at
the Theatre in Drury-Lane. Dennis says in his Preface,
that the success of his play was neither despicable nor
extraordinary ;" but Gildon in his " Comparison between
the two Stages," 8vo. 1702, informs us, that it was acted
but six times; and that the other tragedy, after four re-
presentations, was laid aside.
CC
It is extraordinary that Dryden should not have men-
tioned Farquhar's TRIP TO THE JUBILEE, which we learn.
from Boyer's Preface, had been acted at Drury-Lane with
considerable success, immediately before his ACHILLES
was produced. Another difficulty (says the author,) this
play laboured under, was, its being acted at a time when
the whole town was so much and so justly diverted with the
TRIP TO THE JUBILEE." One of Farquhar's biographers
says, that this comedy was exhibited fifty-three times in
that season; but the theatrical history of that period con-
futes his assertion. According to Gildon, Betterton
having gained a great deal of money by reviving KING
HENRY THE EIGHTH, and King HENRY THE FOURTH,
(which in a letter written Jan. 28, 1699-1700, is said to
have drawn "all the town more than any new play that has
been performed of late." See vol. i. part i. p. 329, n.)
the manager of the theatre in Drury-lane, after the failure
of his IPHIGENIA, produced Ben Jonson's Fox, and AL-
CHEMIST, and THE SILENT WOMAN; and towards the
end of the season brought out Fletcher's PILGRIM, altered
by Vanbrugh, with additions by Dryden; exertions,
which would scarcely have been necessary, if Farquhar's
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
107
profaneness is issued out in print; but a deep
disease is not to be cur'd with a slight medicine.
The parsons, who must read it, will find as little ef-
fect from it, as from their dull sermons: 'tis a scare-
crow, which will not fright many
birds from prey-
ing on the fields and orchards.-The best news
I heare is, that the land will not be charg'd very
deep this yeare: let that comfort you for your
Shrievalty, and continue me in your good graces,
who am, fair Cousine,
Your most faithfull oblig'd Servant,
Jo: DRYDEN.
For Mrs. Stuart,
Att Cotterstock near Oundle,
in Northamptonshyre,
These.
To be left with the Postmaster
of Oundle.
comedy had attracted fifty-three audiences. It is more
probable, that it was not performed oftener than eighteen
or twenty times at the utmost.
In the London Gazette, No. 3557, Thursday, Dec.
14, 1699, it is mentioned, that a Proclamation for pre-
venting and punishing immorality and profaneness, had
been issued out on the 11th instant.
108
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
LETTER XLII.
TO MRS. ELIZABETH THOMAS, JUN.
MADAM,
Friday, Dec. 29, 1699.
I HAVE sent your poems back again, after
having kept them so long from you; by which
you see I am like the rest of the world, an impu-
dent borrower, and a bad pay-master. You take
more care of my health than it deserves: that of
an old man is always crazy, and at present, mine
is worse than usual, by a St. Anthony's fire in one
of my legs though the swelling is much abated,
yet the pain is not wholly gone, and I am too weak
to stand upon it. If I recover, it is possible I may
attempt Homer's Iliad. A specimen of it (the first
book) is now in the press, among other poems of
mine, which will make a volume in folio, of
twelve shillings' price; and will be publish'd within
this month. I desire, fair author, that you will
be pleas'd to continue me in your good graces,
who am with all sincerity and gratitude,
7
Your most humble Servant,
and Admirer,
JOHN DRYDEn.
• Relying on this passage, I once supposed that the
book here spoken of, his FABLES, was published in
January; but it did not appear till the first week in March.
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
10g
MADAM,
LETTER XLIII.
TO MRS. STEWARD.
Feb. 23d. [1699-1700.]
THOUGH I have not leisure to thank you for the
last trouble I gave you, yet haveing by me two
lampoons lately made, I know not but they may be
worth your reading; and therefore have presum'd
to send them. I know not the authours; but the
town will be ghessing. The BALLAD OF THE
PEWS, which are lately rais'd higher at St. James's
church, is by some sayd to be Mr. Manwareing,
or my Lord Peterborough: the poem of THE
CONFEDERATES Some think to be Mr. Walsh: the
copies are both lik'd. And there are really two
factions of ladyes, for the two play-houses. If you
do not understand the names of some persons
mention'd, I can help you to the knowledge of
them. You know, Sir Tho: Skipwith is master
of the play-house in Drury-lane; and my Lord
Scarsdale is the patron of Betterton's house, being
in love with somebody there. The Lord Scott is
second sonn to the Duchess of Monmouth.
I
Our author's memory here deceived him. From
the ballad itself we learn, that it was the Chapel Royal at
St. James's, in which the pews were raised.
• Arthur Maynwaring. See vol. i. part i. p. 546, n. 8.
110
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
need not tell you who my Lady Darentwater is;
but it may be you know not her Lord is a poet,
and none of the best. Forgive this hasty billet,
from
Your most oblig'd Servant,
For Mrs. Stewart,
JOHN DRYDEN.
Att Cotterstock near Oundle,
in Northamptonshyre, These.
To be left with the Postmaster of Oundle.
The two lampoons above mentioned do not appear to have
been preserved by Mrs. Steward; at least they have not
come to my hauds. However, after some fruitless inquiry
concerning the former of them, which I expected to have
found in the Pepysian Collection in Magdalen College, in
Cambridge, I have recovered them both.-Either Dryden
by the Ballad of the Pews, meant only to describe it as a
Ballad concerning the pews, which, &c. or it afterwards
assumed a new name; for it appears in the STATE POEMs,
vol. iii. p. 372, under the following title:
A new Ballad, call'd,
THE BRAWNY BISHOP'S COMPLAINT.
To the tune of-Packington's Pound. 9
1.
WHEN Burnet perceiv'd that the beautiful dames
Who flock'd to the chapel of hilly St. James,
9 This tune was extremely popular in the last century,
many ballads, both on political subjects and subjects of
gallantry, having been adapted to it. It is at least as old
as the time of King James the First, being introduced in
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
111
On their lovers the kindest of looks did bestow,
And smil'd not on him, while he bellow'd' below,
Ben Jonson's BARTHOLOMEW FAIR, 1614, where Night-
ingale, a ballad-singer, sings a very long song to this
tune, which is there called Pagginton's Pound, and is said
so be a country-dance. In that ballad each stanza con-
sists of eleven lines, and ends with this couplet, by the first
words of which the tune was also frequently described:
Youth, youth, thou had'st better been starv'd by thy
nurse,
"Than live to be hanged for cutting a purse."
But who Mr. Packington was, or where his pound was
situated, our musical antiquaries have not informed us.
Perhaps he was a gallant of those days, whose name was
attached to a country-dance, in which each couple suc-
cessively was encircled by the other dancers, and thus
placed in a kind of pound.
Among other old popular airs, this was adopted by Gay
in his BEGGAR'S OPERA, where it is introduced in the
third act, sc. ii.
"Thus gamesters united in friendship are found," &c.
I
According to Shippen's sarcastick representation,
(FACTION DISPLAYED, 4to, 1704,) Bishop Burnet's voice
was uncommonly loud:
"Full of such stuff, he would have giv'n it vent,
“But that black ARIO's fierceness did prevent :
"A Scotch, seditious, unbelieving priest,
"The brawny chaplain of the Calves-head Feast:
"Who first his patron, then his prince betray'd,
And does the church he's sworn to guard, invade,
"Warm with rebellious rage, he thus began:
To talk of calling life again, is vain.
112
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
}
To the Princess2 he went,
With pious intent,
This dangerous ill in the church to prevent :
O Madam! quoth he, our religion is lost,
If the ladies thus ogle the Knights of the Toast. 3
"Peace to the GLORIOUS dead! We justly mourn
"His ashes:-ever sacred be his urn!
"But here, my lords, we are together met,
To vow to ANNA's sceptre endless hate.
"For since my hope of Winton is expired,
"With just revenge and indignation fired,
C
"I'll write, and talk, and preach her title down;
My thund'ring voice shall shake her in the throne ;
Do you the sword, and I'll engage the gown."
1683 had been married
2 The Princess Anne, who in
to George, Prince of Denmark. Queen Mary being at
this time dead, the Princess of Denmark was now the
first lady in the English Court.
3 Not long before this ballad was written, a Society of
Gentlemen had been instituted, who were distinguished
by the title of the Knights of the Toast, from their drink-
ing ladies' healths, in regular succession, after dinner;
which custom was then a novelty, as was the term toast.
No dictionary before the Revolution, that I have seen,
acknowledges the word, thus applied. According to
Addison, however, it was familiar in this sense at an
earlier period, and "had its rise from an accident in the
town of Bath, in the time of Charles the Second.”
"It happened, (says he) that on a publick day, a cele-
brated beauty of those times was in the Cross Bath; and
one of the crowd of her admirers took a glass of the
water in which the fair one stood, and drank her health
to the company. There was in the place a gay fellow,
DRYDEN'S LEtters.
113
2.
Your Highness observes, how I labour and sweat,
Their affections to raise, and new flames to beget;
half fuddled; who offered to jump in, and swore, though
he liked not the liquor, he would have the toast. He
was opposed in his resolution; yet this whim gave foun-
dation to the present honour, which is done to the lady
we meniion in our liquors, who has ever since been
called a TOAST."-TATLER, No. 24, June 4, 1709.
the 129th number of the same periodical paper, Pasquin,
in a letter from Rome, desires an explanation of this
strange term, and requests to know, whether the ladies so
called are Nuns, or Lay-sisters.
In
Colonel Heveningham, who will be mentioned again
hereafter, not long before this ballad appeared, had written
a lampoon against the Knights of the Toast, to which a
reply may be found in the STATE POEMS, vol. ii. p. 256,
beginning with these lines:
O Harry, can'st thou find no subject fit,
"But thy best friends, to exercise thy wit?
"No order but the Toast, to ridicule," &c.
This Society appears to have given rise soon afterwards
to the KIT-KAT Club, (see vol. i. part i. p. 525;) and the
beauties whom that Club celebrated by verses written on
their drinking glasses, were all called Ladies of the Toast.
See" A Decree for conducting the treaty between Dr.
Swift and Mrs. Anne Long:-' And whereas the said
Mrs. Long, humbly acknowledging and allowing the
right of the said Doctor, doth yet insist upon certain
privileges and exceptions, as a Lady of the TOAST," &c.
Nichols's Suppl. to Swift's Works, iii. 96.
The first lady who was thus distinguished, appears to
have been Lord Lansdowne's MIRA, Mrs. Frances Brude-
nell, the youngest daughter of Francis, Lord Brudenell,
i
VOL. I. PART II.
-
114
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
i
And sure when I preach, all the world will agree,
That their ears and their eyes should be pointed on me:
But now I can't find
One beauty so kind,
As my parts to regard, or my presence to mind:
who died in the life-time of his father, Robert, the second
Earl of Cardigan. Hence, on one of the toasting-glasses
of the Kit-Kat Club, the following verses were inscribed
in 1703, probably by Granville :
Imperial Juno gave her matchless grace,
"And Hebe's youthful bloom adorns her face:
"Bright as the star that leads the evening host,
"Brudenell precedes, the glory of the Toast."
So also in THE CELEBRATED BEAUTIES, a poem, written
about the year 1704:
"What mighty glories shall this fair adorn,
"Allied to Mira, and of Richmond born!
"Mira so bright to kindle Granville's fire,
"How did she shine, that could such warmth inspire!
"Richmond so great, to give that title fame,
"And more than equal her, from whom our toasting came."
The lady here celebtated was Lady Louisa Lenox, (then
about ten years old,) daughter of Charles Lenox, Duke
of Richmond, by Anne Brudenell, Mira's eldest sister.
Frances Brudenell, the original Lady of the Toast, was
first married to Charles Livinston, Earl of Newburgh
in Scotland; and secondly, to Richard Lord Bellew, an
Irish Peer. She lived, I believe, to near the end of the
reign of George the Second. In 1727, Dr. King of
Oxford, who had some dispute with her concerning pro-
perty in Ireland, wrote a bitter satirical poem, entitled
THE TOAST, of which this lady is the heroine. It was
first printed in Dublin; and was inserted, with many
additions, in the unpublished collection of Dr. King's
works, printed in 4to. at Oxford, in 1736.
DRYDEN'S LETters.
115
Nay, I scarce have a sight of any one face,
But those of old Oxford, and ugly Ardglass. 5
In one of Settle's pieces, purchased some time ago,
Mr. Bindley found a loose sheet containing a manuscript
poem written by him, addressed" to the most renowned
the President, [probably either Lord Dorset or Mr. Mon-
tague,] and the rest of the Knights of the most noble
Order of the TOAST;" in which the poet endeavours to
propitiate the person to whom these verses served as a
begging Petition, by asserting the dignity and antiquity
of this illustrious Society. They appear to have been
written in 1699.
**
Why should the noble Windsor garters boast
"Their fame, above the Knighthood of the Toast ?
"Is 't on their first original they build?
"Their high-priz'd knighthood these to you must yield.
"A lady dropp'd a garter at a ball;
"A toy for their foundation; was that all?
Suppose the nymph that lost it was divine;
"The garter's but a relique from the shrine:
"The Toast includes the deity ;—not one star,
"But the whole constellation of the Fair."
The custom of drinking ladies' healths, in regular succes-
sion, at this time being novel, was considered as a kind
of foppery; and hence we often find "toasting beaus;"
introduced in the poems of that period.
4 Diana, the daughter of George Kirke, Esq. and
second wife of Aubery de Vere, the twentieth Earl of
Oxford; to whom she was married about the year 1674.
See p. 11, n.9.
5 Honora, first married to Thomas, Lord Cromwell in
England, and Earl of Ardglass in Ireland; and at this
time the wife of Francis Cuffe, Esq. She was a daughter
of Dr. Michael Boyle, Archbishop of Armagh, and Lord
Chancellor of Ireland from 1665 to 1685.
116
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
3.
These sorrowful matrons, with hearts full of truth,
Repent for the manifold sins of their youth:
The rest with their tattle my harmony spoil;
And Burlington," Anglesea," Kingston, and Boyle,"
Their minds entertain
With thoughts so profane,
8
'Tis a mercy to find that at church they contain;
Even Henningham's' shapes their weak fancies entice,
And rather than me they will ogle the Vice.*
6 Juliana, daughter of Henry Noel, second son of
Edward, Viscount Gainsborough, and wife of Charles, the
second Earl of Burlington and Corke; by whom she was
mother of Richard, Earl of Burlington, the friend of Pope.
7 Lady Catharine Darnley, natural daughter of King
James the Second, by Catharine Sidley, whom in 1685-6
he created Countess of Dorchester. Their daughter, who
was born in 1683, was married October 28, 1699, to
James, the third Earl of Anglesea; from whom, after
about a year's cohabitation, she was separated for his cruel
treatment of her. She afterwards (March 1, 1705-6,)
married John Sheffield, Duke of Buckinghamshire. She
died March 13, 1742-3. A curious character of this
lady, supposed to have been written by herself, may
found in Pope's Works.
be
• Mary, daughter of William Fielding, Earl of Den-
bigh, and wife of Evelyn Pierrepont, Earl of Kingston.
She was mother of the celebrated Lady Mary Wortley
Montague.
9 Perhaps Arethusa Boyle, a daughter of Charles,
Lord Clifford of Lanesborough, by his second wife. This
lady afterwards married Vernon, Esq., son of Se-
cretary Vernon. She was half-sister to Charles, Earl of
Burlington, above mentioned; and therefore likely to
have been grouped with his lady.
DRYDEN'S LETTERS,
117
4.
These practices, Madam, my preaching disgrace:
Shall laymen enjoy the just rights of my place?
Sure all may lament my condition for hard,
To thrash in the pulpit without a reward.
Then pray condescend
Such disorders to end,
And from the ripe vineyards such labourers send;
Or build up the seats, that the beauties may see
The face of no brawny pretender but me.³
The Honourable Henry Heveningham, who is some-
time's called in the lampoons of the last age, Colonel
Heveningham. In Motteux's GENTLEMAN'S JOURNAL
are two songs, written by Colonel Heveningham; and
that poet's tragedy, entitled BEAUTY IN DISTRESS, was
dedicated to him, in 1698. In the Answer to a Satire in
the STATE POEMs, iii. 148, he is called-well-shaped He'n-
ingham; and in THE LOVERS' SESSION, a lampoon in the
same collection, written about 1682, in imitation of Suck-
ling's SESSION OF THE POETS, he is thus described:
<<
*
Harry He'ningham thought himself sure of a grant ;
But, O foolish, cries out villain Frank, he's a Cant;
His mistress ne'er knows, so odd 'tis exprest,
"Whether he means to make love or a jest :
"For he puts on so many several faces,
"Is so full of his frank familiar grimaces,
*
They cannot but think-he's acting a part,
"And his passionate speeches has gotten by heart."
2 The Hon. Peregrine Bertie, a younger son of Robert,
Earl of Lindsey, and Lady Elizabeth Wharton, half-
sister of Thomas, Earl of Wharton. He was appointed
Vice-Chamberlain in 1690, and held that office till. his
death in 1711.
In the last age, and the early part of the present cen-
118
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
5.
The Princess, by rude importunity press'd,
Tho' she laugh'd at his reasons, allow'd his request:
tury, ladies and gentlemen had so few opportunities of
meeting, that the Church was frequently employed for the
purposes of gallantry. Hence we find in the TATLER,
No. 166, May 2, 1710, (written by Steele,) the following
Advertisement, addressed to the belles and beaus of that
period:
"Whereas the several Church-wardens of most of the
parishes within the bills of mortality have in an earnest
manner applied themselves by way of petition, and have
also made a presentment of the vain and loose deport-
ment, during divine service, of persons of too great figure
in all their said parishes for their reproof; and whereas
it is therein set forth, that by salutations given each other,
hints, shrugs, ogles, playing of fans, fooling with canes.
at their mouths, and other wanton gesticulations, their
whole congregation appears rather a theatrical audience
than an house of devotion: it is hereby ordered, that, all
canes, cravats, bosom-laces, muffs, fans, snuff-boxes, and
all other instruments made use of to give persons unbe-
coming airs, shall be immediately forfeited and sold; and
of the sum arising from the sale thereof a ninth part
shall be paid to the poor, and the rest to the Overseers."
See also a Song by Motteux, entitled "the Bachelor's
Wish," and published in the GENTLEMAN'S JOURNAL, in
September, 1692:
"One modestly free, not too proud of her means,
"And tho' she writes woman, not out of her teens ;
"Who visits the church, tho' custom can't move her
"To play there at bo-peep, 'cross a pew, with a lover:
"Yet let her with care shun a contrary evil,
"Lest angel at church prove at home a mere devil.”
}
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
119
**
And now Britain's nymphs, in a Protestant reign,
Are lock'd up at pray'rs, like the virgins in Spain;
And all are undone,
As sure as a gun,
Whenever a woman is kept like a nun.
If any kind man from bondage will save her,
The lass will in gratitude grant him the favour.
THE CONFEDERATES: 4
or, The first Happy Day of THE ISLAND PRINCESS. 5
YE vile traducers of the female kind,
Who think the fair to cruelty inclin'd,
Recant your errour, and with shame confess
6
Their tender care of Skipwith in distress:
4 These spritely and elegant verses are also preserved
in the STATE POEMS, vol. ii. p. 248.
5 Soon after the Revolution some original dramas were
produced, with musical entertainments intermixed; and
others were altered, and adapted to musick; among which
we find THE PROPHETESS, THE FAIRY QUEEN, THE
INDIAN QUEEN, KING ARTHUR, DON QUIXOTE, and
BONDUCA. These pieces, by the aid of Purcell's mu-
sick, having had great success, and the taste of the town
for musical dramas growing daily stronger, the manager
of the theatre in Drury-Lane, in 1699, employed Peter
Motteux to convert Fletcher's ISLAND PRINCESS (which
Tate had unsuccessfully revived a few years before) into
a semi-opera; for which musick was composed by Jere.
miah Clarke, (who, in 1697, had the honour of setting
Dryden's ALEXANDER'S FEAST; when it was originally
performed,) Daniel Purcell, and Richard Leveridge. Of
120
DRYDEN'S Letters.
For now, to vindicate this monarch's right,
The Scotch and English equal charms unite;
In solemn leagues contending nations join,
And Britain labours with the vast design.
the piece itself an anonymous writer thus speaks in 1702;
State Poems, iv. 361:
“Motteux and D'Urfey are for nothing fit,
"But to supply with songs their want of wit.
"Had not THE ISLAND PRINCESS been adorn'd
"With tunes and pompous scenes, she had been scorn'd:
"What was not Fletcher's, no more sense contains
"Than he that wrote THE JUBILEE has brains;
“Which ne'er had pleas'd the town, or purchased fame,
"But that 'twas christen'd with a modish name."
6 In a Petition presented to Queen Anne, about Nov.
1709, Charles Killigrew, Dr. Charles D'Avenant, Sir `
Thomas Skipwith, Baronet, Christopher Rich, William
Collier, Lord Guilford, John Lord Hervey, Anne Shad-
well, widow, and eleven other persons, are stated to have
been then the proprietors of the two patents, which were
granted by Charles II. in 1660, for establishing two com-
panies of comedians, and were united in 1682; but when Sir
Thomas Skipwith first acquired an interest in those united
patents, I have not been able to ascertain.-It appears
from the Report of the Attorney and Solicitor-General,
(Edward Northey and Robert Raymond,) to whom a
Petition of certain of these proprietors was referred in Feb.
1709-10, that Christopher Rich got a footing in Drury-
Lane Theatre on the 24th of March, 1690-91, by Alex-
ander D'Avenant assigning to him all his interest in that
theatre, which in 1687 he derived from a similar assign-
ment made to him by Charles D'Avenant, probably his
brother; and from that time Rich has been considered
as the principal manager of the entertainments exhibited
there.
In the Dedication of THE WORLD IN THE MOON
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
121
An Opera with loud applause is play'd,
Which fam'd Motteux in soft heroicks made;
And all the sworn Confederates resort,
To view the triumph of their sovereign's Court.
In bright array the well-train'd host appears;
Supreme command brave Derwentwater bears;
And next in front George Howard's bride does shine,
The living honour of that ancient line.
8
The wings are led by chiefs of matchless worth:
Great Hamilton," the glory of the North,
to him, in 1697, that piece, which was acted at the The-
atre in Dorset Garden, is said to have been played under
his own roof; and in 1706 THE FAIR EXAMPLE, a co-
medy, was dedicated "to Christopher Rich, Chief Pa-
tentee, Manager, and Governor of the Theatre-Royal in
Drury-Lane." We see, however, that at an early period
Sir Thomas Skipwith was, for some time at least, invested
with this sovereignty; and Cibber says, that " he had an
equal share with Rich in the property;" which he pro-
bably derived from some of the Killigrew family. About
the year 1708 he transferred his right, whatever it was,
to Colonel Brett; and died in 1710.
7 Mary Tudor, natural daughter of Charles the Second,
by Mary Davies, a celebrated singer on the stage. See
vol. iii. p. 269, n. She was born in 1673, and married
in 1687-8 to Francis, Lord Radcliffe; who, on the death
of his father in 1696-7, became Earl of Derwentwater,
then corruptly written (as it was sounded,) Darentwater.
Arabella, daughter of Sir Edward Allen, Bart. She
first married Francis Thompson, Esq. and was at this
time the wife of Lord George Howard, (eldest son of
Henry, the sixth Duke of Norfolk, by his second wife,)
who died in March, 1720-21.
Elizabeth, daughter of Digby, Lord Gerard; and
122
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
Commands the left; and England's dear delight,
The bold Fitzwalter' charges on the right.
The Prince, to welcome his propitious friends,
A throne erected on the stage ascends.
He said :-Blest angels! for great ends design'd,
The best, and sure the fairest, of your kind,
How shall I praise, or in what numbers sing
Your just compassion of an injured King?
Till you appear'd, no prospect did remain,
My crown and falling sceptre to maintain;
No noisy beaus in all my realm were found;
No beauteous nymphs my empty boxes crown'd:
But still I saw, O dire heart-breaking woe!
My own sad consort in the foremost row.
But this auspicious day new empire gives;
And if by your support my nation lives,
For you my bards shall tune the sweetest lays,
Norton³ and Henley shall resound your praise;
second wife of James, Duke of Hamilton, who was killed
in a duel by Lord Mohun, in Nov. 1712.
I
Elizabeth, daughter of Charles Bertie, of Uffington,
in the county of Lincoln, Esq., a younger son of Mon-
tague, the second Earl of Lindsey. She was at this time
the wife of Charles Mildmay, the second Lord Fitz-
walter, of that family.
2 Margaret, daughter of George, Lord Chandos, and
relict of William Brownlow, of Humby, in Lincoln-
shire. She is represented in one of the lampoons of that
day, as much older than her husband:
"Sackville wants leisure to attend his Muse,
"His time is taken up with these reviews,
"And Skipwith with his grannam of a spouse."
3 Richard Norton, of Southwick, in Hampshire, Esq.
Cibber's comedy, entitled LOVE'S LAST SHIFT, was de-
dicated to this gentleman, in Feb. 1696-7. In "A Dia-
"
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
123
And I, not last of the harmonious train,
Will give a loose to my poetick vein.
To him great Derwentwater thus replied:
Thou mighty Prince, in many dangers tried,
logue between Poet Motteux and Patron Henningham,
who is charged with writing the Dedication of BEAUTY
IN DISTRESS to himself, (STATE POEMS, ii. 251,) he is
thus introduced:
"PATRON. Here, Sirra, here's five guineas then.
"POET. What do you mean? you promis'd ten;
"And Norton gave a hundred pieces,
"To own a better thing than this is,
"Even to Southerne,-.'
The piece here alluded to is PAUSANIAS, a tragedy, which
Southerne published in 1696, without the author's name;
who, we learn from THE DISPENSARY, was Mr. Norton.
Garth highly commends it:
And Britain, since PAUSANIAS was writ,
"Knows Spartan virtue, and Athenian wit.'
In my copy of PHAETON, a tragedy, by Gildon, 4to.
1698, (which is dedicated to Charles Montague,) is the
following inscription to this gentleman, in Gildon's hand-
writing, which accompanied a presentation copy, and
probably produced the effect intended by the poet, a do-
nation of a few guineas :
"Domino Domino
"Ricardo Norton, de Southwick in agro Hamptoni-
ensi, Armigero; viro eximio, tam virtutibus quam genere
claro, Musis dilectissimo, ipsarumque cultorum fautori
colendissimo, libellum hunc offert
"CAROLUS GILDON."
Mr. Norton died Dec. 10, 1732, in his sixty-ninth year.
His extraordinary will, which was made in 1714, and
the last codicil in Nov. 1731, may be found in THE
GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE, vol. iii. p. 57. He left a
124
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
Born to dispute severe decrees of fate,
The nursing father of a sickly state;
Behold the pillars of thy lawful reign!
Thy regal rights we promise to maintain:
Our brightest nymphs shall thy dominions grace,
With all the beauties of the Highland race;
The beaus shall make thee their peculiar care,
For beaus will always wait upon the fair:
For thee kind Beereton and bold Webbe shall fight,'
Lord Scott shall ogle, and my spouse shall write :7
real estate of £.6000. per ann. and personal property to
the amount of £.60,000l.
66 to the
poor; that is to say,”
(says the testator) "to the poor hungry, and thirsty,
naked, and strangers, sick and wounded, and prisoners,
to the end of the world." He also bequeathed two
saphire rings to the Archbishops of Canterbury and
York, and a ring with a holy lamb enameled thereon, and
set round with diamonds, to each of the Bishops, " to be
by them, and all and every of them, daily and successively
worn, to the end of the world."-Of this will, which is
very long, was all written with his own hand, and was
lodged for several years in the custody of the Bishop of
Winchester, he appointed the Parliament of Great Bri-
tain, executors. But on a trial at Bar in the King's
Bench, in May, 1739, the testator was found to be in-
sane, and his will was set aside.
4 Anthony Henley, of the Grange in Hampshire, Esq.,
a man of parts and learning, who died in 1711. He was
father of Robert, the first Earl of Northington, Lord
Chancellor; and at this time represented Andover in
Parliament. There are three letters written by him
to Swift, in Swift's Works, vol. xviii. Garth dedicated
his DISPENSARY to this gentleman; and Southerne, in the
Dedication of PAUSANIAS to him, says, that he was at
once a master of poetry, painting, and musick. The
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
125
Thus shall thy Court our English youth engross,
And all the Scotch, from Drummond down to Ross.&
Now in his throne the King securely sat;
But O! this change alarm'd the rival state;
Epilogue to PAUSANIAS was written by Mr. Henley, who
was probably a friend of Mr. Norton.
5 Perhaps General Webbe, whose "firm platoon" was
afterwards celebrated by Tickell. Of the prowess of
Mr. Beereton no memorials have been discovered.
• Lord Henry Scott, second surviving son of James,
Duke of Monmouth; who was born in 1676. In 1706 he
was created Earl of Deloraine, and died about 1730.
7 The Earl of Derwentwater's poetry, which appears
to have been composed when he was Lord Radcliffe,`is
spoken of with contempt in a lampoon written about this
period. The person addressed is Colonel Hevening-
ham, who has been already mentioned:
Lord Radcliffe's poems might thy satire fit;
"But what hast thou to do with men of wit?"
Again, ibid.
0
"if to charge the fair thy fancy moves,
"Write Popham's life, or Madam Griffin's loves.
"One labour too to Ranelagh is due,
"Who with false beauty does deface the true;
"And may arrive with diligence and care
"In time to rival Derwentwater's heir.
"On such as these thy doggrel numbers try," &c.
* In the last age, and the early part of this century, the
in engross was pronounced short, as in loss. So Pope,
who perhaps remembered the lines before us:
But.all our praises why should lords engross?
"Rise, honest Muse! and sing the Man of Ross."
Pope had diligently read the STATE POEMS, and may be
sometimes traced in them. Thus, "Peace is my dear
120
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
Besides, he lately bribed, in breach of laws,
The fair deserter of her uncle's cause. 9
This rouz'd the Monarch of the neighbouring crown,
A drowsy Prince, too careless of renown.
2
I
Yet prompt to vengeance, and untaught to yield,
Great Scarsdale challeng'd Skipwith to the field.
Whole shoals of poets for this chief declare,
And vassal players attend him to the war.
Skipwith with joy the dreadful summons took,
And brought an equal force; then Scarsdale spoke:
66
delight" is taken from a former line in the poem before
us. So in an Essay in opposition to the Essay on
Satire," ibid.
"So bawling H-
-n and K- the mute,
"With noise and nonsense fill up the dispute."
Whence perhaps in the DUNCIAD, we have—
"With noise and Norton, brangling and Breval."
Again, in vol. iii. p. 135:
C
[The] little underlings that sit about,
"Pretend they know the author by his style;
"I've eas'd my mind, and will securely smile."
So, in the Epistle to Arbuthnot :
and can I choose but smile,
"When every coxcomb knows me by my style.”
9 This “fair deserter" appears to have been the actress
whom Lord Henry Scott admired, and was perhaps the
niece of Mrs. Betterton. I suspect, the person meant was
Mrs. Moore, who performed in THE PRETENDERS, a
comedy, acted at the theatre in Lincoln's-Inn Fields, in
1698; and in Farquhar's LovE AND A BOTTLE, acted
in Drury-Lane Theatre in 1699. She was probably an
actress of some estimation, having spoken the Epilogue
to the former play.
Betterton, who was at this time near sixty-five years
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
127
Thou bane of empire, foe to human kind,
Whom neither leagues nor laws of nations bind;
For cares of high poetick sway unfit,
Thou shame of learning, and reproach of wit;
Restore bright Helen to my longing sight,
Or now my signal shall begin the fight.
Hold, said the foe, thy warlike host remove,
Nor let our bards the chance of battle prove :
Should death deprive us of their shining parts,
What would become of all the liberal arts ?
Should Dennis fall, whose high majestick wit,
And awful judgment, like two tallies, fit,
Adieu strong Odes, and every lofty strain,
The tragick rant, and proud Pindarick vein:
Should tuneful D'Urfey now resign his breath,
The lyrick Muse would scarce survive his death;
But should divine Motteux untimely die,
The gasping Nine would in convulsions lie.
For these bold champions safer arms provide,
And let their pens the double strife decide.
The King consents; and urg'd by publick good,
Wisely retreats, to save his people's blood :
The moving legions leave the dusty plain,
And safe at home poetick wars maintain.
LETTER XLIV.
TO MRS. STEWARD.
Tuesday, March 12th, 1699 [-1700.]
MADAM,
"Tis a week since I feceiv'd the favour of a
letter, which I have not yet acknowledg'd to you.
old. In 1695 he had seceded from Drury-Lane, and
opened the theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields.
Robert Leake, the third Earl of Scarsdale.
128
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
3
About that time my new Poems were publish'd,
which are not come till this day into my hands.
They are a debt to you, I must confess; and I am
glad, because they are so unworthy to be made a
present. Your sisters, I hope, will be so kind to
have them convey'd to you; that my writeings
may have the honour of waiting on you, which is
deny'd to me. The Town encourages them with
more applause than any thing of mine deserves:
and particularly my Cousin Driden accepted one
from me so very indulgently, that it makes me
more and more in love with him. But all our
hopes of the House of Commons are wholly
dash'd. Our proprieties are destroy'd ; and rather
than we shou'd not perish, they have made a breach
in the MAGNA CHARTA; for which God forgive
them!-Congreve's new play' has had but mo-
derate success, though it deserves much better.
-I am neither in health, nor do I want afflictions
of any kind; but am in all conditions,
Madam,
Your most oblig'd obedient Servant,
For Mrs. Stuart, att Cotterstock
near Oundle, These.
By the Oundle Carrier, with
a book directed to her, These.
Northamptonshyre.
JOHN DRYDEN.
3 Here we have an additional confirmation of a re-
'mark already made. See p. 74, n. 4. So also when
he speaks of his Virgil to his sons, he says, "it succeeds.
in the world beyond its desert, or my expectation."
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
129
LETTER XLV.
MADAM,
TO MRS. STEWARD.
Thurſday, April the 11th, 1700.
THE ladies of the town have infected you at a
distance they are all of your opinion, and like
my last book of Poems better than any thing they
have formerly seen of mine. I always thought
my Verses to my Cousin Driden were the best of
the whole; and to my comfort, the Town thinks
them so; and he, which pleases me most, is of
the same judgment, as appears by a noble present
C. 4•
7
+ He alludes to the statute, 11 and 12 William III.
for the further preventing the growth of popery;
by which it was enacted, that from and after the 29th of
Sept. 1700, all papists who should not, within six months
after attaining the age of eighteen years, take the oaths of
Allegiance and Supremacy, &c. should be incapable of
inheriting or taking any lands or tenements, by descent or
devise; and that the next of kin, being a protestant, should
enjoy the same.
S THE WAY OF THE WORLD. The author was so
disgusted at the ill reception of this comedy, that he
determined to write no more for the stage.
• His FABLES.
"It should be remembered, that when he speaks of the
contents of this volume, and thus highly praises the verses
to his kinsman, he had in contemplation only the new
pieces which appeared in it. ALEXANDER'S FEAST had
VOL. I. PART II.
k
130
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
+
8
he has sent me, which surpris'd me, because I did
not in the least expect it.-I doubt not but he re-
ceiv'd what you were pleas'd to send him ; because
he sent me the letter which you did me the favour
to write me.At this very instant I heare the
guns; which, goeing off, give me to understand
that the King is goeing to the Parliament, to pass
Acts, and consequently to prorogue them: for
yesterday I heard that both he and the Lords have
given up
the cause, and the House of Commons
have gain'd an entire victory; though, under the
been printed in 1697, in a separate form; had already
"had its trial, and stood out all appeals.'
8 See vol. i. part i. pp. 325 and 327.
• King William had rewarded the Earls of Portland,
Galway, Albemarle, and Athlone, and other of his foreign
servants, who had served him ably and faithfully, and
whom he had raised to peerages, with grants of part of
the forfeited estates in Ireland, to enable them to support
their new dignities. The House of Commons having
resolved to resume those grants, brought in a Bill for
that purpose, and to apply them to the payment of the
publick debts; and, to prevent the Bill from being de-
feated in the House of Lords, they called this Bill, not
an Act of Resumption, but a Bill of Supply; and tacked it
to that for the ordinary grants of the year. The Lords for
some time opposed-not the resumption, but the form of
the Bill, which tended to reduce them to insignificance:
but at length, on an intimation from his Majesty,-that he
did not wish any further opposition to be made, even
the Servants of the Crown gave way; and the Bill passed
both Houses.The day before this letter was written,
the Commons, not content with having deprived their
L
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
131
rose,
I am of opinion that much of the confidence
is abated on either side, and that whensoever they
meet next, it will give that house a farther occa-
sion of encroaching on the prerogative and the
Lords; for they who beare the purse, will rule.
The Parliament being risen, my Cousin Driden
will immediately be with you, and, I believe, re-
turn his thanks in person.-All this while I am
lame at home, and have not stirr'd abroad this
moneth at least. Neither my wife nor Charles are
well, but have intrusted their service in my hand.
I humbly add my own to the unwilling High She-
riff,* and wish him fairly at an end of his trouble.
The latter end of last week, I had the honour
of a visite from my Cousine, your mother, and my
Cousine Dorothy, with which I was much com-
forted. Within this moneth there will be play'd
for my profit, an old play of Fletcher's, call'd THE
PILGRIM, Corrected by my good friend, Mr.
Vanbrook ;' to which I have added a new Masque,
I
Deliverer of his faithful Dutch Guards, and wishing to
mark their hatred of all those for whom he had any
personal regard, had resolved to address him, that no
person, not a native of his dominions, except Prince
George of Denmark, should be admitted to his councils
either in England or Ireland.-To prevent this address
being presented, on the 11th of April he went suddenly
to the House of Lords; and, to mark his disgust the more
strongly, after having given his assent to the Act of
Resumption, and some other Bills, he prorogued the
Parliament, without making a speech from the throne.
* Mr. Steward. See p. 105.
* The orthography of Vanbrugh's name was for some
132
DRYDEN'S LETTERS.
2
and am to write a new Prologue and Epilogue.
Southern's tragedy, call'd the REVOLT OF CAPUA,
will be play'd at Betterton's House within this
fortnight. I am out with that Company; and
therefore, if I can help it, will not read it before
'tis acted, though the authour much desires I
shou'd.-Do not think I will refuse a present from
fair hands; for I am resolv'd to save my bacon.³
I beg your pardon for this slovenly letter; but I
have not health to transcribe it. My service to
my Cousin, your brother, who I heare is happy in
your company; which he is not, who most desires
it, and who is, Madam,
For Mrs. Stuart,
Your most oblig'd obedient
Servant,
Att Cotterstock, neare Oundle,
in Northamptonshyre, These.
To be left with the
Postmaster of Oundle.
JOHN DRYDEN.
time unsettled. It is thus spelled in the fifth volume
of Dryden's MISCELLANIES published in 1704, after his
death. Gildon says, that Dryden had publickly pane-
gyrick'd Vanbrugh; but I know not to what he alludes.
2 Our author died on the first of the following month,
after an illness of four or five days: these last spirited
productions of his pen, therefore, were written between
the 14th and 26th of April, perhaps not a fortnight before
his death.
3 See Letter xxix. p. 73.
4 The paper was blotted with ink in several places, and
otherwise soiled.
ITIONS
ADDITIONS AND EMENDATIONS.
IN THE LIFE OF DRYDEN.
P. 3. n. 1. 4. from the bottom.
In the year 1679, and for some time afterwards, our
author wrote his name DREYDEN; as we find from the
London Gazette, No. 1472, (see p. 322, n. 7.) and from
the titlepage of the second edition of his ESSAY OF
DRAMATICK POESY, in 1684. So also one of his con-
temporaries, in a paper of Verses prefixed to NOAH'S
FLOOD, an opera, 1679:
Thou fear'st no cynical philosopher,
"No nigrum ✪, nor an English R;
No, nor thou need'st not; for we plainly see
“In every individual line of thee,
"Milton and Dreyden in epitome.
}
It should seem to have been the ancient name of his
family. See vol. i. part i. p. 554. n.
P. 6. n. l. 13. For Dryden's, r. Dryden.
Ibid. n. 1. 4. from the bottom. From the inaccuracy of
the person whom I employed to transcribe the inscription
on Dryden's monument, the words here are not rightly
arranged, though in other respects the inscription is
correctly given. They should have been arranged thus:
"J. DRYDEN,
"Natus 1632. Mortuus Maij 1. 1700." &c.
P. 10. l. 16. For Burnet, r. Oldmixon.
Ibid. n. 3. 1. 2. This pamphlet, which was published
anonymously, I now believe, was written, not by
homas Burnet, but by John Oldmixon.
134
ADDITIONS AND EMENDATIONS.
P. 12. 1. 17. Read-leaving two daughters; Elizabe th
the wife of Dr. Richard Martyn, Prebendary of West-
minster, and Mary, who was married to John Shaw, Esq.
P. 16. l.-5. For Dryden, r. Dreyden.
Ibid. l. 12. Dele the marks of a word omitted; and for
table, r. tables.
An inaccurate transcript of this order, which was
transmitted to me from Cambridge, was the occasion of
this errour; which I have been enabled to correct by the
kindness of the Rev. Dr. Mansel, Master of Trinity
College in Cambridge, to whom I am also indebted for
the notice relative to Dr. Lockier's admission into that
college, given in p. 481. n.
The words "the three Fellowes tables," that is, the three
tables of the Fellows, refer, as the same gentleman ob-
serves to me, to a table formerly in use at Trinity College,
viz. the Bursar's, which has for some time been laid
aside; two tables only (the Vice-Master's and the Dean's)
being now occupied.
To Dr. Mansel I am also indebted for the following
notice, which has been lately discovered in one of the old
books of his College :
CC
April 23, 1655. At the election of Scholars, Wil-
ford is chosen into Sir Dreyden's place."
This entry induces me to believe, that our author left
the University a year earlier than I have supposed. There
are instances, however, of gownsmen residing at Cambridge
after the loss of their scholarships.
P.
17.
1. 8. As I was sure from the recital in our author's
patent, that he was a Master of Arts, I had reason to
believe that he had obtained that degree at Cambridge,
at the regular time, though his name was omitted to be
enrolled with those who were thus honoured in 1657.
Still, however, entertaining doubts on this subject, I
continued my researches after the page here referred
to was printed; and at length discovered that Dryden's
ADDITIONS AND EMENDATIONS.
135
degree of M. A. was conferred by Archbishop Sheldon,
several years afterwards. See the Dispensation granted
on that occasion, in the Appendix to vol. i. part i.
P. 554.
P. 28. n. 4. l. 5. For a, r. an.
1.
P. 74. l. 11, from the bottom. Dele the words-and three
quarters.
P. 81. 1. 9. After the word sense, add ".
P. 92. n. 9. Dele the words-in the Appendix.
P. 101. n. I. 13. For rogue, r. dog.
P. 103. n. 5.
This lady has been represented as the
person whom Pope had in view in the second of the
following lines,-ON THE USE OF RICHES:
"But thousands die, without or this or that,
"Die, and endow a college, or à cat.”
Sir David Dalrymple, (Lord Hailes,) being laudably
concerned for the honour of his countrywoman, has thus
vindicated her from this charge, in a note on a curious
work, entitled "The Opinions of Sarah, Duchess Dowager
of Marlborough," selected from her Grace's original papers,
and printed in 1788: Mr. Pope had the art of laying
hold on detached circumstances, and of applying them to
his purpose, without much regard for historical accuracy.
Thus, to his hemistick-' endow a college, or a cat,' hẹ
adds this note;-'That a Duchess of Richmond left
annuities to her cats.' The lady, as to whom he seems
so uncertain, was la belle Stuart of the Comte de Gram-
mont. She left annuities to certain female friends, with the
burden of maintaining some of her cats; a delicate way of
providing for poor, and probably proud, gentlewomen,
without making them feel that they owed their livelihood
to her mere liberality."
Pope's apparent uncertainty with regard to the
person
alluded to, appears to have arisen merely from his having
136
ADDITIONS AND EMENDATIONS.
written in his first edition in folio, "A certain Du-
chess, in her last will, left considerable annuities and
legacies to her cats;"'—and in subsequent editions, when
he had caught the name, having inserted it without
changing the original structure of the sentence, by print-
ing-“ A certain Duchess of Richmond," &c. But on
inquiry it turns out, that both the poet and Sir David
Dalrymple (who in general was extremely accurate,) were
mistaken; the one in supposing any such bequest to have
been made, at least by a Duchess of Richmond after the
Restoration; and the other, in the motive assigned for
this bequest; for I have examined the will of la belle
Stuart, and not one word does it contain concerning the
maintenance of cats. The will of Frances Terese, Duchess
of Richmond, who was a widow for near thirty years,
was made Sept. 24, 1702, and it was proved on the 21st
of the following October, six days after her death. (PR.
OFF. Herne, qu. 166.) This lady appears not to have
forgotten that she had been celebrated for her beauty;
for she directed by a codicil to her will, that her "effigies,
as well done in wax as could be, and dreffed in coronation
robes and coronet, should be placed in a case with clear
crown glass before it, and should be set up in West-
minster Abbey," near Lodowick Stuart, the old Duke of
Richmond, and Frances, his wife.
Anne Brudenell, Duchess of Richmond, died in Dec.
1722, about ten years before Pope's Epistle was written,
and was therefore more likely to have been in his con-
templation: but she made no will, dying in her husband's
life-time. It appears, therefore, that the poet too hastily
gave credit to a false tale, unless the will of Frances
Howard, the widow of Lodowick Stuart, Duke of Rich-
mond, should contain the bequest above mentioned;
which is so improbable, that I have not taken the trouble
to learn whether she made a will or not. She died in 1639.
P. 106. I. 14. For prologue, r. some verses.
ADDITIONS AND EMENDATIONS.
137
P. 111. l. 2. For preparatory, r. preparatively.
1
P. 135. l. 7, and in n. 9. For Querouaille, r. Queroualle.
P. 180. n. l. 1. For-in this volume, r. in vol. i. part ii.
P. 181. l. 5. As in this critical age we must speak by the
card, it may be proper here to add to this passage, (which
was printed several months ago,) that I do not mean
to say that Mr. Dyer was the sole author, but the prin-
cipal author, of the work alluded to.
I have good
reason to believe that he had at least one, perhaps two
co-adjutors but his co-adjutor most assuredly was not
a young Irishman, who has been lately suggested as the
writer of the work alluded to; an opinion for which
the following among other reasons of equal weight has
been assigned;-because he used to carry Junius in his
pocket, and was in the habit of repeating to his friends
various passages of that work!!!
P. 184. n. 3. l. 8. “About the time of this event, some pe-
cuniary losses," &c. The pecuniary losses which are
here coupled with the death of Mr. Dyer, happened in
Nov. 1769, near three years before that event.
P. 190. l.
4.
Dele the words-a second time. Lord Ro-
chester had before been at the head of the Treasury,
but was not made Lord High Treasurer till after the
accession of King James II.; as I have elsewhere
stated.
P. 205. I have, I find, inadvertently omitted to mention
in the List of our Author's Works, his translation of
the Life of St. Francis Xavier, which should have been
introduced here. The Dedication prefixed to that piece
is printed in its proper place.
In the Bodleian Catalogue another work is attributed
to our author, on very slight grounds: "An Exposition
of the Doctrine of the Catholick Church," translated
from Bossuet, Bishop of Meaux, and published at London
in 1685. The only authority for attributing this transla-
tion to Dryden, should seem to have been the following
138
ADDITIONS AND EMENDATIONS.
note in Bishop Barlow's hand-writing, at the bottom of
the titlepage of the copy belonging to the Bodleian
Library:
46
By Mr. Dryden, then only a poet, now a papist too :
may be, he was a papist before, but not known till of late."
This book had belonged to Bishop Barlow, who died
in 1691.
P. 207. 1. 3. After offices, add-and, as he himself has told
us, he conscientiously relinquished them.
P. 222. n. 7. Dele the words-in this volume:
P. 233. last line of text. Read-had been, &c. The word
had was inadvertently omitted at the press, after this
page had been revised for the last time by the author.
P. 235. 1. 6. From a Letter of Dryden to Jacob Tonson,
it should seem that the translation of Virgil was sent to
the press, when only eight books of it were finished.
Tonson therefore probably began to print at an earlier
period than I have supposed.
P. 236. n. 8. For xvi. r. xv.
P. 258. n. 8. l. 12. For AUTHOLOGIA, г. ANTHOLOGIA.
P. 278. n. l. 3. After Penseroso, add-and elsewhere.
P. 280. n. 1. 9. For Daniel, r. Henry. Henry Purcell, how-
ever, being then dead, this musick must have been old.
P. 292. 1. ult. n. Read-which was made, May 26, 1697,
and proved Sept. 7, 1698.
P. 297. 1. 2. For is, r. are.
P. 302. n. 6. Jeremiah Clarke also composed the musick
of the Prologue to THE WORD IN THE MOON, an
Opera by Settle, performed in 1697.
P. 313. 1. 2. For-First Lord, r. a Lord.-See vol. i.
part ii.
p. 102, n. 6.
P. 318. n. 1. For xxvi. r. xxxiii.
P.
329.
1. ult. n. Read-died at Chelsea, and was buried
there Sept. 9, 1711.
P. 333. When this page was printed some months ago,
I little expected that at a subsequent period the palpable
ADDITIONS AND EMENDATIONS.
139
errour of Dryden and Prior, and their contemporaries,
respecting the commencement of the century, would
be gravely relied on, as adding support to so strange a
notion. This, however, has been the case; and, in
addition to these authorities, we have been told of the
statute for regulating the year, and the correction of the
Calendar, enacted in 1751, 24 Geo. II. c. 23; where
the following words are found: "For the next century,
that is, from the year 1800 to the year 1899, inclusive,
add to the current year," &c. The authority, it must
be acknowledged, is weighty, full, and complete; but
unfortunately no authority or statute can convince the
understanding, that two and two do not make four, or
that ninety-nine years do make one hundred. All that
follows from that statute, is, that Lord Macclesfield,
who drew it, was in an errour, as Dryden, Prior, and
others, had been before him. Addison, however, should
seem not to have adopted this strange mistake; for in
THE SPECTATOR, No. 72, after having given an account
of the EVERLASTING CLUB, he adds,-" It is said, that
towards the close of 1700, being the great year of
Jubilee, the Club had it in consideration, whether they
should break up, or continue their session; but, after
many speeches and debates, it was at length agreed to
sit out the other century."
P. 340. n. l. 16. Read-and gratuitously instructing, &c.
P. 348. 1. 5. Read-that far the greater part of, &c.
P. 349. n. l. 3. For Philadelpha, r.
For Philadelpha, r. Philadelphia.
P. 359. n. l. ult, For Stewart, r. Steward.
P. 361. n. 4. l. 2. For Harveain, r. Harveian.
P. 388. For-1 Maii, г. Maij 1.
P.
419. Add to note 2.-No discredit was in the last age
attached to this foolish study. There are several ser-
mons in print, preached before the learned Society of
Astrologers.
P. 439. 1.5 from the bottom.-The poem here described,
140
ADDITIONS AND EMENDATIONS.
after it had received Swift's corrections, was published
in London in quarto, under the title of "EUGENIO, or
Virtuous and Happy Life;" and was inscribed to Mr.
Pope. A few days after its publication, May 17, 1737,
the author, who was a wine-merchant at Wrexham,
killed himself in a very shocking manner.
P. 467. Add to note 1.-To this change, and the subse-
quent erection of Buckingham-House, Dr. King has
alluded in his ART OF COOKERY, written about forty
years afterwards (1709):
"The fate of Kings is always in the dark ;
"What Cavalier would know St. James's Park ?
"For Locket's stands, where gardens once did spring,
“And wild-ducks quack, where grasshoppers did sing:
"A princely palace on that space does rise,
"Where Sidley's noble Muse found mulberries."
The princely palace was that built by Sheffield, Duke of
Bucks, on the site of Arlington-House, before 1705;
for his long letter to the Duke of Shrewsbury, describing
his new house, appears to have been written in that year,
soon after he resigned the office of Lord Privy Seal.
P. 485. n. 2. 1. ult. For 23, r. 21.
P. 488. 1. 5. For visitors, r. visiters.
P. 494. n. 8. In 1699, however, plays seem not to have
begun till five o'clock. Thus Garth, in THE DISPEN-
SARY, Canto IV. which first appcared in that year:
"Not far from that frequented theatre,
"Where wand'ring punks each night at five repair," &c.
P. 495. n. 9. l. 8. After Carew, put a comma.
P. 499. n. *. The Duke of Buckinghamshire used to go.
almost every day to Marybone Bowling-Green, and
frequently stayed there till it was dark; whence in
THE TATLER, No. 18, he is described as living there,
not in St. James's Park.
P. 517. 1. 10. For study, r. instruction.
ADDITIONS AND EMENDATIONS.
141
VOL. I. PART II.
LETTERS.
P. 24. n. I had supposed the theatre in Dorset Gardens.
to have assumed the name of The Queen's Theatre, after
the union of the two companies in 1682; but it did
not, I believe, take that name till a few months after this
letter was written; namely, on the accession of James
II. Dryden, therefore, was perfectly correct.
P. 88. n. 2. 1. 2. In some of the impressions, for two
months before, r. not long before.
P. 90. n. 1. There is here a slight errour, in consequence
of my having trusted to Beatson's POLITICAL INDEX;
which is not always a safe guide. Charles Montague
was not First Lord of the Treasury during any part of
King William's reign, and was not Chancellor of the
Exchequer in October, 1699, having been devested of
that office on the 2d of the preceding June; as I have
stated in a subsequent page, from an examination in
the Chapel of the Rolls. See p. 102. n. 6.
For Sapho, r. Sappho.
P. 98. 1. 7.
P. 93. 1. 9.
may see.
For has, r. have. P. 95. 1. 8. Read-you
P. 101. l. 16. Dele a. P. 103. 1. 3. For
having, r. haveing; and ibid. r. done me.
Lett. xli. 1. 2. Dele of. P. 109. 1. 11. Read-to be
either, &c.
VOL. I. PART II.
ESSAYS.
P. 10. l. 12. Angli suos, &c.
P. 104.
I have frequently had, occafion to observe that our
author generally quoted from memory. The paffage here
cited from Barclay's ICON ANIMORUM, c. iv. 8vo. 1614,
stands thus in the original: "Anglis ut plurimum gravis
animus, et in se velut ad consilium seductus: seipsos, et suæ
142
ADDITIONS AND EMENDATIONS.
gentis mores, ingenia, animos, eximiè mirantur: dum salutant,
aut scribunt, descendere ad verba imaginariæ servitutis, quæ
istorum seculorum blandities invenit, nisi forte externis
moribus imbuti, non sustinent." The sentiment expressed
by the words which Dryden has added,-" cæteras na-
tiones despectui habent,"-is implied in this passage as it
stands; but they are not found in any edition of the ICON
ANIMORUM that I have seen; and I have consulted
several. That piece was afterwards very improperly in-
corporated with his SATYRICON, of which it makes
the Fourth Part. The SATYRICON is mentioned by
Dryden in his Preface to Juvenal.
^
It is a curious circumstance, that Barclay in his ICON,
which contains a masterly description of the manners of
the several nations of Europe in the beginning of the
seventeenth century, should have suggested an expedition
against the Turkish empire, similar in the most material
circumstances to that undertaken in the year 1798 by the
French Republick, (particularly in the number of the
troops employed,) though it was proposed to be directed
against a different part of the Turkish dominions from
that which was assailed by the Corsican Mussulman, who
now governs France. See ICON ANIMORUM, c. ix. I
do not however suspect him to have read Barclay's book:
he merely followed the plan suggested to the ancient
French Government.
P. 26. n. 2. Sir Charles Sidley translated another act.
P. 33. n. 6. l. 3. For 1674, r. 1672; and in the next
line, for Menardine, (an errour in the book here quoted)
r. Menardiere.
P.
34. n. 1. In the conjecture here stated, I was certainly
mistaken, and the errour has been already acknow-
ledged. See the Life of Dryden, vol. i. part i. p. 62.
CRITES was unquestionably intended to represent Sir
Robert Howard, and LISIDEIUS, Sir Charles Sidley.
P. 41. Dele the Note, for the reason assigned above.
ADDITIONS AND EMENDATIONS.
143
P. 61. n. 1. 2. For satirical, r. satyrical.-Our author's
inaccuracy here was probably the occasion of Dr.
Johnson's falling into the same errour, in the Preface
to his edition of Shakspeare.
P. 69. n. 5. l. 2. For about the year 1630, r.in 1625.
P. 92. n. *. After passage, r. in his works.
P. 96. n. 1. 9. For comedies, r. plays.
3.
P. 157, 1. from the bottom. "—that excuse
the philosopher made to the Emperour," &c.
-
-
which
The philosopher here alluded to was Favorinus; and
the Emperour, Adrian. The story, which was originally
related by Ælian, is thus told by Bacon, in his 160th
Apophthegm, 16mo, 1625. "There was a philosopher
that disputed with Adrian, the Emperour, and did it but
weakely. One of his friends that had beene by, afterwards
said to him, Meethinkes, you were not like your selfe
last day, in argument with the Emperour: I could have
answered better my selfe.' Why,' sayd the philosopher,
* would you have mee contend with him that commands thirtie
legions?"
'
Our author, by writing-" twenty legions of arts and
sciences," in order to accommodate the story to his pur-
pose, has entirely changed the point of it; for Favorinus
was not afraid of the knowledge, but the power, of the
Emperour. He might, however, urge Barclay's com-
ment on this anecdote in his defence; who gravely con-
tends, that the philosopher mentioned this circumstance
as a proof of Adrian's science. See his ICON ANIMORUM,
c. x. "Adeo ut non per jocum magis quem ex philoso-
phiæ præcepto, Favorinus scientiam Adriani metitus sit ex
magnitudine potestatis. Adrianus imperator famam scientiæ
quærebat, et forte in Favorinum philosophum inciderat ;
qui ab eo lacessitus argumentis, parcius, et ut victus,
agebat, quo princeps impunè exultaret. Objurgantibus
amicis, quod tam facilè cessisset, Male,' inquit,' admo-
netis :
nam cur non doctissimum putem, qui habet
C
144
ADDITIONS AND EMENDATIONS.
•
viginti legiones?'-Hæc non sine argumento philoso-
phus cum, ex arte tot legionibus moderari, sit altioris.
scientiæ, quam quicquid exercito et per contemplationem
sublato acumine, in scholis deprehendas.
P. 170. 1. 6. from the bottom. A great wit's great work is
to refuse, as my worthy friend, Sir John Berkenhead,
has ingeniously expressed it.
See his Verses prefixed to the Comedies, &c. of Wil-
liam Cartwright', 8vo. 1651:
"For thy imperial Muse at once defines
Laws, to arraign and brand their weak strong lines;
"Unmasks the golden verse that frights a page,
"As when old time brought devils on the stage :---
"Knew the right mark of things, saw how to choose,
(For the great wit's great work is to refuse,)
"And smiled to see, what shouldering there is,
To follow Lucan, where he trod amiss."
P. 231. n. l. 9. After Dublin, add-and now Lord Bishop
of Killalla.
Ibid. 1. penult. For que, r. quæ.
P. 295. n. l. 14.
P. 331. n. 7. l. 3.
P. 342. n. *. This
After in, r. or before.
For in 1668 or 1669, r. in 1667.
note was founded on a mistake, occa-
sioned by the Catalogue of the printed books in the
Museum, in which an edition of Dryden's Mock
ASTROLOGER, of the year 1668, is mentioned. But it
proves, on inspection, to have been an inaccuracy of
the person by whom that Catalogue was made; for no
such edition is in that library. The play called THE
ASTROLOGER, translated from the French, and pub-
lished in 1668, which is there, was confounded by him
with Dryden's comedy.
P. 354. n. The passage in the Preface to THE TEMPEST,
which led me to think that it was not exhibited on the
stage till after the death of D'Avenant, must yield to
ADDITIONS AND EMENDATIONS.
145
superior evidence. Since this note was written, I have
observed, that the Epilogue ascertains its first perform-
ance to have been in 1667.
P. 359. n. l. penult. For 18th, r. 28th.
P. 365. n. In the country, Lord Rochester lived a
blameless life; but he used to say, (as Aubrey tells us,)
that "when he came to Brentford, the Devil entered
into him, and never left him till he returned to the
country again, to Adderbury or Woodstock Park," of
which he was Ranger.
P. 371. n. l. antepenult. For in the year, &c. r. at the time of
his death, Aug. 20, 1701.
P. 374. 1. 5.-" that which one of the ancients called-
eruditam voluptatem.”
I have not been able to discover the author here re-
ferred to. Quintilian, whom Dryden appears to have
studied very diligently, has (lib. xi.) ineruditis voluptatibus
applied to pleasures derived ex spectaculis,campo,tessera,&c.
P. 378. Add to the note-Perhaps the fastidious Brisk of
Oxford, was Sprat.
P. 383. 1. 7 from the bottom.-" what the historian said
of a Roman Emperor-.'
>>
Otho; whose last words are here cited with a slight
variation: "Alii diutiùs imperium tenuerint; nemo tam
fortiter reliquerit." Tacit. HIST. ii. 47.
P. 385. n. For fourteen, r. fifteen.
P. 391. n. For scarce fifteen, x. little more than sixteen.
P. 420. n. Since this note was written, I have met with
the passage here referred to by our author. It is in
Montagne's ESSAYS, book i. ch. 39. "There are ga-
thered out of Cicero's writings, and from Plinies ----
infinite testimonies of a nature beyond measure ambi.
tious. Amongst others, that they openly solicit the
historians of their times, not to forget them in their
VOL. I. PART II.
1
146
ADDITIONS AND EMENDATIONS.
1
writings; and fortune, as it were in spight, hath made
the vanity of their request to continue, even to our
daies, and long since the historians were lost." Florio's
translation, 1622,
VOL. II.
P. 16. l. 18. After choses, put a comma.
P. 26. 1. 19. For fregore, r. frigore.
P. 27. l. 14. For nature, r. name.
P. 35. n. When this note was written, I thought our
author had more concern in the ESSAY ON SATIRL
than I now, on a closer examination, believe he had.
See vol. i. part i. p. 130.
P. 83. l. ult.—“ and curse ye Meroz, would be oftener
preached upon, than-Give to Casar,-."
See the book of JUDGES, v. 23. "Curse ye Meroz, said
the Angel of the LORD; curse ye bitterly the inhabitants
thereof, because they came not to the help of the LORD,
to the help of the LORD against the mighty."
"This text," (says Edmond Hickeringhill, who preach-
ed a Sermon on it before the Lord- Mayor and Alder-
men of London, May 9, 1680, that made much noise at
that time,) "this text, about forty years ago, I have
heard, was the common theme in pulpits, and ushered in,
as well as promoted, the late bloody civil wars." Hick-
eringhill had written an Answer to our author's MEDAL.
See the Life of Dryden, p. 164.
P. 84.--he had, as an old historian says of another,
magnas virtutes, nec minora vitia.
I have in vain endeavoured to trace this passage to any
historian. Annibal's character in Livy, (1. xxi. c. 4.)
contains these words: "Has tantas viri virtutes ingentia
vitia æquabant; which I should have suspected were in
our author's contemplation, (for he seldom is exact in his
quotations,) but that the very words, here introduced,
occur in other modern authors. Thus Howel, in his
ADDITIONS AND EMENDATIONS.
147
(C
LETTERS, Book 1. let. 42. says, "To conclude; in
Italy there be virtutes magnæ, nec minora vitia." So also
Sir Thomas Browne, in his RELIGIO MEDICI, P. II.
§ 10. Magnæ virtutes, nec minora vitia, is the poesy of
the best natures; -a poesy, which Dr. Jolinson has ap-
plied to the style of Browne. The same words also occur
in one of the Epistles of Erasmus.
P. 91. n. 9. For Queen Elizabeth's birth-day, r. the day of
Queen's Elizabeth's accession to the throne.
The following account of this ceremonial is given by
Wright, in his "Compendious View of the late Tumults
and Troubles," &c. p. 59, 8vo. 1685.
"The effigies of the Pope, in all his Pontificalibus, had
been for several years past solemnly burnt by the people
in the month of November, yearly; but never with so
much ceremony as on the 17th of November this year
[1679]; it being a day observed by some in memory
of
Queen Elizabeth. The procession consisted of one per-
sonating the dead body of Sir Edmundbury Godfrey,
carried on a horse, with a bellman to mind the people of
his murther; Priests in copes, with a large silver cross;
Carmelites and Gray Friers; six Jesuites, and after them
the Waits; several Bishops, some in lawn sleeves, others
with copes and miters on; then six Cardinals; and after
them the Pope on a pageant, with boys and incense pots,
and other ceremonious pomp; behind him the Devil's
representative. In this manner they marched, about five
at night, from Bishopsgate to the Temple Gate at Chan-
cery Lane end, attended with thousands of people; at
which appointed station they committed the effigies to
the flames of a very extraordinary bonefire, at which time
the mock devil departed, and the shew ended."-See also
our author's Prologue to Southerne's LOYAL BROTHER,
1682.
A very curious and scarce print, representing this ce-
remonial, is in Mr. Bindley's Collection.
148
ADDITIONS AND EMENDATIONS.
P. 105. Add to the Note-So, in "The Treacherous Ana-
baptist, or the Dipper Dipt, a new Protestant ballad :"
"O ye Roundheads and Whiggs, for ever be silent,
"Cease to scandalize Tory, and honest Tantivy."
Again, in Choice Songs, printed at the end of an He-
roick Poem to his Royal Highness the Duke of York on his
return from Scotland, by Matthew Taubman, folio, 1682:
"Here's a health to the King and his lawful successors,
"To honest Tantivies, and loyal Addressers;
"But a pox take all those, that promoted Petitions,
To poison the nation, and stir up seditions."
P. 134. n. 7. For Leolin, r. Leoline.-I have lately ob-
served, that Sir John Dalrymple, in his " APPENDIX
to the Review of Events after the Restoration," p. 324,
says, that the relation of Shaftesbury's death here given,
was chiefly founded on the testimony of one Massal;
and that "if he had known Massal's character to have
been so bad as he afterwards found it to have been, he
should not have given credit to any thing said by him."
P. 151. n. l. 6. For third, r. sixth.
For a more particular account of the news of the Duke
of Monmouth's landing, reaching London, see the Life
of Dryden, p. 188. n.
;
P. 152. n. See vol. iii. p. 32, where our author has given
the same definition but we there find that he meant
only what he calls "poetical wit." This qualification
in a great measure obviates the objections made by
Addison on this subject.
P. 211. l. 13 from the bottom.-so have you wisely chosen
to withdraw yourself from publick business, &c.
On the 19th of October, 1689, the Marquis of Halifax
desired to be excused from officiating any longer as
Speaker of the House of Lords; and Sir Robert Atkins,
Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer, was appointed
Speaker in his room.
ADDITIONS AND EMENDATIONS.
149
P. 218. n. There is here a slight mistake, in consequence
of my trusting to memory. Lord Rochester was in the
reign of Charles II. only First Commissioner of the
Treasury, and by King James was made Lord High
Treasurer, as has been rightly stated in p. 64.-In this
note therefore, in l. 3, for Lord Treasurer, r. First
Lord of the Treasury; and afterwards, dele the words
again, and a second time.
P. 220. n. 1. l. 2. Read, James, Earl of Ossory, afterwards
the second Duke of Ormond.
Ibid. 1. 5. For the Duchess of Ormond, r. Lady Ossory.
P. 231. l. 12 from the bottom. For Ptolomy, г. Ptolemy.
P. 237. n. l. 3. For Charles, r. Thomas.
P. 249. For 1662, r. 1661.
P. 274. n. l. 1. Since this note was written, I have ob- .
served that Crowne, in the Preface to his CALIGULA,
a tragedy, printed in 1698, says, that "three parts of
four of the Notes on THE EMPRESS OF MOROcco,
were written by him."
P. 278. 1. 5. "I suspect he took her character from the
poisoning woman.
Catharine des Hayes, the widow of the Sieur Mont-
Voisin, and thence known by the name of LA VOISIN,
about this time, having purchased from an Italian chemist
named Exili, a poison named acqua toffana, with it de-
stroyed many lives. She pretended to the spirit of pro-
phecy, and took care to fulfil her deadly predictions, by
giving her drug to those whose death she had foretold.
By this flagitious trade she supported herself in great
elegance for some years. Being at length suspected, in
consequence of various persons having died suddenly, a
chambre ardente was held at the Arsenal in Paris, by
order of Louis the Fourteenth, and she was burned, July
22, 1680.-I doubt, however, whether she was suffi-
ciently notorious, when the Notes on THE EMPRESS OF
R
150
ADDITIONS AND EMENDATIONS.
MOROCCO were written, to have been here in contem-
plation.
P. 288. n. See also THE LOYAL SATIRIST, 4to, 1662,
P. 7:
among the Turks, dizziness is a divine trance;
changelings and ideots are the chiefest saints; and 'tis the
greatest sign of revelation to be out of one's wits."
P. 293. n. 3. See this matter more accurately stated in
the Life of Dryden.-Though the story of Absalom
and Achitophel had not been applied in the pulpit to
this part of King Charles the Second's reign, before
our author's poem, Nathaniel Carpenter had exhibited
the picture of "a wicked politician," in the person of
Achitophel, in three sermons preached at Oxford,
which were printed in the year 1627. I doubt, how-
ever, whether Dryden had ever seen Carpenter's book.
P. 294. n. 6.-The following instances fully support my
conjecture here. In Mr. Bindley's Collection is " A
proper New Brummigham Ballad, to the tune of-Hey then,
up go we;" which is a song of triumph on the prospect
of the speedy downfall of the Church of England, and
the arrival of the happy time when men shall be al-
lowed to teach beneath a tree, and make a pulpit of a cart.
So also in "Old Jemmy, an excellent new ballad," in
the same Collection; published Sep. 15, 1681:
"Old Jemmy is the top
"And chief among the princes,
"No mobile gay fop,
"With Bringham pretences.
Again, in IGNORAMUS, a ballad, Dec. 15, 1681:
"O, how they plotted!
.
Briminghams voted,
"And all the mobile the holy cause promoted."
ADDITIONS AND EMENDATIONS.
151
Again, in THE CAVALIER LITANY, Nov. 1682:
"From a Brumisham Saint, and a serious Church Whig,
"From a puritan soul that abominates pig,
"From the forty-one rogues, that would hum the old
Libera nos."
gig,
Again, in "THE RIDDLE OF THE ROUND-HEAD, an
excellent new ballad," Sep. 9, 1681:
"Lords and Bishops are useless voted ;-
Whigs and Brumighams, with shams and stories,
"Are true protestants,
"And protestants are masquerades and Tories,
"The modern reformation of the Saints."
See also the Prologue to SIR BARNABY WHIG, a
comedy, by T. D'Urfey, 1681 :
"In a coffee-house just now among the rabble,
"I humbly ask'd, which was the treason-table;
"The fellow pointed, and 'faith down I sat,
"To hear two harden'd Brumicham rascals prate;
Aiming at politicks, though void of reason,
"And lacing coffee with large lumps of treason."
P. 301. n. 5. Read-in 1681 and 1682.
Shaftesbury was supposed to be the author of the first
part of NO PROTESTANT PLOT.
P. 306. n. l. 11. After Muse, add-THE TORY POETS.
P. 307. n. Since this note was written, I have met
with THE WHIP AND KEY. Some account of that
poem may be found in the Life of Dryden, p. 158.
P. 310. n. Sir George Mackenzie, soon after the Resto-
ration, published RELIGIO STOICI.-In 1685 appeared
RELIGIO JURISPRUDENTIS; and in 1691 was pub-
lished RELIGIO MILITIS.
P. 311. l. 13. "whose writings have highly deserved
of both."
152
ADDITIONS AND EMENDATIONS.
I suspect, Tillotson, at that time Dean of Canterbury,
was the person here meant. Congreve tells us, that
Dryden greatly admired his writings.
P. 407. "What has been already noted by him—.”
Such was the phraseology of the last age. Our author
means of or concerning him.
P.411. 1. 13." It is not defined, how far our resolution may
carry us to suffer. The force of bodies may more
easily be determined, than that of souls."
Dr. Johnson, in his 32d RAMBLER, has thus energe-
tically expressed the same sentiment. I do not, how-
ever, suppose that he had Montagne in his thoughts :
"I think there is some reason for questioning, whether
the body and mind are not so proportioned, that the one
can bear all which can be inflicted on the other; whether
virtue cannot stand its ground as long as life, and whe-
ther a soul well principled will not be separated before
it be subdued.”
P. 425. In confirmation of what has been here suggested,
(that this Advertisement was written by Dryden,) see
vol. iii. p. 388. n.
P. 453. n. The poem alluded to by Fenton, was written
by Blackmore, and appeared in 1709, under the title
of "Instructions to Vanderbank; a sequel to the Ad-
vice to the Poets." See some extracts from it ridi-
culed in THE TATLER, No. 3.
P. 476. In further support of what is here stated, see the
Life of Dryden, p. 193, n. 9.
P. 532, n. 1. Robin Wisdom's "godly ballad" here al-
luded to, appeared probably in the 16th century. It
is found also at the end of "The whole Book of Psalms
collected into English Meter by Thomas Sternhold,
John Hopkins, and others," subjoined to the Book of
ADDITIONS AND EMENDATIONS.
153
Common Prayer, folio, 1662. The first stanza, to
which our author refers, is the only part of it which
need be quoted:
"Preserve us, LORD, by thy dear word,
"From Turk and Pope defend us, LORD;
"Which both would thrust out of his throne
"Our Lord JESUS CHRIST, thy dear son."
P. 543. n. 7. l. 4. For Bohurs, r. Bouhours.
VOL. III.
P. 26. n. 7. For 1680, r. 1684; and in the next line, r.
appeared also—.
P. 41. My memory here deceived me; for it is the Essay
on Satire, not that on Poetry, that Sheffield says, was
written in 1675. Dryden therefore, by the words-
"before I knew the author of it," certainly meant,-
before I knew by whom it was written.
P. 43. n. Dele the words—" to whom," &c. the verses re-
ferred to, though generally ascribed to our author, not
being written by him. See vol. i. part i. p. 507.
P. 56. I. 15.-" to give mankind their own."
Here we have one among many proofs of Dryden's
love of English idiomatical phrases. In a serious com-
position no one would now venture to write-" he
gave
mankind their own," in the sense of " he rated them
severely."
P. 65. n. Dr. Chetwood had a claim to the peerage of
Wahull, or Woodhull; and on this ground, perhaps,
was denominated “ a person of honour."
P. 112. l. 2. For self-concept, r. self-conceit.
P. 125. l. 5. For Siquis, r. Si quis.
154
ADDITIONS AND EMENDATIONS.
P. 127. l. 11. from the bottom. For satirick, r. satyrick.
P. 151. n. The Ancients, it should be recollected, writing
on rolls of parchment, called each book or part of a
work, or whatever might be comprised within the roll,
a volume. Thus the fifteen books of Ovid's META-
MORPHOSES certainly made fifteen volumes, if not
more. The works of Varro therefore, though unques-
tionably voluminous, were not so numerous as may at
first sight appear.
P.
194. n. 2. Since this remark was written, I have met
with several notices of "honest Mr. Swan," who was
the most distinguished punster of his day. Dennis
speaks of him more than once in his Letters, 1696;
and declares, that "for the management of quibbles
and dice, no one came near him." Briscoe, the
bookseller, in his Collection of Letters, calls him-
Captain Swan. He is twice mentioned by Swift, who
styles him the famous Mr. Swan," and says, he was
"as virulent a Jacobite as any in England." See Swift's
Works, vol. x. p. 244; and vol. xiii. p. 78. He is
also alluded to in the Prologue to Ravenscroft's ITA-
LIAN HUSBAND, a tragedy, 1698:
"With Swanish puns you may regale the cit;
“Their swinish taste delights in husks of wit."
P. 199. n. I. 2. For "Generous Enemies," r. " Loving
Enemies."
It appears from a letter of Mr. Moyle, published by
Hammond, that our author's learned friend, Mr. Lewis
Maidwell, published a Book of Instructions for reading
a course of Mathematicks and other literature.
1702, r. 1713.
P. 212. n. 2. l. 4. For 1702, r.
P. 229. n. 9. For Sheers, here and afterwards, r. Shere.
See vol. i. part i. p. 253, n. 4. He was, however, usually
called Sheeres by his contemporaries; from the custom
ADDITIONS AND EMENDATIONS.
155
which prevailed very generally in the last century of
adding an (s) to the end of
to the end of proper names.
P. 253. 1. 7.-" and chapters even his own Aratus on the
same head.'
""
Our author is perhaps singular in the use of this verb,
which escaped Dr. Johnson's vigilance. To chapter,
meaning" to pronounce a solemn censure," is deduced
with sufficient propriety from one of the senses of the
noun, Chapter, "the place where delinquents receive
discipline and correction." It may, however, here bear
the same signification as if our author had written "-and
lectures even his own Aratus," &c.
P. 269. n. 6. For-" son of Francis, r. son of James.
P. 276. n. For our author, r. Shadwell.
P. 278. n. l. 3. For Blackman, r. Blackmore.
P. 366. n. Since this note was written, I have learned
that a-mocca, or a-muck, (for so the word should be
written,) is used in the Malay language, adverbially,
as one word, and signifies, if we may so write, killingly.
"He runs a-muck," i. e. he runs with a savage intent
to kill whomsoever he meets. Dryden, by placing
Indian before the word, (" He runs an Indian muck at
all he meets,) while he recognized its origin, misled
Dr. Johnson and others, to suppose it a substantive.
T. Brown, in his "Observations on THE HIND AND
THE PANTHER," 1687, is more correct :-" then he
lays about him, as if he were running a muck, and had
resolved to kill all that he met." So also Mr. Boyle
on Blackmore :
"Let him great Dryden's awful name profane,
"And learned Garth with envious pride disdain;
"Codron's bright genius with vile puns lampoon,
" And run a-muck at all the Wits in town.'
P. 378. 1. 16.-Aristotle has made the same definition in
other terms-
156
ADDITIONS AND EMENDATIONS.
I thought it probable that the passage here in our au-
thor's thoughts was in Aristotle's POETICKS; but when
this page was printing, I had not leisure to examine it with
sufficient care. But the learned and ingenious Mr.
Twining, to whom the publick is indebted for an excel-
lent translation and commentary on that work, has disco-
vered the words which Dryden seems to have had in view;
ΠΕΡΙ ΠΟΙΗΤΙΚΗΣ, p. 24: edit. Tyrwhitt : Τρίτον δὲ ἡ
διάνοια· τοῦτο δέ ἐτι τὸ λέγειν δύνασθαι τὰ ἐνόντα καὶ τὰ ἀρ-
ματίοντα.
P. 394. n. 4. 1. 5. For Bucal, r. Bucol.
1.5.
P. 401. n. *. l. 5. For was the inventor, r. is generally
supposed to have been the inventor. And add, after the
word videatur, in l. 11., as follows:
The claim of Sannazarius, however, to the invention of
this species of Eclogue, may be doubted; for from a line
of Ovid (EPIST. EX PONTO. iv. 16.) it should seem that
a Roman poet of the Augustan age, had written Piscatory
Eclogues, though none of his works has come down
to us:
66
Tityrus antiquas et erat qui pasceret herbas,
Aptaque venanti Gratius arma daret.
"Naïadas a Satyris caneret FONTANUS amatas,
"Clauderet imparibus verba Capella modis."
P. 427. n. l. penult. r. any heroich poem,
P. 427. l. 10 from the bottom. "Stavo ben," &c. I have
in vain consulted many books of travels into Italy, in
order to discover where or when this monumental in-
scription was set up, and on whom it was written; and
merely mention it here, with a view to a further and
more successful inquiry. Its having been quoted in
the SPECTATOR, No. 25, has made it familiar to Eng-
lish readers but Addison does not furnish us with the
desired information; for he only says, that it is " an
:
$
ADDITIONS AND EMENDATIONS.
157
Italian epitaph written on the monument of a Vale-
tudinarian."
P. 452. l. 12. For Montange's, r. Montagne's.
P. 495.
"From whence did he borrow his design of
bringing Æneas into Italy ?"-Add to the note here.
Aurelius Victor, who wrote in the fourth century,
quotes a work then extant, written by A. Posthumius, De
Adventu Enea in Italiam. Posthumius lived a century
before Virgil.
P. 516. l. 13. “I doubt not but the adverb, solum, is to be
understood," &c.
Turnus certainly would not acknowlege, that the me-
naces of his antagonist had any effect whatsoever on him;
and, therefore, solum is not admissible. As for the valour
of his opponent, there is no question concerning it, that
being introduced by our author's false reading of the
passage. See p. 514. n.
P. 517. 1. ult. Ornari res ipsa negat, contenta doceri.
This line is by many supposed to be in Horace; but it
is found in the ASTRONOMICON of Manilius, lib. iii. v. 39.
Our author affixed it as a motto to his RELIGIO LAICI.
P. 561. n. 6. Sir William Trumbull's character of Arch-
bishop Dolben, I have since observed, was printed in
"the History of Rochester," 1774, and again in the
new edition of the BIOGRAPHIA BRITANNICA.
P. 575. n. 1. 4. For about the year 1662, r. April 9, 1665.
P. 612. n. The observation quoted was not made by Ca-
tullus, as Dryden supposed, but by Martial, lib. iii.
epig. 44:
"Occurrit tibi nemo quod libenter;
Quod quocunque venis, fuga est, et ingens
"Circa te, Ligurine, solitudo;
Quid sit, scire cupis? nimis poeta es.”
158
ADDITIONS AND EMENDATIONS.
ī
P. 657. n. The circumstance here mentioned, which ex-
plains and illustrates some of our author's verses, is
ascertained by a letter written by Congreve to Joseph
Keally, Esq. a gentleman who resided at Keally-mount,
in the county of Kilkenny, in Ireland. In this letter,
which appears to have been written, Sep. 28, 1697,
(though falsely dated by the publisher, or some person
through whose hands it passed, Sep. 1707,) is the fol-
lowing passage:-" My Lord Duke of Ormond, whom
I waited on yesterday, talks of going for Ireland on Mon-
day next. I believe my Lady, and the good Bishop,
[Dr. John Hartstong, Bishop of Ossory, who had
been the Duke of Ormond's Chaplain,] will have their
books at that time. [Probably Dryden's Virgil.] Tell
the good Bishop, I must have very good fortune before
I am reconciled to the necessity of my staying in Eng-
land, at a time when I promised myself the happiness
of seeing him at Kilkenny. I would say somewhat
very devout to the Duchess; but you are a profane dog,
and would spoil it." See LITERARY RELICKS, pub-
lished by George Monck Berkeley, Esq. 8vo. 1789,
P. 35%.
ERRATA.
In the Life of Dryden, p. 461, 1. 3. For has, r. have.
P. 464, 1. 10. Fox Turnbull, 1. Trumbull.
OF
DRAMATICK POESY,
AN ESSAY:
FIRST PRINTED IN QUARTO, IN 1668.
FUNGAR VICE COTIS, ACUTUM,
REDDERE QUÆ FERRUM VALET, EXSORS IPSA SECANDI.
VOL. I.
B
HOR.
PROLEGOMENA.
EPISTLE DEDICATORY
TO THE
RIVAL LADIES.
TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE
ROGER, EARL OF ORRERY."
MY LORD,
THIS worthless present was designed you,
long before it was a Play, when it was only a con-
fused mass of thoughts, tumbling over one another in
the dark; when the Fancy was yet in its first work,
moving the sleeping images of things towards the
light, there to be distinguished, and then either
I
Roger Boyle, Earl of Orrery, fifth son of the great
Earl of Cork, was born April 25, 1621; and died on
the 16th of October, 1679. He is author of eight plays,
seven of which were collected and published in two
volumes, 8vc. in 1739.
The present Dedication was addressed to him in the year
1664, when the RIVAL LADIES, which was Dryden's
second play, was first printed.
In the last paragraph of the DEFENCE OF THE
ESSAY ON DRAMATICK POESY, the reader will find the
reason of this, and the following piece, being placed here.
4
PROLEGOMENA.
chosen or rejected by the judgment: it was yours,
my Lord, before I could call it mine. And, I
confess, in that first tumult of my thoughts, there
appeared a disorderly kind of beauty in some of
them, which gave me hope, something worthy my
Lord of ORRERY might be drawn from them but
I was then in that eagerness of imagination, which
by over-pleasing fanciful men, flatters them into
the danger of writing; so that when I had moulded
it to that shape it now bears, I looked with such
disgust upon it, that the censures of our severest
criticks are charitable to what I thought, and still
think, of it myself. 'Tis so far from me to believe
this perfect, that I am apt to conclude our best
plays are scarcely so; for the stage being the
representation of the world, and the actions in it,
how can it be imagined, that the picture of human
life can be more exact, than life itself is? He may
be allowed sometimes to err, who undertakes to
move so many characters and humours as are
requisite in a play, in those narrow channels which
are proper to each of them: to conduct his imagi-
nary persons through so many various intrigues and
chances, as the labouring audience shall think
them lost under every billow; and then at length
to work them so naturally out of their distresses,
that when the whole plot is laid open, the spectators
may rest satisfied, that every cause was powerful
enough to produce the effect it had; and that the
whole chain of them was with such due order linked
together, that the first accident would naturally
PROLEGOMENA.
5
beget the second, till they all rendered the con-
clusion necessary.
These difficulties, my Lord, may reasonably
excuse the errors of my undertaking; but for this
confidence of my Dedication, I have an argument
which is too advantageous for me not to publish it
to the world: 'tis the kindness your Lordship
has continually shown to all my writings. You
have been pleased, my Lord, they should some-
times cross the Irish seas, to kiss your hands; which
passage (contrary to the experience of others) I
have found the least dangerous in the world.
Your favour has shone upon me at a remote
distance, without the least knowledge of my
person; and, like the influence of the heavenly
bodies, you have done good, without knowing to
whom you did it. 'Tis this virtue in your Lord-
ship, which emboldens me to this attempt: for
did I not consider you as my patron, I have little
reason to desire you for my judge; and should
appear with as much awe before you in the reading,
as I had when the full theatre sat upon the action.
For who could so severely judge of faults as he,
who has given testimony he commits none; your
excellent poems having afforded that knowledge
of it to the world, that your enemies are ready to
upbraid you with it, as a crime for a man of business
to write so well. Neither durst I have justified your
Lordship in it, if examples of it had not been in
the world before you; if Xenophon had not written
a romance, and a certain Roman, called Augustus
6
PROLEGOMENA.
2
Cæsar, a tragedy, and epigrams. But their writing
was the entertainment of their pleasure, yours is
only a diversion of your pain. The Muses have
seldom employed your thoughts, but when some
violent fit of the gout has snatched you from
affairs of state and, like the Priestess of Apollo,
you never come to deliver his oracles, but un-
willingly and in torment. So that we are obliged
to your Lordship's misery for our delight: you
treat us with the cruel pleasure of a Turkish
triumph, where those who cut and wound their
bodies, sing songs of victory as they pass, and
divert others with their own sufferings. Other
men endure their diseases, your Lordship only
can enjoy them. Plotting and writing in this
kind, are certainly more troublesome employments
than many which signify more, and are of greater
moment in the world: The fancy, memory, and
judgment are then extended (like so many limbs)
upon the rack; all of them reaching with their
utmost stress at nature; a thing so almost infinite
and boundless, as can never fully be comprehended,
but where the images of all things are always
present. Yet I wonder not, your Lordship succeeds
so well in this attempt: the knowledge of men
is your daily practice in the world; to work and
bend their stubborn minds, which go not all after
the same grain, but each of them so particular a
way, that the same common humours, in several
persons, must be wrought upon by several means.
2 Entitled AJAX. See Sueton. in Aug. 85.
PROLEGOMENA.
7
Thus, my Lord, your sickness is but the imitation
of your health; the poet but subordinate to the
statesman in you: you still govern men with the
same address, and manage business with the same
prudence; allowing it here, as in the world, the
due increase and growth, till it comes to the just
height; and then turning it when it is fully ripe,
and Nature calls out, as it were, to be delivered.
With this only advantage of ease to you in your
poetry, that you have fortune here at your com
mand; with which, wisdom does often unsuccess-
fully struggle in the world. Here is no chance
which you have not foreseen; all your heroes are
more than your subjects, they are your creatures ;
and though they seem to move freely in all the
sallies of their passions, yet you make destinies
for them which they cannot shun. They are
moved, if I may dare to say so, like the rational
creatures of the Almighty Poet, who walk at liberty,
in their own opinion, because their fetters are
invincible, when indeed the prison of their will is
the more sure for being large; and instead of an
absolute power over their actions, they have only
a wretched desire of doing that, which they cannot
choose but do.
I have dwelt, my Lord, thus long upon your
writing, not because you deserve not greater and
more noble commendations, but because I am not
equally able to express them in other subjects.
Like an ill swimmer, I have willingly staid long in
my own depth; and though I am eager of perform-
ing more, yet am loath to venture out beyond
PROLEGOMENA.
my knowledge: for beyond your poetry, my
Lord, all is ocean to me. To speak of you as a
soldier, or a statesman, were only to betray my
own ignorance; and I could hope no better success
from it, than that miserable rhetorician had, who
solemnly declaimed before Hannibal, of the con-
duct of arms, and the art of war.
I can only say
in general, that the souls of other men shine out
at little crannies; they understand some one thing,
perhaps to admiration, while they are darkened on
all the other parts: but your Lordship's soul is an
entire globe of light, breaking out on every
side;
and if I have only discovered one beam of it, 'tis
not that the light falls unequally, but because the
body which receives it, is of unequal parts.
The acknowledgment of which is a fair occasion
offered me, to retire from the consideration of
your Lordship to that of myself. I here present
you, my Lord, with that in print, which you had
the goodness not to dislike upon the stage; and
account it happy to have met you here in England;
it being at best, like small wines, to be drunk out
upon the place, and has not body enough to endure
the sea.
I know not whether I have been so
careful of the plot and language as I ought; but
for the latter, I have endeavoured to write English,
as near as I could distinguish it from the tongue
of pedants, and that of affected travellers; only
I am sorry, that, speaking so noble a language as
we do, we have not a more certain measure of it,
as they have in France, where they have an
PROLEGOMENA.
9
Academy³ erected for that purpose, and endowed
with large privileges by the present king. I
wish we might at length leave to borrow words
from other nations, which is now a wantonness
in us, not a necessity; but so long as some
affect to speak them, there will not want others
who will have the boldness to write them.
But I fear, lest defending the received words,
I shall be accused for following the new way,-I
mean, of writing scenes in verse: though, to
speak properly, 'tis not so much a new way
amongst us, as an old way new revived; for many
years before Shakspeare's plays, was the tragedy
of Queen Gorboduc in English verse, written by
4
3 Some years after this Dedication was written, Lord
Roscommon, as Fenton informs us, in imitation of those
learned and polite assemblies with which he had been
acquainted abroad, formed the plan of a Society for
refining our language, and fixing its standard. In this
design, he adds, "his great friend Mr. Dryden was his
principal assistant."-But the project was not carried into
execution. The same scheme was again attempted by
Swift, in the beginning of the present century, without
success.
4 The author means THE TRAGEDIE OF FERREX AND
PORREX, written by Thomas Sackville (afterwards Lord
Buckhurst, and finally Earl of Dorset) and Thomas Norton,
and acted before Queen Elizabeth, Jan. 18th, 1561-2. A
spurious edition of this play appeared in 1565,under the title
of THE TRAGEDIE OF GORBODUC; and the genuine piece
was printed by John Dayę, in 8vo. in 1571. The first three
acts were written by Norton; the last two by Sackville.
10
PROLEGOMENA.
that famous Lord Buckhurst, afterwards Earl of
Dorset, and progenitor to that excellent person,'
who, as he inherits his soul and title, I wish may
inherit his good fortune. But supposing our
countrymen had not received this writing till of
late, shall we oppose ourselves to the most polished
and civilized nations of Europe? Shall we with
the same singularity oppose the world in this, as
most of us do in pronouncing Latin? or do we
desire that the brand which Barclay has (I hope)
unjustly laid upon the English, should still con-
tinue,—Angli suos ac sua omnia impense mirantur;
cæteras nationes despectui habent. All the Spanish
and Italian tragedies I have yet seen, are writ in
rhyme. For the French, I do not name them,
because it is the fate of our countrymen to admit
little of theirs among us, but the basest of their
men, the extravagancies of their fashions, and the
frippery of their merchandise. Shakspeare (who
On our author's mistake respecting the sex of Gorboduc,
who was king of Britain, and the father of Ferrex and
Porrex, Langbaine expatiates with his usual severity.
This play, however, is not written in rhyme, which
from the context appears to have been meant by the words
English verse. The greater part of the piece is in blank
verse; the choruses in alternate rhymes.
Mr. Pope and Mr. Spence being struck with the merit
of this tragedy, the latter gentleman republished it in 1735,
with a preface; but unluckily followed a spurious edition
of 1590, instead of the genuine copy above mentioned.
5 Charles, then Lord Buckhurst, who, in 1677, on
the death of his father, became Earl of Dorset.
PROLEGOMENA.
11
with some errors not to be avoided in that age, had,
undoubtedly, a larger soul of poesy than ever any
of our nation) was the first, who, to shun the
pains of continual rhyming, invented that kind of
writing, which we call blank verse, 6 but the
French more properly, prose mesuré: into which
the English tongue so naturally slides, that in
writing prose 'tis hardly to be avoided. And there-
fore I admire, some men should perpetually
stumble in a way so easy; and inverting the
order of their words, constantly close their lines
with verbs; which though commended sometimes
in writing Latin, yet we were whipped at Westmin-
ster if we used it twice together. I know some,
who, if they were to write in blank verse, Sir, I ask
your pardon, would think it sounded more heroically
to write, Sir, I your pardon ask. I should judge
him to have little command of English, whom the
necessity of a rhyme should force upon this rock,
though sometimes it cannot easily be avoided: and
indeed this is the only inconvenience with which
rhyme can be charged. This is that which makes
them say, rhyme is not natural; it being only so,
when the poet either makes a vicious choice of
words, or places them for rhyme-sakc so unnaturally,
as no man would in ordinary speaking: but when
'tis so judiciously ordered, that the first word in the
verse seems to beget the second, and that the next,
6 Our author is here again inaccurate. Many plays
before those of Shakspeare exhibit passages in blank
verse.
12
PROLEGOMENA.
till that becomes the last word in the line, which
in the negligence of prose would be so, it must
then be granted, rhyme has all the advantages of
prose, besides its own. But the excellence and
dignity of it were never fully known, till Mr.
Waller taught it; he first made writing easily an
art; first shewed us to conclude the sense, most
commonly in distichs; which in the verse of those
before him, runs on for so many lines together,
that the reader is out of breath to overtake it. This
sweetness of Mr. Waller's lyrick poesy, was after-
wards followed in the epick by Sir John Denham, in
his COOPER'S-HILL; a poem which your Lordship
knows, for the majesty of the style, is, and ever will
be, the exact standard of good writing. But if we
owe the invention of it to Mr. Waller, we are ac-
knowledging for the noblest use of it to Sir William
D'Avenant, who at once brought it upon the stage,
and made it perfect, in the SIEGE of Rhodes."
The advantages which rhyme has over blank
verse, are so many, that it were lost time to name
1 them. Sir Philip Sydney, in his Defence of Poesy,
gives us one, which, in my opinion, is not the
least considerable; I mean the help it brings to
memory which rhyme so knits up by the affinity
of sounds, that by remembering the last word in
one line, we often call to mind both the verses.
Then in the quickness of repartees, which in
discoursive scenes fall very often, it has so parti-
7 First acted at the Duke's Theatre in 1662, and printed
in 4to. in 1663,
PROLEGOMENA.
13
}
cular a grace, and is so aptly suited to them, that
the sudden smartness of the answer, and the
sweetness of the rhyme, set off the beauty of each
other. But that benefit which I consider most
in it, because I have not seldom found it, is, that it
bounds and circumscribes the fancy: for imagination
in a poet is a faculty so wild and lawless, that, like an
high-ranging spaniel, it must have clogs tied to it,
lest it outrun the judgment. The great easiness of
blank verse renders the poet too luxuriant; he is
tempted to say many things which might better
be omitted, or at least shut up in fewer words: but
when the difficulty of artful rhyming is interposed,
where the poet commonly confines his sense to his
couplet, and must contrive that sense into such
words, that the rhyme, shall naturally follow them,
not they the rhyme; the fancy then gives leisure
to the judgment to come in; which seeing so
heavy a tax imposed, is ready to cut off all un-
necessary expences. This last consideration has
already answered an objection which some have
made; that rhyme is only an embroidery of sense,
to make that which is ordinary in itself, pass for
excellent with less examination. But certainly,
that which most regulates the fancy, and gives the
judgment its busiest employment, is like to bring
forth the richest and clearest thoughts. The poet
examines that most which he produceth with the
greatest leisure, and which, he knows, must pass
the severest test of the audience, because they are
aptest to have it ever in their memory; as the
14
PROLEGOMENA.
stomach makes the best concoction, when it strictly
embraces the nourishment, and takes account of
every little particle as it passes through. But as
the best medicines may lose their virtue by being
ill applied, so is it with verse, if a fit subject be not
chosen for it. Neither must the argument alone,
but the characters and persons, be great and noble;
otherwise (as Scaliger says of Claudian) the poet
will be ignobiliore materiâ depressus. The scenes,
which, in my opinion, most commend it, are those
of argumentation and discourse, on the result of
which the doing or not doing some considerable
action should depend.
But, my Lord, though I have more to say upon
this subject, yet I must remember, 'tis your Lord-
ship to whom I speak; who have much better
commended this way by your writing in it, than
I can do by writing for it. Where my reasons
cannot prevail, I am sure your Lordship's example
must. Your rhetorick has gained my cause; at
least the greatest part of my design has already
succeeded to my wish, which was to interest so
noble a person in the quarrel, and withal to testify
to the world how happy I esteem myself in the
honour of being,
MY LORD,
Your Lordship's
Most humble, and most obedient servant,
JOHN DRYDEN.
J
PREFACE
то
SIR ROBERT HOWARD'S PLAYS,
FIRST PRINTED IN FOLIO, IN 1665.
TO THE READER.
THERE is none more sensible than I am,
how great a charity the most ingenious may need,
that expose their private wit to a publick judg-
ment; since the same fancy from whence the
thoughts proceed, must probably be kind to its
own issue. This renders men no perfecter judges
of their own writings, than fathers are of their
own children; who find out that wit in them which
another discerns not, and see not those errors
which are evident to the unconcerned. Nor is
this self-kindness more fatal to men in their
writings, than in their actions; every man being
a greater flatterer to himself than he knows how
to be to another: otherwise it were impossible
that things of such distant natures should find
their own authors so equally kind in their affections
to them, and men so different in parts and virtues,
should rest equally contented in their own opinions.
16
PROLEGOMENA.
1
•
8
This apprehension, added to that greater which
I have of my own weakness, may, I hope, incline
the reader to believe me, when I assure him that
these follies were made publick as much against
my inclination as judgment: but being pursued
with so many solicitations of Mr. Herringman's,
and having received civilities from him, if it were
possible, exceeding his importunities, I at last
yielded to prefer that which he believed his in-
terest, before that which I apprehend my own
disadvantage: considering withal, that he might
pretend it would be a real loss to him, and could
be but an imaginary prejudice to me; since things
of this nature, though never so excellent, or never
so mean, have seldom proved the foundation¸ of
men's new-built fortunes, or the ruin of their old;
it being the fate of poetry, though of no other
good parts, to be wholly separated from interest;
and there are few that know me but will easily
believe I am not much concerned in an unprofitable
reputation. This clear account I have given the
reader of this seeming contradiction,-to offer that
to the world which I dislike myself; and in all
things I have no greater an ambition than to be
believed a person that would rather be unkind to
myself, than ungrateful to others.
I have made this excuse for myself; I offer none
for my writings, but freely leave the reader to
condemn that which has received my sentence
8 The bookseller by whom Sir Robert Howard's plays
were published.
PROLEGOMENA.
17
already. Yet I shall presume to say something in
the justification of our nation's plays, though not
of
my own; since, in my judgment, without being
partial to my country, I do really prefer our plays
as much before any other nation's, as I do the best
of our's before my own.
The manner of the stage-entertainments have
differed in all ages; and as it has encreased in use,
it has enlarged itself in business: the general man-
ner of plays among the ancients we find in Se-
neca's tragedies, for serious subjects, and in Te-
rence and Plautus, for the comical; in which latter
we see some pretences to plots, though certainly
short of what we have seen in some of Mr. Jon-
son's plays; and for their wit, especially Plautus,
I suppose it suited much better in those days than
it would do in ours; for were their plays strictly
translated, and presented on our stage, they would
hardly bring as many audiences as they have now
admirers.
The serious plays were anciently composed of
speeches and choruses, where all things are re-
lated, but no matter of fact presented on the stage:
this pattern the French do at this time nearly fol-
low; only leaving out the chorus, making up their
plays with almost entire and discoursive scenes,
presenting the business in relations. This
way has
very much affected some of our nation, who pos-
sibly believe well of it, more upon the account
that what the French do ought to be a fashion,
than upon the reason of the thing.
VOL. I.
C
18
PROLEGOMENA.
It is first necessary to consider why, probably,
the compositions of the ancients, especially in their
serious plays, were after this manner; and it will
be found, that the subjects they commonly chose
drove them upon the necessity, which were usually
the most known stories and fables. Accordingly,
Seneca making choice of Medea, Hyppolitus, and
Hercules Oetus, it was impossible to shew Medea
throwing old mangled Æson into her age-renew-
ing caldron, or to present the scattered limbs
of Hyppolitus upon the stage, or shew Hercules
burning upon his own funeral pile: and this the
judicious Horace clearly speaks of in his Arte
Poetica, where he says,
Non tamen intus
Digna geri, promes in scenam: multaque tolles
Ex oculis, quæ mox narret facundia præsens.
Nec
pueros coram populo Medea trucidet;
Aut humana palàm coquat exta nefarius Atreus;
Aut in avem Progne vertatur, Cadmus in anguem.
Quodcunque ostendis mihi sic, incredulus odi.
So that it appears a fault to choose such subjects
for the stage, but much greater to affect that me-
thod which those subjects enforce; and therefore
the French seem much mistaken, who, without the
necessity, sometimes commit the error: and this is
as plainly decided by the same author in his pre-
ceding words:
Aut agitur res in scenis, aut acta refertur :
Segnius irritant animos demissa per aurem,
Quam quæ sunt oculis subjecta fidelibus, et quæ
Ipse sibi tradit spectator.
By which he directly declares his judgment, that
PROLEGOMENA.
19
every thing makes more impression presented than
related. Nor, indeed, can any one rationally assert
the contrary; for if they affirm otherwise, they do
by consequence maintain, that a whole play might
be as well related as acted: therefore, whoever
chooses a subject that enforces him to relations, is
to blame; and he that does it without the neces-
sity of the subject, is much more.
If these premises be granted, it is no partiality to
conclude, that our English plays justly challenge
the pre-eminence; yet I shall as candidly ac-
knowledge, that our best poets have differed from
other nations, (though not so happily,) in usually
mingling and interweaving mirth and sadness
through the whole course of their plays, Ben Jon-
son only excepted, who keeps himself entire to one
argument. And I confess I am now convinced in
my own judgment, that it is most proper to keep
the audience in one entire disposition both of con-
cern and attention; for when scenes of so different
natures immediately succeed one another, it is
probable the audience may not so suddenly recol-
lect themselves, as to start into an enjoyment of
the mirth, or into a concern for the sadness. Yet
I dispute not but the variety of this world may af-
ford pursuing accidents of such different natures:
but yet, though possible in themselves to be, they
may not be so proper to be presented; an entire
connexion being the natural beauty of all plays,
and language the ornament to dress them in
which, in serious subjects, ought to be great and
20
PROLEGOMENA.
easy, like a high-born person, that expresses great-
ness without pride or affectation. The easier dic-
tates of nature ought to flow in Comedy, yet se-
parated from obsceneness, there being nothing
more impudent than the immodesty of words: wit
should be chaste; and those that have it can only
write well:
Si modo-
Scimus inurbanum lepido seponere dicto.
Another way of the ancients, which the French
follow, and our stage has now lately practised, is,
to write in rhyme; and this is the dispute betwixt
many ingenious persons, whether verse in rhyme,
or verse without the sound, which may be called
blank verse, (though a hard expression,) is to be
preferred. But take the question largely, and it
is never to be decided; but, by right application,
I suppose it may; for in the general, they are both
proper, that is, one for a play, the other for a
poem or copy of verses; a blank verse being as
much too low for one, as rhyme is unnatural for
the other. A poem being a premeditated form of
thoughts upon designed occasions, ought not to be
unfurnished of any harmony in words or sound;
the other is presented as the present effect of ac-
cidents not thought of: so that it is impossible it
should be equally proper to both these, unless it
were possible that all persons were born so much
more than poets, that verses were not to be com-
posed by them, but already made in them. Some
may object, that this argument is trivial, because,
PROLEGOMENA.
21
whatever is shewed, it is known still to be but a
play; but such may as well excuse an ill scene,
that is not naturally painted, because they know it
is only a scene, and not really a city or country.
But there is yet another thing which makes
verse upon the stage appear more unnatural; that
is, when a piece of a verse is made up by one that
knew not what the other meant to say, and the
former verse answered as perfectly in sound as the
last is supplied in measure; so that the smartness
of a reply, which has its beauty by coming from
sudden thoughts, seems lost by that which rather
looks like a design of two, than the answer of one.
It may be said, that rhyme is such a confinement
to a quick and luxuriant fancy, that it gives a stop
to its speed, till slow judgment comes in to assist
it; but this is no argument for the question in
hand for the dispute is not, which way a man
may write best in, but which is most proper for the
subject he writes upon; and, if this were let pass,
the argument is yet unsolved in itself: for he that
wants judgment in the liberty of his fancy, may
as well shew the defect of it in its confinement:
and, to say truth, he that has judgment will avoid
the errors, and he that wants it will commit them
both. It may be objected, it is improbable that
any should speak extempore as well as Beaumont
and Fletcher makes them, though in blank verse:
I do not only acknowledge that, but that it is also
improbable any will write so well that way. But
if that may be allowed improbable, I believe it
22
PROLEGOMENA.
may
be concluded impossible that any should speak
as good verses in rhyme, as the best poets have
writ; and therefore, that which seems nearest to
what it intends, is ever to be preferred. Nor is*
great thoughts more adorned by verse, than verse
unbeautified by mean ones; so that verse seems
not only unfit in the best use of it, but much more
in the worse, when a servant is called, or a door
bid to be shut, in rhyme. Verses (I mean good
ones) do in their height of fancy declare the labour
that brought them forth, like majesty, that grows
with care; and Nature, that made the poet capa-
ble, seems to retire, and leave its offers to be made
perfect by pains and judgment. Against this I can
raise no argument but my Lord of Orrery's writings,
in whose verse the greatness of the majesty seems
unsullied with the cares, and his inimitable fancy
descends to us in such easy expressions, that they
seem as if neither had ever been added to the
other, but both together flowing from a height;
like birds got so high, that use no labouring
wings, but only with an easy care preserve a stea-
diness in motion. But this particular happiness,
among those multitudes which that excellent per-
son is owner of, does not convince my reason, but
*This disregard of concord was common in the last
age. So again in this preface:" The manner of the
stage entertainments have differed," &c. and, "The want
of abilities are largely supplied," &c. a species of in-
accuracy into which more correct writers than Sir Robert
Howard have fallen, when a second noun in the plural.
number immediately precedes the verb.
PROLEGOMENA.
23
employ my wonder: yet I am glad such verse has
been written for our stage, since it has so happily
exceeded those whom we seemed to imitate. But
while I give these arguments against verse, I may
seem faulty that I have not only written ill ones,
but written any: but, since it was the fashion, I
was resolved, as in all indifferent things, not to ap-
pear singular, the danger of the vanity being greater
than the error; and therefore I followed it as a
fashion, though very far off.
For the Italian plays, I have seen some of them
which have been given me as the best; but they
are so inconsiderable, that the particulars of them
are not at all worthy to entertain the reader; but
as much as they are short of others in this, they
exceed in their other performances on the stage:
I mean their Operas; which, consisting of musick
and painting, there is none but will believe it is
much harder to equal them in that way, than it is
to excel them in the other.
The Spanish plays pretend to more, but, indeed,
are not much; being nothing but so many novels
put into acts and scenes, without the least attempt
or design of making the reader more concerned
than a well-told tale might do ; whereas a poet that
endeavours not to heighten the accidents which
fortune seems to scatter in a well-knit design, had
better have told his tale by a fire-side, than pre-
sented it on a stage.
For these times wherein we write, I admire to
hear the poets so often cry out upon, ana wittily
24
PROLEGOMENA.
(as they believe) threaten their judges, since the
effects of their mercy has so much exceeded their
justice, that others, with me, cannot but remember
how many favourable audiences some of our ill
plays have had; and when I consider how severe
the former age has been to some of the best of
Mr. Jonson's never-to-be-equalled comedies, I
cannot but wonder why any poet should speak of
former times, but rather acknowledge that the
want of abilities in this age are largely supplied
with the mercies of it. I deny not but there are
some who resolve to like nothing; and such, per-
haps, are not unwise, since by that general resolu-
tion they may be certainly in the right sometimes,
which perhaps they would seldom be, if they should
venture their understandings in different censures;
and being forced to a general liking or disliking,
lest they should discover too much their own weak-
ness, it is to be expected they would rather choose
to pretend to judgment than good nature, though
I wish they could find better ways to shew either.
But I forget myself; not considering, that while
I entertain the reader in the entrance with what a
good play should be, when he is come beyond the
entrance he must be treated with what ill plays are:
but in this I resemble the greatest part of the world,
that better know how to talk of things than to per-
form them, and live short of their own discourses.
And now I seem like an eager hunter, that has
long pursued a chace after an inconsiderable quarry,
and gives over weary, as I do.
EPISTLE DEDICATORY
TO THE ESSAY ON
DRAMATICK POESY.
TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE
CHARLES, LORD BUCKHURST,
MY LORD,
As I was lately reviewing my loose papers,
amongst the rest I found this Essay, the writing of
which, in this rude and indigested manner wherein
your lordship now sees it, served as an amusement
to me in the country, when the violence of the
9 Charles, lord Buckhurst, afterwards frequently distin-
guished by the appellation of the witty earl of Dorset,
was the son of Richard, the fifth earl of Dorset, and was
born January 24, 1637-8. He survived our author a few
years, dying January 29th, 1705-6. He attended the
duke of York as a volunteer in the Dutch war, and was
in the sea-fight of June 3, 1665, alluded to in the opening
of the following Dialogue. On the preceding evening,
according to tradition, he wrote the well known ballad,
To all you ladies now at land, &c. But Dr. Johnson,
with more probability, tells us from the information of
John, the fifth earl of Orrery, that he then only re-
touched and finished it.
26
DEDICATION TO THE ESSAY
last plague' had driven me from the town. See-
ing then our theatres shut up, I was engaged in
these kind of thoughts with the same delight with
which men think upon their absent mistresses. I
confess I find many things in this Discourse which
I do not now approve; my judgment being not a
little altered since the writing of it; but whether
for the better or the worse, I know not: neither
indeed is it much material, in an essay, where all
I have said is problematical. For the way of wri-
ting plays in verse, which I have seemed to favour,
I have, since that time, laid the practice of it aside,
till I have more leisure, because I find it trouble-
some and slow. But I am no way altered from
my opinion of it, at least with any reasons which
have opposed it. For your lordship may easily
observe, that none are very violent against it, but
those who either have not attempted it, or who
have succeeded ill in their attempt. It is enough
for me to have your lordship's example for my ex-
cuse in that little which I have done in it; and I
am sure my adversaries can bring no such argu-
ments against verse, as those with which the fourth
act of POMPEY* will furnish me in its defence. Yet,
my lord, you must suffer me a little to complain
The great plague of 1665.
2 The tragedy of Pompey the Great, "translated out
of French by certain persons of honour." 4to. 1664.—
From Dryden's eulogium it appears, that the fourth act
was translated by lord Buckhurst; the first was done by
Waller.
1
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
27
of
you
you, that too soon withdraw from us a con-
tentment, of which we expected the continuance,
because you gave it us so early. It is a revolt,
without occasion, from your party, where your
merits had already raised you to the highest com-
mands, and where you have not the excuse of other
men, that you
have been ill used, and therefore
laid down arms. I know no other
I know no other quarrel you can
have to verse, than that which Spurina³ had to his
beauty, when he tore and mangled the features of
his face, only because they pleased too well the
sight. It was an honour which seemed to wait for
you, to lead out a new colony of writers from the
mother nation: and upon the first spreading of
your ensigns, there had been many in a readiness
to have followed so fortunate a leader; if not all,
yet the better part of poets:
pars, indocili melior grege; mollis et exspes
Inominata perprimat culilia.
I am almost of opinion, that we should force
you
to accept of the command, as sometimes the Præ-
torian bands have compelled their captains to
receive the empire. The court, which is the best
and surest judge of writing, has generally allowed♦
of verse; and in the town it has found favourers of
wit and quality. As for your own particular, my
lord, you have yet youth,' and time enough to
3 See Valerius Maximus, 1. iv. c. 5.
4 To allow in the last age signified to approve.
5 Lord Buckhurst was at this time just thirty years old.
28
DEDICATION TO THE ESSAY
give part of them to the divertisement of the pub-
lick, before you enter into the serious and more
unpleasant business of the world. That which the
French poet said of the temple of Love, may be as
well applied to the temple of the Muses. The words,
as near as I can remember them, were these:
Le jeune homme à mauvaise grace,
N'ayant pas adoré dans le Temple d'Amour ;
Il faut qu'il entre; et pour le sage
Si ce n'est pas son vrai sejour,
C'est un gîte sur son passage.
I leave the words to work their effect upon your
lordship in their own language, because no other
can so well express the nobleness of the thought;
and wish you may be soon called to bear a part
in the affairs of the nation, where I know the
world expects you, and wonders why you have
been so long forgotten; there being no person
amongst our young nobility, on whom the eyes of
all men are so much bent. But in the mean time,
your lordship may imitate the course of Nature,
who gives us the flower before the fruit: that I may
speak to you in the language of the muses, which
I have taken from an excellent poem to the king:
As Nature, when she fruit designs, thinks fit
By beauteous blossoms to proceed to it ;
And while she does accomplish all the spring,
Birds to her secret operations sing.*
*These lines are found in a poem by Sir William
D'Avenant, printed in 4to. in 1663, and republished in
his works, folio, 1673, p. 268.
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
29
I confess I have no greater reason, in addressing
this Essay to your lordship, than that it might
awaken in you the desire of writing something, in
whatever kind it be, which might be an honour to
our age and country. And methinks it might
have the same effect on you, which Homer tells us
the fight of the Greeks and Trojans before the
fleet, had on the spirit of Achilles; who, though he
had resolved not to engage, yet found a martial
warmth to steal upon him at the sight of blows,
the sound of trumpets, and the cries of fighting
men.
For my own part, if, in treating of this subject,
I sometimes dissent from the opinion of better wits,
I declare it is not so much to combat their opi-
nions, as to defend my own, which were first made
publick. Sometimes, like a scholar in a fencing-
school, I put forth myself, and shew my own ill
play, on purpose to be better taught. Sometimes
I stand desperately to my arms, like the foot when
deserted by their horse; not in hope to overcome,
but only to yield on more honourable terms. And
yet, my lord, this war of opinions, you well know,
has fallen out among the writers of all ages, and
sometimes betwixt friends. Only it has been pro-
secuted by some, like pedants, with violence of
words, and managed by others like gentlemen,
with candour and civility. Even Tully had a con-
troversy with his dear Atticus; and in one of his
In the Dedication to THE RIVAL Ladies.
30
DEDICATION TO THE ESSAY, &c.
Dialogues, makes him sustain the part of an enemy
in philosophy, who, in his letters, is his confident of
state, and made privy to the most weighty affairs
of the Roman senate. And the same respect which
was paid by Tully to Atticus, we find returned to
him afterwards by Cæsar on a like occasion, who
answering his book in praise of Cato, made it not
so much his business to condemn Cato, as to praise
Cicero.
But that I may decline some part of the en-
counter with my adversaries, whom I am neither
willing to combat, nor well able to resist; I will
give your lordship the relation of a dispute betwixt
some of our wits on the same subject, in which
they did not only speak of plays in verse, but min-
gled, in the freedom of discourse, some things of
the ancient, many of the modern, ways of writing;
comparing those with these, and the wits of our
nation with those of others: it is true, they dif-
fered in their opinions, as it is probable they would:
neither do I take upon me to reconcile, but to re-
late them; and that as Tacitus professes of himself,
sine studio partium, aut irâ, without passion or inte-
rest; leaving your lordship to decide it in favour
of which part you shall judge most reasonable, and
withal, to pardon the many errors of
Your Lordship's
Most obedient humble servant,
JOHN DRYDEN.
TO THE READER.
THE drift of the ensuing discourse was chiefly
to vindicate the honour of our English writers,
from the censure of those who unjustly prefer the
French before them. This I intimate, lest any
should think me so exceeding vain," as to teach
others an art which they understand much better
than myself. But if this incorrect Essay, written
in the country without the help of books or ad-
vice of friends, shall find any acceptance in the
world, I promise to myself a better success of the
Second Part, wherein I shall more fully treat of
the virtues and faults of the English poets, who
have written either in this, the epick, or the lyrick
way.
Of the use of adjectives as adverbs, I have given se-
veral instances in the Notes on Shakspeare's works. From
the present, and various other examples that might be
produced, it is evident that his anomalies were the language
not only of his own, but a subsequent period; and were
not errors of the press, as has been frequently maintained
in the edition of 1793, whenever they happened to stand
in the way of any hypothesis of the editor.
AN ESSAY
OF
DRAMATICK POESY."
Ir was that memorable day," in the first
summer of the late war, when our navy engaged
the Dutch; a day wherein the two most mighty
and best appointed fleets which any age had ever
seen, disputed the command of the greater half of
the globe, the commerce of nations, and the riches
of the universe: while these vast floating bodies,
on either side, moved against each other in parallel
lines, and our countrymen, under the happy con-
duct of his royal highness, went breaking, by
little and little, into the line of the enemies; the
noise of the cannon from both navies reached our
8
6 Martin Clifford, in his Letters on Dryden's Poems,
which, though first published in 4to. in 1687, appear to have
been written in 1674, says, that this Essay was "stollen
from Mons. Hedelin, Menardine, and Corneille." To
the latter writer our author frequently acknowledges his
obligations.
Lord Bolingbroke, however, told Mr. Spence, as he
informs us in his ANECDOTES, that Dryden assured him,
he was more indebted to the Spanish Criticks, than to the
writers of any other nation.
7 June 3, 1665.
8
James, duke of York, afterwards James II.
VOL. I.
D
34
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
ears about the city, so that all men being alarmed
with it, and in a dreadful suspence of the event,
which they knew was then deciding, every one
went following the sound as his fancy led him ;
and leaving the town almost empty, some took
towards the park, some cross the river, others down
it; all seeking the noise in the depth of silence.
Amongst the rest, it was the fortune of Euge-
nius, Crites, Lisideius, and Neander, to be in com-
pany together; three of them persons whom their
wit and quality have made known to all the town;'
and whom I have chose to hide under these bor-
rowed names, that they may not suffer by so ill a
relation as I am going to make of their discourse.
Taking then a barge, which a servant of Lisi-
deius had provided for them, they made haste to
shoot the bridge, and left behind them that great
fall of waters which hindered them from hearing
The engagement between the English and Dutch
fleets took place about eight leagues to the east of Leo-
stoff, in Suffolk. In this memorable battle, eighteen large
Dutch ships were taken, and fourteen others were de-
stroyed; Opdam, the Dutch admiral, who engaged the
duke of York, was blown up beside him, and he and
all his crew perished.
The person hid under the feigned name of EUGE-
NIUS, as we shall presently find, was Charles, earl of Dorset.
CRITES and LISIDEIUS, perhaps, were meant to represent
Wentworth, earl of Roscommon, and John Sheffield, earl
of Mulgrave, afterwards duke of Bucks and Normanby.
Under the character of NEANDER, who in the latter part
of this Essay appears as a strenuous advocate for rhyming
tragedies, our author himself, I conceive, is shadowed.
t
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
35
what they desired: after which, having disengaged
themselves from many vessels which rode at anchor
in the Thames, and almost blocked up the pas-
sage towards Greenwich, they ordered the water-
men to let fall their oars more gently; and then,
every one favouring his own curiosity with a strict
silence, it was not long ere they perceived the air
to break about them like the noise of distant thun-
der, or of swallows in a chimney: those little un-
dulations of sound, though almost vanishing before
they reached them, yet still seeming to retain
somewhat of their first horrour, which they had be-
twixt the fleets. After they had attentively listened
till such time as the sound by little and little went
from them, Eugenius, lifting up his head, and
taking notice of it, was the first who congratulated
to the rest that happy omen of our nation's vic-
tory adding, that we had but this to desire in
confirmation of it, that we might hear no more of
that noise, which was now leaving the English coast.
When the rest had concurred in the same opinion,
Crites, a person of a sharp judgment, and some-
what too delicate a taste in wit, which the world
have mistaken in him for ill-nature," said, smiling
2
Prior, who probably was well informed, in the dedi-
cation of his Poems to Lionel, earl of Dorset and Middle-
sex, tells us, that by EUGENIUS in this Essay, Dryden
meant Charles, earl of Dorset, to whom it is addressed.-
The passage before us, were we not to submit to this
authority, would rather lead us to suppose that CRITES
was intended to represent that nobleman :—
!
"The best good man, with the worst-natured muse."
36
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
to us, that if the concernment of this battle had
not been so exceeding great, he could scarce have
wished the victory at the price he knew he must
pay for it, in being subject to the reading and
hearing of so many ill verses as he was sure would
be made on that subject. Adding, that no argu-
ment could scape some of those eternal rhymers,
who watch a battle with more diligence than the
ravens and birds of prey; and the worst of them
surest to be first in upon the quarry: while the
better able, either out of modesty writ not at all,
or set that due value upon their poems, as to let
them be often desired and long expected. There
are some of those impertinent people of whom you
speak, answered Lisideius, who to my knowledge
are already so provided, either way, that they can
produce not only a panegyrick upon the victory,
but, if need be, a funeral elegy on the duke;
wherein, after they have crowned his valour with
many laurels, they will at last deplore the odds
under which he fell, concluding that his courage
deserved a better destiny. All the company smiled
at the conceipt of Lisideius; but Crites, more
eager than before, began to make particular excep-
tions against some writers, and said, the publick
magistrate ought to send betimes to forbid them ;
and that it concerned the peace and quiet of all
honest people, that ill poets should be as well
silenced as seditious preachers. In my opinion,
replied Eugenius, you pursue your point too far;
for as to my own particular, I am so great a lover
of poesy, that I could wish them all rewarded, who
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
37
3
åttempt but to do well; at least, I would not have
them worse used than one of their brethren was by
Sylla the Dictator :-Quem in concione vidimus, (says
Tully,) cum ei libellum malus poeta de populo subje-
cisset, quod epigramma in eum fecisset tantummodo
alternis versibus longiusculis, statim ex iis rebus quas
tunc vendebat jubere ei præmium tribui, sub ea con-
ditione ne quid postea scriberet. I could wish with
all my heart, replied Crites, that many whom we
know were as bountifully thanked upon the same
condition,—that they would never trouble us again.
For amongst others, I have a mortal apprehension
of two poets, whom this victory, with the help
of both her wings, will never be able to escape. 'Tis
easy to guess whom you intend, said Lisideius; and
without naming them, I ask you, if one of them
does not perpetually pay us with clenches upon
words, and a certain clownish kind of raillery? if now
and then he does not offer at a catachresis or Cleive-
landism, wresting and torturing a word into an-
other meaning: in fine, if he be not one of those
whom the French would call un mauvais buffon ;
one who is so much a well-willer to the satire, that
he intends at least to spare no man; and though
he cannot strike a blow to hurt any, yet he ought
3 Perhaps the writer first alluded to was Dr. Robert
Wild, author of ITER BOREALE, a panegyrick on General
Monck, published in April, 1660, and often re-printed;
which may be the famous poem alluded to in p. 39. His
works were collected and published in a small volume, in
1668. The other poet may have been Richard Flecknoe.
Both these poets celebrated the Dutch defeat.
38
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
to be punished for the malice of the action, as our
witches are justly hanged, because they think them-
selves to be such; and suffer deservedly for be-
lieving they did mischief, because they meant it.
You have described him, said Crites, so exactly,
that I am afraid to come after
you with
my other
extremity of poetry: he is one of those who, hav-
ing had some advantage of education and converse,
knows better than the other what a poet should
be, but puts it into practice more unluckily than
any man.
His style and matter are every where
alike he is the most calm, peaceable writer you
ever read he never disquiets your passions with
the least concernment, but still leaves you in as
even a temper as he found you; he is a very le-
veller in poetry: he creeps along with ten little
words in every line, and helps out his numbers
with For to, and Unto, and all the pretty expletives
he can find, till he drags them to the end of an-
other line; while the sense is left tired half way
behind it he doubly starves all his verses, first for
want of thought, and then of expression. His
poetry neither has wit in it, nor seems to have it;
like him in Martial:
:
Pauper videri Cinna vult, et est pauper.
He affects plainness, to cover his want of ima-
gination when he writes the serious way, the
4 This passage evidently furnished Pope with his well-
known couplet in the ESSAY ON CRITICISM;
"While expletives their feeble aid do join,
"And ten low words oft creep in one dull line."
ON DRAMATICK POESY:
39
highest flight of his fancy is some miserable anti-
thesis, or seeming contradiction; and in the co-
mick he is still reaching at some thin conceit, the
ghost of a jest, and that too flies before him, never
to be caught. These swallows which we see be-
fore us on the Thames, are the just resemblance of
his wit: you may observe how near the water they
stoop, how many proffers they make to dip, and
yet how seldom they touch it; and when they do,
it is but the surface: they skim over it but to catch
a gnat, and then mount into the air and leave it.
Well, gentlemen, said Eugenius, you may speak
your pleasure of these authors; but though I and
some few more about the town may give you a
peaceable hearing, yet assure yourselves, there are
multitudes who would think you malicious and
them injured especially him whom you first de-
scribed. He is the very Withers* of the city: they
have bought more editions of his works than would
serve to lay under all their pies at the lord mayor's
Christmas. When his famous poem first came
out in the year 1660, I have seen them reading it
in the midst of 'Change time; nay so vehement
they were at it, that they lost their bargain by the
candles' ends: but what will you say, if he has been
received amongst great persons? I can assure you
* George Wither, a very voluminous poetaster.-
See Wood's ATH. OXON. vol. ii. col. 391.
5 A sale by the candle is one of the modes of selling
goods by publick auction.
40
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
he is, this day, the envy of one who is lord in the
art of quibbling; and who does not take it well,
that any man should intrude so far into his pro-
vince. All I would wish, replied Crites, is, that
they who love his writings, may still admire him,
and his fellow poet: Qui Bavium non odit, &c. is
curse sufficient. And farther, added Lisideius, I
believe there is no man who writes well, but would
think he had hard measure, if their admirers should
praise any thing of his : Nam quos contemnimus, eorum
quoque laudes contemnimus. There are so few who
write well in this age, said Crites, that methinks
any praises should be welcome; they neither rise
to the dignity of the last age, nor to any of the
ancients: and we may cry out of the writers of this
time, with more reason than Petronius of his, Pace
vestra liceat dixisse, primi omnium eloquentiam perdi-
distis: you have debauched the true old poetry so
far, that Nature, which is the soul of it, is not in
any of your writings.
If your quarrel (said Eugenius) to those who
now write, be grounded only on your reverence to
antiquity, there is no man more ready to adore
those great Grecks and Romans than I am : but on
the other side, I cannot think so contemptibly of
the age in which I live, or so dishonourably of my
own country, as not to judge we equal the an-
cients in most kinds of poesy, and in some surpass
them; neither know I any reason why I may not
be as zealous for the reputation of our age, as we
find the ancients themselves were in reference to
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
41
those who lived before them. For
you
hear your
Horace* saying,
Indignor quidquam reprehendi, non quia crassé
Compositum, illepidève putetur, sed quia nuper.
And after:
Si meliora dies, ut vina, poemata reddit,
Scire velim, pretium chartis quotus arroget annus?
But I see I am engaging in a wide dispute,
where the arguments are not like to reach close
on either side; for poesy is of so large an extent,
and so many both of the ancients and moderns
have done well in all kinds of it, that in citing one
against the other, we shall take up more time this
evening than each man's occasions will allow him:
therefore I would ask Crites to what part of poesy
he would confine his arguments, and whether he
would defend the general cause of the ancients
against the moderns, or oppose any age of the
moderns against this of ours?
Crites, a little while considering upon this de-
mand, told Eugenius, that if he pleased, he would
limit their dispute to Dramatick Poesy; in which
he thought it not difficult to prove, either that the
ancients were superior to the moderns, or the last
age to this of ours.
Eugenius was somewhat surprised, when he
heard Crites make choice of that subject. For
aught I see, said he, I have undertaken a harder
province than I imagined; for though I never
*This passage adds some support to my conjecture, that
CRITES was intended to represent lord Roscommon.
42
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
judged the plays of the Greek or Roman poets
comparable to ours, yet, on the other side, those
we now see acted come short of many which were
written in the last age. But my comfort is, if we
are overcome, it will be only by our own country-
men: and if we yield to them in this one part of
poesy, we more surpass them in all the other: for
in the epick or lyrick way, it will be hard for them
to shew us one such amongst them, as we have
many now living, or who lately were: they can
produce nothing so courtly writ, or which ex-
presses so much the conversation of a gentleman,
as Sir John Suckling; nothing so even, sweet, and
flowing, as Mr. Waller; nothing so majestick, so
correct, as Sir John Denham; nothing so elevated,
so copious, and full of spirit, as Mr. Cowley. As
for the Italian, French, and Spanish plays, I can
make it evident, that those who now write, surpass
them; and that the drama is wholly ours.
All of them were thus far of Eugenius his"
opinion, that the sweetness of English verse was
never understood or practised by our fathers; even
Crites himself did not much oppose it: and every
one was willing to acknowledge how much our
poesy is improved, by the happiness of some wri-
ters yet living; who first taught us to mould our
6 This ungrammatical phraseology continued to be used
by all our best writers, till the beginning of the present
reign. Our author, as Dr. Lowth, bishop of London,
has clearly shewn, (Grammar, p. 31,) ought to have written
Eugeniusis opinion."
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
43
thoughts into easy and significant words,-to re-
trench the superfluities of expression,—and to make
our rhyme so properly a part of the verse, that it
should never mislead the sense, but itself be led
and governed by it.
Eugenius was going to continue this discourse,
when Lisideius told him that it was necessary,
before they proceeded further, to take a standing
measure of their controversy; for how was it
possible to be decided who wrote the best plays,
before we know what a play should be? But, this
once agreed on by both parties, each might have
recourse to it, either to prove his own advantages,
or to discover the failings of his adversary.
He had no sooner said this, but all desired the
favour of him to give the definition of a play; and
they were the more importunate, because neither
Aristotle, nor Horace, nor any other, who had
writ of that subject, had ever done it.
Lisideius, after some modest denials, at last con-
fessed he had a rude notion of it; indeed, rather a
description than a definition; but which served to
guide him in his private thoughts, when he was to
make a judgment of what others writ: that he
conceived a play ought to be, A just and lively
image of human nature, representing its passions and
humours, and the changes of fortune to which it is
subject; for the delight and instruction of mankind.
This definition, though Crites raised a logical
objection against it-that it was only a genere et
fine, and so not altogether perfect, was yet well
received by the rest and after they had given
44
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
order to the watermen to turn their barge, and row
softly, that they might take the cool of the even-
ing in their return, Crites, being desired by the
company to begin, spoke on behalf of the ancients,
in this manner :
If confidence presage a victory, Eugenius, in
his own opinion, has already triumphed over the
ancients: nothing seems more easy to him, than to
overcome those whom it is our greatest praise to
have imitated well; for we do not only build upon
their foundations, but by their models. Dramatick
Poesy had time enough, reckoning from Thespis
(who first invented it) to Aristophanes, to be born,
to grow up, and to flourish in maturity. It has
been observed of arts and sciences,, that in one
and the same century they have arrived to great
perfection; and no wonder, since every age has a
;*
kind of universal genius, which inclines those that
live in it to some particular studies: the work
then being pushed on by many hands, must of
necessity go forward.
Is it not evident, in these last hundred years
(when the study of philosophy has been the bu-
siness of all the Virtuosi in Christendom) that al-
most a new nature has been revealed to us? That
more errors of the school have been detected,
more useful experiments in philosophy have been
made, more noble secrets in opticks, medicine, ana-
tomy, astronomy, discovered, than in all those cre-
dulous and doting ages from Aristotle to us ?—sÔ
* See VELL. PATERC. i. 16, 17.
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
45
true it is, that nothing spreads more fast than
science, when rightly and generally cultivated.
Add to this, the more than common emulation
that was in those times of writing well; which
though it be found in all ages and all persons that
pretend to the same reputation, yet poesy being
then in more esteem than now it is, had greater
honours decreed to the professors of it, and conse-
quently the rivalship was more high between them.
They had judges ordained to decide their merit,
and prizes to reward it; and historians have been
diligent to record of Æschylus, Euripides, Sopho-
cles, Lycophron, and the rest of them, both who
they were that vanquished in these wars of the
theatre, and how often they were crowned: while
the Asian kings and Grecian commonwealths
scarce afforded them a nobler subject than the
unmanly luxuries of a debauched court, or giddy,
intrigues of a factious city :-Alit æmulatio ingenia,
(says Paterculus,) et nunc invidia, nunc admiratio
incitationem accendit: Emulation is the spur of wit;
and sometimes envy, sometimes admiration, quick-
ens our endeavours.
But now, since the rewards of honour are taken
away, that virtuous emulation is turned into direct
malice; yet so slothful, that it contents itself to
condemn and cry down others, without attempting
to do better it is a reputation too unprofitable, to
take the necessary pains for it; yet, wishing they
had it, that desire is incitement enough to hinder
others from it. And this, in short, Eugenius, is
the reason why you have now so few good poets,
:
46
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
and so many severe judges. Certainly, to imitate
the ancients well, much labour and long study is
required; which pains, I have already shewn, our
poets would want encouragement to take, if yet
they had ability to go through the work. Those
ancients have been faithful imitators and wise
observers of that nature which is so torn and ill
represented in our plays; they have handed down
to us a perfect resemblance of her; which we, like
ill copiers, neglecting to look on, have rendered
monstrous, and disfigured. But, that you may
know how much you are indebted to those your
masters, and be ashamed to have so ill requited
them, I must remember you, that all the rules
by which we practise the drama at this day, (either
such as relate to the justness and symmetry of the
plot; or the episodical ornaments, such as descrip-
tions, narrations, and other beauties, which are not
essential to the play;) were delivered to us from
the observations which Aristotle made, of those
poets, who either lived before him, or were his
contemporaries. We have added nothing of our
own, except we have the confidence to say our wit
is better; of which, none boast in this our age, but
such as understand not theirs. Of that book
which Aristotle has left us, περὶ τῆς Ποιητικῆς, Horace
his Art of Poetry is an excellent comment, and,
I believe, restores to us that Second Book of his
concerning Comedy, which is wanting in him.
Out of these two have been extracted the fa-
mous Rules, which the French call Des Trois
Unites, or, The Three Unities, which ought to be
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
47
observed in every regular play; namely, of time,
place, and action.
The unity of time they comprehend in twenty-
four hours, the compass of a natural day, or as
near as it can be contrived; and the reason of it is
obvious to every one,-that the time of the feigned
action, or fable of the play, should be proportioned
as near as can be to the duration of that time in
which it is represented: since therefore, all plays
are acted on the theatre in a space of time much
within the compass of twenty-four hours, that play
is to be thought the nearest imitation of nature,
whose plot or action is confined within that time.
And, by the same rule which concludes this ge-
neral proportion of time, it follows, that all the
parts of it are (as near as may be) to be equally
subdivided; namely, that one act take not up the
supposed time of half a day, which is out of pro-
portion to the rest; since the other four are then
to be straitened within the compass of the remain-
ing half: for it is unnatural that one act, which
being spoke or written, is not longer than the rest,
should be supposed longer by the audience; it is
therefore the poet's duty, to take care that no act
should be imagined to exceed the time in which it is
represented on the stage; and that the intervals and
inequalities of time be supposed to fall out between
the acts.
This rule of time, how well it has been ob-
served by the ancients, most of their plays will wit-
ness. You see them in their tragedies, (wherein
48
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
to follow this rule, is certainly most difficult,)
from the very beginning of their plays, falling
close into that part of the story which they intend
for the action or principal object of it, leaving the
former part to be delivered by narration: so that
they set the audience, as it were, at the post where
the race is to be concluded; and, saving them the
tedious expectation of seeing the poet set out and
ride the beginning of the course, they suffer you
not to behold him, till he is in sight of the goal,
and just upon you.
For the second unity, which is that of place, the
ancients meant by it, that the scene ought to be
continued through the play, in the same place
where it was laid in the beginning: for the stage,
on which it is represented, being but one and the
same place, it is unnatural to conceive it many;
and those far distant from one another. I will
not deny but, by the variation of painted scenes,
the fancy, which in these cases will contribute to
its own deceit, may sometimes imagine it several
places, with some appearance of probability; yet it
still carries the greater likelihood of truth, if those
places be supposed so near each other, as in the
same town or city; which may all be comprehended
under the larger denomination of one place: for
a greater distance will bear no proportion to the
shortness of time which is allotted, in the acting,
to pass from one of them to another. For the
observation of this, next to the ancients, the French
are to be most commended. They tie themselves
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
49
:
so strictly to the unity of place, that you never see
in any of their plays, a scene changed in the middle
of an act if the act begins in a garden, a street,
or chamber, 'tis ended in the same place; and
that you may know it to be the same, the stage is
so supplied with persons, that it is never empty all
the time he who enters second, has business with
him who was on before; and before the second
quits the stage, a third appears who has business
with him. This Corneille calls la liaison des scenes,
the continuity or joining of the scenes; and 'tis
a good mark of a well-contrived play, when all the
persons are known to each other, and every one of
them has some affairs with all the rest.
As for the third unity, which is that of action,
the ancients meant no other by it than what the
logicians do by their finis, the end or scope of any
action; that which is the first in intention, and last
in execution. Now the poet is to aim at one great
and complete action, to the carrying on of which
all things in his play, even the very obstacles, are
to be subservient; and the reason of this is as evi-
dent as any of the former. For two actions equally
laboured and driven on by the writer, would de-
stroy the unity of the poem ; it would be no longer
one play, but two: not but that there may be
many actions in a play, as Ben Jonson has ob-
ferved in his DISCOVERIES; but they must be all
subservient to the great one, which our language
happily expresses in the name of under-plots: such
as in Terence's EUNUCH is the difference and re-
VOL. I.
E
50
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
concilement of Thais and Phædria, which is not
the chief business of the play, but promotes the
marriage of Chærea and Chremes's sister, princi-
pally intended by the poet. There ought to be
but one action, says Corneille, that is, one com-
plete action, which leaves the mind of the audience
in a full repose; but this cannot be brought to
pass but by many other imperfect actions, which
conduce to it, and hold the audience in a delight-
ful
suspence of what will be.
If by these rules (to omit many other drawn from
the precepts and practice of the ancients) we should
judge our modern plays, 'tis probable that few of
them would endure the trial: that which should
be the business of a day, takes up in some of them
an age; instead of one action, they are the epi-
tomes of a man's life; and for one spot of ground,
which the stage should represent, we are some-
times in more countries than the map can shew us.
But if we allow the Ancients to have contrived
well, we must acknowledge them to have written
better. Questionless we are deprived of a great
stock of wit in the loss of Menander among the
Greek poets, and of Cæcilius, Affranius and Varius,
among the Romans: we may guess at Menander's
excellency by the plays of Terence, who translated
some of his; and yet wanted so much of him,
that he was called by C. Cæsar the half-Menander;
and may judge of Varius, by the testimonies of
Horace, Martial, and Velleius Paterculus. "Tis
probable that these, could they be recovered, would
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
51
decide the controversy; but so long as Aristophanes
and Plautus are extant, while the tragedies of Eu-
ripides, Sophocles, and Seneca, are in our hands, I
can never see one of those plays which are now
written, but it increases my admiration of the an-
cients. And yet I must acknowledge further, that
to admire them as we ought, we should understand
them better than we do. Doubtless many things
appear flat to us, the wit of which depended on
some custom or story, which never came to our
knowledge; or perhaps on some criticism in their
language, which being so long dead, and only re-
maining in their books, 'tis not possible they should
make us understand perfectly. To read Macro-
bius, explaining the propriety and elegancy of many
words in Virgil, which I had before passed over
without consideration, as common things, is enough
to assure me that I ought to think the same of
Terence; and that in the purity of his style (which
Tully so much valued that he ever carried his
works about him) there is yet left in him great
room for admiration, if I knew but where to place
it. In the mean time I must desire you to take
notice, that the greatest man of the last age, Ben
Jonson, was willing to give place to them in all
things he was not only a professed imitator of
Horace, but a learned plagiary of all the others ;
you track him every where in their snow if Ho-
race, Lucan, Petronius Arbiter, Seneca, and Juve-
nal, had their own from him, there are few serious
thoughts which are new in him: you will pardon
me, therefore, if I presume he loved their fashion,
52
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
I
when he wore their cloaths. But since I have
otherwise a great veneration for him, and you,
Eugenius, prefer him above all other poets,* I will
use no farther argument to you than his example :
I will produce before you Father Ben, dressed in
all the ornaments and colours of the ancients; you
will need no other guide to our party, if you follow
him; and whether you consider the bad plays of
our age, or regard the good plays of the last, both
the best and worst of the modern poets will equally
instruct you to admire the ancients.
Crites had no sooner left speaking, but Eugenius,
who had waited with some impatience for it, thus
began:
I have observed in your speech, that the former
part of it is convincing as to what the moderns
So again, (as Langbaine has observed,) in our author's
Prologue to ALBUMAZAR, which, I find, was revived at
the Duke's Theatre in 1668, the year in which this Essay
was first published:
"Subtle was got by our Albumazar,
"That Alchemist by this Astrologer;
"Here he was fashion'd; and we may suppose,
"He liked the fashion well, who wore the cloaths."
The thought, if I remember right, is originally Suck-
ling's; but I cannot at present turn to the passage,
Dryden, however, was inaccurate in supposing that the
ALCHEMIST was formed on ALBUMAZAR; for the AL-
CHEMIST was acted and printed in 1610, and ALBUMAZAR
did not appear till four years afterwards.
* See a high eulogy on Ben Jonson, by lord Buckhurst,
(the Eugenius of this piece,) written about the year 1668,
Dryden's MISCEL. v. 123. edit. 1716.
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
53
have profited by the rules of the ancients; but in
the latter you are careful to conceal how much they
have excelled them. We own all the helps we
have from them, and want neither veneration nor
gratitude, while we acknowledge that, to overcome
them, we must make use of the advantages we have
received from them but to these assistances we
have joined our own industry; for, had we sat
down with a dull imitation of them, we might then
have lost somewhat of the old perfection, but never
acquired any that was new. We draw not there-
fore after their lines, but those of nature; and
having the life before us, besides the experience of
all they knew, it is no wonder if we hit some airs
and features which they have missed. I deny not
what you urge
of arts and sciences, that they have
flourished in some ages more than others ; but your
instance in philosophy makes for me : for if natural
causes be more known now than in the time of
Aristotle, because more studied, it follows that
poesy and other arts may, with the same pains, ar-
rive still nearer to perfection; and, that granted, it
will rest for you to prove that they wrought more
perfect images of human life than we; which see-
ing in your discourse you have avoided to make
good, it shall now be my task to shew you some
part of their defects, and some few excellencies of
the moderns. And I think there is none among
us can imagine I do it enviously, or with purpose
to detract from them; for what interest of fame or
profit can the living lose by the reputation of the
54
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
dead? On the other side, it is a great truth which
Velleius Paterculus affirms: Audita visis libentius
laudamus; et præsentia invidia, præterita admiratione
prosequimur ; et his nos obrui, illis instrui credimus:
that praise or censure is certainly the most sincere,
which unbribed posterity shall give us.
Be pleased then in the first place to take notice,
that the Greek poesy, which Crites has affirmed to
have arrived to perfection in the reign of the old
comedy, was so far from it, that the distinction of
it into acts was not known to them; or if it were,
it is yet so darkly delivered to us that we cannot
make it out.
All we know of it is, from the singing of their
Chorus; and that too is so uncertain, that in some
of their plays we have reason to conjecture they
sung more than five times. Aristotle indeed di-
vides the integral parts of a play into four. First,
the Protasis, or entrance, which gives light only to
the characters of the persons, and proceeds very
little into any part of the action. Secondly, the
Epitasis, or working up of the plot; where the play
grows warmer, the design or action of it is drawing
on, and you see something promising that it will
come to pass. Thirdly, the Catastasis, called by
the Romans, Status, the height and full growth
of the play we may call it properly the counter-
turn, which destroys that expectation, imbroils
the action in new difficulties, and leaves you far
distant from that hope in which it found you; as
you may have observed in a violent stream resisted
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
55
by a narrow passage,—it runs round to an eddy,
and carries back the waters with more swiftness
than it brought them on. Lastly, the Catastrophe,
which the Grecians called ausis, the French le dé-
nouement, and we the discovery, or unravelling of
the plot there you see all things settling again
upon their first foundations; and the obstacles which
hindered the design or action of the play once re-
moved, it ends with that resemblance of truth and
nature, that the audience are satisfied with the
conduct of it. Thus this great man delivered to
us the image of a play; and I must confess it is so
lively, that from thence much light has been
derived to the forming it more perfectly into acts
and scenes but what poet first limited to five the
number of the acts, I know not; only we see it so
firmly established in the time of Horace, that he
gives it for a rule in comedy,-Neu brevior quinto,
neu sit productior actu.* So that you see the Gre-
cians cannot be said to have consummated this art;
writing rather by entrances, than by acts, and
having rather a general indigested notion of a
play, than knowing how and where to bestow the
particular graces of it.
:
But since the Spaniards at this day allow but
three acts, which they call Jornadas, to a play,
and the Italians in many of theirs follow them,
when I condemn the ancients, I declare it is not
*Horace's line is,
Neve minor, neu sit quinto productior actu.
56
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
altogether because they have not five acts to every
play, but because they have not confined them-
selves to one certain number: it is building an
house without a model; and when they succeeded
in such undertakings, they ought to have sacrificed
to Fortune, not to the Muses.
Next, for the plot, which Aristotle called ro
μυθος, and often των πραγμάτων σύνθεσις, and from
him the Romans Fabula; it has already been judi-
ciously observed by a late writer, that in their
tragedies it was only some tale derived from Thebest
or Troy, or at least something that happened in
those two ages; which was worn so threadbare by
the pens of all the epick poets, and even by tra-
dition itself of the talkative Greeklings, (as Ben
Jonson calls them,) that before it came upon the
stage, it was already known to all the audience:
and the people, so soon as ever they heard the name
of Oedipus, knew as well as the poet, that he had
killed his father by a mistake, and committed incest
with his mother, before the play; that they were
now to hear of a great plague, an oracle, and the
ghost of Laius: so that they sat with a yawning
kind of expectation, till he was to come with his
eyes pulled out, and speak a hundred or more
verses in a tragick tone, in complaint of his mis-
fortunes. But one Oedipus, Hercules, or Medea,
had been tolerable: poor people, they escaped not
so good cheap; they had still the chapon bouillé set
before them, till their appetites were cloyed with
the same dish, and, the novelty being gone, the
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
57
pleasure vanished; so that one main end of Dra-
matick Poesy in its definition, which was to cause
delight, was of consequence destroyed.
In their comedies, the Romans generally bor-
rowed their plots from the Greek poets; and theirs
was commonly a little girl stolen or wandered from
her parents, brought back unknown to the city,
there got with child by some lewd young fellow,
who, by the help of his servant, cheats his father;
and when her time comes, to cry-Juno Lucina,
fer opem, one or other sees a little box or cabinet
which was carried away with her, and so discovers
her to her friends, if some god do not prevent it,
by coming down in a machine, and taking the
thanks of it to himself.
By the plot you may guess much of the charac-
ters of the persons. An old father, who would
willingly, before he dies, see his son well married;
his debauched son, kind in his nature to his
mistress, but miserably in want of money; a servant
or slave, who has so much wit to strike in with
him, and help to dupe his father; a braggadocio
captain, a parasite, and a lady of pleasure.
As for the poor honest maid, on whom the story
is built, and who ought to be one of the principal
actors in the play, she is commonly a mute in it
she has the breeding of the old Elizabeth way,
which was for maids to be seen and not to be
heard; and it is enough you know she is willing
to be married, when the fifth act requires it.
These are plots built after the Italian mode of
58
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
houses, you see through them all at once the
characters are indeed the imitations of nature, but
so narrow, as if they had imitated only an eye or an
hand, and did not dare to venture on the lines of
a face, or the proportion of a body.
But in how strait a compass soever they have
bounded their plots and characters, we will pass it
by, if they have regularly pursued them, and
perfectly observed those three unities of time, place,
and action; the knowledge of which you say is
derived to us from them. But in the first place
give me leave to tell you, that the unity of place,
however it might be practised by them, was never
any of their rules: we neither find it in Aristotle,
Horace, or any who have written of it, till in our
age the French poets first made it a precept of the
stage. The unity of time, even Terence himself,
who was the best and most regular of them, has
neglected his HEAUTONTIMORUMENOS, or Self-
Punisher, takes up visibly two days, says Scaliger;
the two first acts concluding the first day, the
three last the day ensuing; and Euripides, in
tying himself to one day, has committed an
absurdity never to be forgiven him; for in one of
his tragedies he has made Theseus go from Athens
to Thebes, which was about forty English miles,
under the walls of it to give battle, and appear
victorious in the next act; and yet, from the time
of his departure to the return of the Nuntius, who
gives the relation of his victory, Athra and the
Chorus have but thirty-six verses; which is not
for every mile a verse.
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
59
The like error is as evident in Terence his
EUNUCH, when Laches, the old man, enters by
mistake into the house of Thais; where, betwixt
his exit and the entrance of Pythias, who comes to
give ample relation of the disorders he has raised
within, Parmeno, who was left upon the stage,
has not above five lines to speak. C'est bien
employer un temps si court, says the French poet,
who furnished me with one of the observations:
and almost all their tragedies will afford us ex-
amples of the like nature.
*
It is true, they have kept the continuity, or, as
you called it, liaison des scenes, somewhat better:
two do not perpetually come in together, talk, and
go out together; and other two succeed them, and
do the same throughout the act, which the English
call by the name of single scenes; but the reason
is, because they have seldom above two or three
scenes, properly so called, in every act; for it is to
be accounted a new scene, not only every time the
stage is empty, but every person who enters, though
to others, makes it so; because he introduces a
new business. Now the plots of their plays being
narrow, and the persons few, one of their acts was
written in a less compass than one of our well-
wrought scenes; and yet they are often deficient
even in this. To go no further than Terence ;
you find in the EUNUCH, Antipho entering single
in the midst of the third act, after Chremes and
Pythias were gone off: in the same play you have
likewise Dorias beginning the fourth act alone;
and after she has made a relation of what was done
60
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
at the Soldier's entertainment, (which by the way
was very inartificial, because she was presumed to
speak directly to the audience, and to acquaint
them with what was necessary to be known, but
yet should have been so contrived by the poet as
to have been told by persons of the drama to one
another, and so by them to have come to the
knowledge of the people,) she quits the stage, and
Phædria enters next, alone likewise: he also gives
you an account of himself, and of his returning
from the country, in monologue; to which unna-
tural way
of narration Terence is subject in all his
plays. In his ADELPHI, or Brothers, Syrus and
Demea enter after the scene was broken by the
departure of Sostrata, Geta, and Canthara; and
indeed you can scarce look into any of his comedies,
where you will not presently discover the same
interruption.
But as they have failed both in laying of their
plots, and in the management, swerving from the
rules of their own art by misrepresenting nature
to us, in which they have ill satisfied one intention
of a play, which was delight; so in the instructive
part they have erred worse: instead of punishing
vice and rewarding virtue, they have often shewn
a prosperous wickedness, and an unhappy piety:
they have set before us a bloody image of revenge
in Medea, and given her dragons to convey her
safe from punishment; a Priam and Astyanax
murdered, and Cassandra ravished, and the lust
and murder ending in the victory of him who acted
them in short, there is no indecorum in
:
any of
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
61
our modern plays, which if I would excuse, I could
not shadow with some authority from the ancients.
2
And one farther note of them let me leave you:
tragedies and comedies were not writ then as they
are now, promiscuously, by the same person; but
he who found his genius bending to the one, never
attempted the other way. This is so plain, that
I need not instance to you, that Aristophanes,
Plautus, Terence, never any of them writ a tragedy;
Eschylus, Euripides, Sophocles, and Seneca,
never meddled with comedy: the sock and buskin
were not worn by the same poet. Having then so
much care to excel in one kind, very little is to be
pardoned them, if they miscarried in it; and this
would lead me to the consideration of their wit,
had not Crites given me sufficient warning not to
be too bold in my judgment of it; because, the
languages being dead, and many of the customs
and little accidents on which it depended, lost to
us, we are not competent judges of it. But though
I grant that here and there we may miss the
application of a proverb or a custom, yet a thing
well said will be wit in all languages; and though
it may lose something in the translation, yet to
him who reads it in the original, 'tis still the
same he has an idea of its excellency, though it
cannot pass from his mind into any other expression
or words than those in which he finds it. When
2 Dryden is here not correct. Euripides has left us
one satirical drama, (somewhat resembling our tragi-
comedy,) entitled THE CYCLOPS.
62
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
ય
Phædria, in the EUNUCH, had a command from
his mistress to be absent two days, and encouraging
himself to go through with it, said, Tandem ego
non illa caream, si sit opus, vel totum triduum ?—
Parmeno, to mock the softness of his master, lifting
up his hands and eyes, cries out, as it were in
admiration, Hui! universum triduum! the elegancy
of which universum, though it cannot be rendered
in our language, yet leaves an impression on our
souls. But this happens seldom in him; in Plautus
oftener, who is infinitely too bold in his metaphors
and coining words, out of which many times his
wit is nothing; which questionless was one reason
why Horace falls upon him so severely in those
verses:
Sed proai nostri Plautinos et numeros et
Laudavere sales, nimium patienter utrumque,
Ne dicam stolidè.*
For Horace himself was cautious to obtrude a
new word on his readers, and makes custom and
common use the best measure of receiving it into
our writings:
Multa renascentur quæ nunc [jam] cecidere, cadentque
Quæ nunc sunt in honore vocabula, si volet usus,
Quem penes arbitrium est, et jus, et norma loquendi.
The not observing this rule is that which the
world has blamed in our satyrist, Cleiveland: to
express a thing hard and unnaturally, is his new
*Our author has quoted from memory. The lines
are-At nostri proavi, &c. and afterwards-Ne dicam
stulte, mirati.
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
63
way of elocution. It is true, no poet but may
sometimes use a catachresis: Virgil does it-
Mistaque ridenti colocasia fundet acantho-
in his eclogue of Pollio; and in his seventh Æneid,'
mirantur et unda,
Miratur nemus, insuetum fulgentia longe
Scuta virum fluvio, pictasque innare carinas.
ب
And Ovid once so modestly, that he asks leave
to do it:
[quem,] si verbo audacia detur,
Haud metuam summi dixisse Palatia cæli.
calling the court of Jupiter by the name of Au-
gustus his palace; though in another place he is
more bold, where he says,-et longas visent Capi-
tolia pompas. But to do this always, and never be
able to write a line without it, though it may be
admired by some few pedants, will not pass upon
those who know that wit is best conveyed to us in
the most easy language; and is most to be admired
when a great thought comes dressed in words so
commonly received, that it is understood by the
meanest apprehensions, as the best meat is the
most easily digested: but we cannot read a verse
of Cleiveland's without making a face at it, as if
every word were a pill to swallow: he gives us
3 These lines are in the eighth Æneid.
*This remark is unfounded; for the words are-et
longæ visent Capitolia pompa. Ovid. MET. 1. i. In the
preceding quotation, for verbo, we should read verbis; and
for metuam summi,-timeam magni.
64
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
many times a hard nut to break our teeth, without
a kernel for our pains. So that there is this dif
ference betwixt his Satires and doctor Donne's;
that the one gives us deep thoughts in common
language, though rough cadence; the other gives
us common thoughts in abstruse words. It is true,
in some places his wit is independent of his words,
as in that of the rebel Scot:
Had Cain been Scot, God would have chang'd his doom;
Not forc'd him wander, but confin'd him home,
Si sic omnia dixisset! This is wit in all languages:
it is like mercury, never to be lost or killed:—and
so that other—–
For beauty, like white powder, makes no noise,
And yet the silent hypocrite destroys.
You see, the last line is highly metaphorical, but
it is so soft and gentle, that it does not shock us as
we read it.
But, to return from whence I have digressed, to
the consideration of the ancients' writing, and their
wit; of which by this time you will grant us in
some measure to be fit judges. Though I see
many excellent thoughts in Seneca, yet he, of
them who had a genius most proper for the stage,
was Ovid; he had a way of writing so fit to stir up
a pleasing admiration and concernment, which are
the objects of a tragedy, and to shew the various
movements of a soul combating betwixt two dif-
ferent passions, that, had he lived in our age, or in
his own could have writ with our advantages, no
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
65
man but must have yielded to him; and therefore
I am confident the MEDEA is none of his for,
though I esteem it for the gravity and sententious-
ness of it, which he himself concludes to be suitable
to a tragedy,-Omne genus scripti gravitate tragedia
vincit,—yet it moves not my soul enough to judge
that he, who in the epick way wrote things so near
the drama, as the story of Myrrha, of Caunus and
Biblis, and the rest, should stir up no more con-
cernment where he most endeavoured it.³ The
master-piece of Seneca I hold to be that scene
in the TROADES, where Ulysses is seeking for
Astyanax to kill him: there you see the tenderness.
of a mother so represented in Andromache, that it
raises compassion to a high degree in the reader,
and bears the nearest resemblance of any thing in
the tragedies of the ancients, to the excellent scenes
of passion in Shakspeare, or in Fletcher.-For
love-scenes, you will find few among them; their
tragick poets dealt not with that soft passion, but
with lust, cruelty, revenge, ambition, and those
bloody actions they produced; which were more
capable of raising horrour than compassion in an
audience leaving love untouched, whose gentle-
ness would have tempered them; which is the most
frequent of all the passions, and which being the
3 Our author (as Dr. Johnson has observed) "might
have determined this question upon surer evidence; for
it [Medea] is quoted by Quintilian as Seneca's, and the
only line which remains of Ovid's play, for one line is
left us, is not found there.”
VOL. I.
F
66
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
private concernment of every person, is soothed by
viewing its own image in a publick entertainment.
Among their comedies, we find a scene or two
of tenderness, and that where you would least
expect it, in Plautus; but to speak generally, their
lovers say little, when they see each other, but
anima mea, vita mea; wnux, as the women in
Juvenal's time used to cry out in the fury of their
kindness. Any sudden gust of passion (as an
extasy of love in an unexpected meeting) cannot
better be expressed than in a word and a sigh,
breaking one another. Nature is dumb on such
occasions; and to make her speak, would be to
represent her unlike herself. But there are a thou-
sand other concernments of lovers, as jealousies,
complaints, contrivances, and the like, where not
to open their minds at large to each other, were to
be wanting to their own love, and to the expecta-
tion of the audience; who watch the movements
of their minds, as much as the changes of their
fortunes. For the imaging of the first is properly
the work of a poet; the latter he borrows from the
historian.
Eugenius was proceeding in that part of his
discourse, when Crites interrupted him. I see,
said he, Eugenius and I are never like to have this
question decided betwixt us; for he maintains, the
moderns have acquired a new perfection in writing,
I can only grant they have altered the mode of it.
Homer described his heroes men of great appetites,
lovers of beef broiled upon the coals, and good
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
67
fellows; contrary to the practice of the French
Romances, whose heroes neither eat, nor drink,
nor sleep, for love. Virgil makes Æneas a bold
avower of his own virtues :
Sum pius Æneas, famâ super æthera notus;
which, in the civility of our poets is the character
of a fanfaron or Hector: for with us the knight
takes occasion to walk out, or sleep, to avoid the
vanity of telling his own story, which the trusty
'squire is ever to perform for him. So in their love-
scenes, of which Eugenius spoke last, the ancients
were more hearty, we more talkative: they writ
love as it was then the mode to make it; and I will
grant thus much to Eugenius, that perhaps one of
their poets, had he lived in our age, si foret hoc
nostrum fato delapsus in ævum, as Horace says of
Lucilius, he had altered many things; not that
they were not natural before, but that he might
accommodate himself to the age in which he lived.
Yet in the mean time, we are not to conclude any
thing rashly against those great men, but preserve
to them the dignity of masters, and give that
honour to their memories,-quos Libitina sacravit,-
part of which we expect may be paid to us in
future times.
This moderation of Crites, as it was pleasing to
all the company, so it put an end to that dispute ;
which, Eugenius, who seemed to have the better
of the argument, would urge no farther. But
Lisideius, after he had acknowledged himself of
68
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
!
Eugenius his opinion concerning the ancients, yet
told him, he had forborne, till his discourse were
ended, to ask him why he preferred the English
plays above those of other nations? and whether
we ought not to submit our stage to the exactness
of our next neighbours?
Though, said Eugenius, I am at all times ready
to defend the honour of my country against the
French, and to maintain, we are as well able to
vanquish them with our pens, as our ancestors
have been with their swords; yet, if you please,
added he, looking upon Neander, I will commit
this cause to my friend's management; his opinion
of our plays is the same with mine: and besides,
there is no reason, that Crites and I, who have now
left the stage, should re-enter so suddenly upon it;
which is against the laws of comedy.
If the question had been stated, replied Lisideius,
who had writ best, the French or English, forty
years ago, I should have been of your opinion,
and adjudged the honour to our own nation; but
since that time, (said he, turning towards Neander,)
we have been so long together bad Englishmen,
that we had not leisure to be good poets. Beau-
mont, Fletcher, and Jonson, (who were only
capable of bringing us to that degree of perfection
which we have,) were just then leaving the world;*
4 This is not quite accurate. Beaumont died in 1615,
about fifty years before the time when this dialogue is
supposed to have passed; Fletcher in 1625, forty years
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
69
as if in an age of so much horrour, wit, and those
milder studies of humanity, had no farther business
among us. But the Muses, who ever follow peace,
went to plant in another country: it was then,
that the great Cardinal of Richelieu began to take
them into his protection; and that, by his encou-
ragement, Corneille,' and some other Frenchmen,
reformed their theatre, which before was as much
below ours, as it now surpasses it and the rest of
Europe. But because Crites in his discourse for
the ancients has prevented me, by observing many
rules of the stage which the moderns have bor-
rowed from them, I shall only, in short, demand of
you, whether
you are not convinced that of all
nations the French have best observed them? In
the unity of time you find them so scrupulous,
that it yet remains a dispute among their poets,
whether the artificial day of twelve hours, more or
less, be not meant by Aristotle, rather than the
natural one of twenty-four; and consequently,
whether all plays ought not to be reduced into that
compass. This I can testify, that in all their dramas
writ within these last twenty years and upwards, I
have not observed any that have extended the time
to thirty hours. In the unity of place they are
full as scrupulous; for many of their criticks limit
from the same period, as here rightly stated; and Ben
Jonson in 1637, only twenty-eight years from 1665, the
supposed era of the dialogue.
5 Pierre Corneille was born in June, 1606, and pro-
duced his first play, MELITE, about the year 1630.
770
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
it to that very spot of ground where the play is
supposed to begin; none of them exceed the com-
pass of the same town or city. The unity of
action in all their plays is yet more conspicuous;
for they do not burden them with under-plots, as
the English do: which is the reason why many
scenes of our tragi-comedies carry on a design that
is nothing of kin to the main plot; and that we
see two distinct webs in a play, like those in ill-
wrought stuffs; and two actions, that is, two plays,
carried on together, to the confounding of the
audience; who, before they are warm in their
concernments for one part, are diverted to another;
and by that means espouse the interest of neither.
From hence likewise it arises, that the one half of
our actors are not known to the other. They
keep their distances, as if they were Mountagues
and Capulets, and seldom begin an acquaintance
till the last scene of the fifth act, when they are all
to meet upon the stage. There is no theatre in
the world has any thing so absurd as the English
tragi-comedy; it is a drama of our own invention,
and the fashion of it is enough to proclaim it so ;
here a course of mirth, there another of sadness
and passion, and a third of honour and a duel :
thus, in two hours and a half, we run through all
the fits of Bedlam. The French affords you as
much variety on the same day, but they do it not
so unseasonably, or mal à propos, as we our poets
present you the play and the farce together; and
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
71
our stages still retain somewhat of the original
civility of the Red Bull :"
6
Atque ursum et pugiles media inter carmina poscunt.
The end of tragedies or serious plays, says
Aristotle, is to beget admiration, compassion, or
concernment; but are not mirth and compassion
things incompatible? and is it not evident that the
poet must of necessity destroy the former by inter-
mingling of the latter? that is, he must ruin the
sole end and object of his tragedy, to introduce
somewhat that is forced into it, and is not of the
body of it. Would you not think that physician
mad, who, having prescribed a purge, should im-
mediately order you to take restringents?
But to leave our plays, and return to theirs. I
have noted one great advantage they have had in
the plotting of their tragedies; that is, they are
always grounded upon some known history: ac-
cording to that of Horace, Ex noto fictum carmen
sequar; and in that they have so imitated the
ancients, that they have surpassed them. For the
ancients, as was observed before, took for the foun-
dation of their plays some poetical fiction, such as
under that consideration could move but little
concernment in the audience, because they already
"The Red Bull, in St. John's-street, was one of the
meanest of our ancient theatres, and was famous for
entertainments adapted to the taste of the lower orders of
people.
72
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
!
knew the event of it. But the French goes
farther:
Atque ita mentitur, sic veris falsa remiscet,
Primo ne medium, medio ne discrepet imum.
He so interweaves truth with probable fiction, that
he puts a pleasing fallacy upon us; mends the
intrigues of fate, and dispenses with the severity of
history, to reward that virtue which has been ren-
dered to us there unfortunate. Sometimes the
story has left the success so doubtful, that the
writer is free, by the privilege of a poet, to take
that which of two or more relations will best suit
with his design as for example, in the death of
Cyrus, whom Justin and some others report to
have perished in the Scythian war, but Xenophon
affirms to have died in his bed of extreme old age.
Nay more, when the event is past dispute, even
then we are willing to be deceived, and the poet,
if he contrives it with appearance of truth, has all
the audience of his party; at least during the time
his play is acting: so naturally we are kind to
virtue, when our own interest is not in question,
that we take it up as the general concernment of
mankind. On the other side, if you consider
the historical plays of Shakspeare, they are rather
so many chronicles of kings, or the business many
times of thirty or forty years, cramped into a repre-
sentation of two hours and an half; which is not to
imitate or paint nature, but rather to draw her in
miniature, to take her in little; to look upon her
through the wrong end of a perspective, and
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
73
receive her images not only much less, but infinitely
more imperfect than the life: this, instead of
making a play delightful, renders it ridiculous:
Quodcunque ostendis mihi sic, incredulus odi.
For the spirit of man cannot be satisfied but
with truth, or at least verisimility; and a poem is
to contain, if not τὰ ἐτυμα, yet ἐτύμοισιν ὁμοῖα, as one
of the Greek poets has expressed it.
τα
Another thing in which the French differ from
us and from the Spaniards, is, that they do not
embarrass, or cumber themselves with too much
plot; they only represent so much of a story as
will constitute one whole and great action sufficient
for a play: we, who undertake more, do but
multiply adventures; which, not being produced
from one another, as effects from causes, but barely
following,, constitute many actions in the drama,
and consequently make it many plays.
But by pursuing closely one argument, which
is not cloyed with many turns, the French have
gained more liberty for verse, in which they write:
they have leisure to dwell on a subject which
deserves it; and to represent the passions, (which
we have acknowledged to be the poet's work,)
without being hurried from one thing to another,
as we are in the plays of Calderon, which we havė
seen lately upon our theatres, under the name of
Spanish plots. I have taken notice but of one
tragedy of ours, whose plot has that uniformity and
unity of design in it, which I have commended in
74
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
1
the French; and that is ROLLO, or rather, under
the name of Rollo, the Story of Bassianus and
Geta in Herodian : there indeed the plot is neither
large nor intricate, but just enough to fill the minds
of the audience, not to cloy them. Besides, you
see it founded upon the truth of history,-only
the time of the action is not reduceable to the
strictness of the rules; and you see in some places
a little farce mingled, which is below the dignity
of the other parts; and in this all our poets are
extremely peccant: even Ben Jonson himself, in
SEJANUS and CATILINE, has given us this olio of a
play, this unnatural mixture of comedy and tragedy;
which to me sounds just as ridiculously as the
history of David with the merry humours of Go-
liah. In SEJANUS you may take notice of the
scene betwixt Livia and the physician, which is a
pleasant satire upon the artificial helps of beauty:
in CATILINE you may see the parliament of women;
the little envies of them to one another; and all that
passes betwixt Curio and Fulvia: scenes admirable
in their kind, but of an ill mingle with the rest.
But I return again to the French writers, who,
as I have said, do not burden themselves too much
with plot, which has been reproached to them by
an ingenious person' of our nation as a fault; for he
says, they commonly make but one person con-
siderable in a play; they dwell on him, and his
"Though I have not been negligent in my researches,
I have not been able to discover the writer here alluded to.
1
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
75
concernments, while the rest of the persons are
only subservient to set him off. If he intends this
by it, that there is one person in the play who is
of greater dignity than the rest, he must tax, not
only theirs, but those of the ancients, and which
he would be loth to do, the best of ours; for it is
impossible but that one person must be more con-
spicuous in it than any other, and consequently
the greatest share in the action must devolve on
him. We see it so in the management of all
affairs ; even in the most equal aristocracy, the
balance cannot be so justly poised, but some one
will be superiour to the rest, either in parts, fortune,
interest, or the consideration of some glorious
exploit; which will reduce the greatest part of
business into his hands.
But, if he would have us to imagine, that
in exalting one character the rest of them are
neglected, and that all of them have not some
share or other in the action of the play, I desire
him to produce any of Corneille's tragedies, wherein
every person, like so many servants in a well-
governed family, has not some employment, and
who is not necessary to the carrying on of the
plot, or at least to your understanding it.
There are indeed some protatick persons in the
ancients, whom they make use of in their plays,
either to hear or give the relation: but the French
avoid this with great address, making their narra-
tions only to, or by such, who are some way in-
teressed in the main design. And now I am
76
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
speaking of relations, I cannot take a fitter oppor-
tunity to add this in favour of the French, that
they often use them with better judgment and
more à propos than the English do. Not that I
commend narrations in general,-but there are two
sorts of them; one, of those things which are
antecedent to the play, and are related to make
the conduct of it more clear to us; but 'tis a
fault to choose such subjects for the stage as will
force us on that rock, because we see they are
seldom listened to by the audience, and that is
many times the ruin of the play; for, being once
let pass
without attention, the audience can never
recover themselves to understand the plot and
indeed it is somewhat unreasonable that they
should be put to so much trouble, as, that to com-
prehend what passes in their sight, they must have
recourse to what was done, perhaps, ten or twenty
years ago.
:
But there is another sort of relations, that is, of
things happening in the action of the play, and
supposed to be done behind the scenes; and this
is many times both convenient and beautiful: for,
by it the French avoid the tumult to which we
are subject in England, by representing duels,
battles, and the like; which renders our stage too
like the theatres where they fight prizes, For
what is more ridiculous than to represent an army
with a drum and five men behind it; all which,
the hero of the other side is to drive in before him;
or to see a duel fought, and one slain with two or
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
77
three thrusts of the foils, which we know are so
blunted, that we might give a man an hour to kill
another in good earnest with them.
I have observed that in all our tragedies, the
audience cannot forbear laughing when the actors
are to die; it is the most comick part of the whole
play. All passions may be lively represented on
the stage, if to the well-writing of them the actor
supplies a good commanded voice, and limbs that
move easily, and without stiffness; but there are
many actions which can never be imitated to a just
height: dying especially is a thing which none but
a Roman gladiator could naturally perform on the
stage, when he did not imitate or represent, but
do it; and therefore it is better to omit the repre-
sentation of it.
The words of a good writer, which describe it
lively, will make a deeper impression of belief in
us than all the actor can insinuate into us, when
he seems to fall dead before us; as a poet in the
description of a beautiful garden, or a meadow,
will please our imagination more than the place
itself can please our sight. When we see death
represented, we are convinced it is but fiction ;
but when we hear it related, our eyes, the strongest
witnesses, are wanting, which might have unde-
ceived us; and we are all willing to favour the
sleight, when the poet does not too grossly impose
on us. They therefore who imagine these rela-
tions would make no concernment in the audience,
are deceived, by confounding them with the other,
78
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
which are of things antecedent to the play those
are made often in cold blood, as I may say, to the
audience; but these are warmed with our con-
cernments, which were before awakened in the
play. What the philosophers say of motion, that,
when it is once begun, it continues of itself, and
will do so to eternity, without some stop put to it,
is clearly true on this occasion: the soul, being
already moved with the characters and fortunes of
those imaginary persons, continues going of its
own accord; and we are no more weary to hear
what becomes of them when they are not on the
stage, than we are to listen to the news of an
absent mistress. But it is objected, that if one
part of the play may be related, then why not all?
I answer, some parts of the action are more fit to
be represented, some to be related. Corneille says
judiciously, that the poet is not obliged to expose
to view all particular actions which conduce to the
principal: he ought to select such of them to be
seen, which will appear with the greatest beauty,
either by the magnificence of the show, or the
vehemence of passions which they produce, or
some other charm which they have in them; and
let the rest arrive to the audience by narration.
It is a great mistake in us to believe the French
present no part of the action on the stage: every
alteration or crossing of a design, every new-sprung
passion, and turn of it, is a part of the action, and
much the noblest, except we conceive nothing to
be action till the players come to blows; as if the
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
79
painting of the hero's mind were not more pro-
perly the poet's work than the strength of his
body. Nor does this any thing contradict the
opinion of Horace, where he tells us,
Segnius irritant animos demissa per aurem,
Quam quæ sunt oculis subjecta fidelibus.
For he says immediately after,
Non tamen intus
Digna geri promes in scenam; multaq; tolles
Ex oculis, quæ mox narret facundia præsens.
Among which many he recounts some :
Nec pueros coram populo Medea trucidet,
Aut in avem Progne mutetur, Cadmus in anguem; &c.
That is, those actions which by reason of their
cruelty will cause aversion in us, or by reason of
their impossibility, unbelief, ought either wholly to
be avoided by a poet, or only delivered by narration.
To which we may have leave to add, such as, to
avoid tumult, (as was before hinted,) or to reduce
the plot into a more reasonable compass of time,
or for defect of beauty in them, are rather to be
related than presented to the eye. Examples of
all these kinds are frequent, not only among all
the ancients, but in the best received of our English
poets. We find Ben Jonson using them in his
MAGNETICK LADY, where one comes out from
dinner, and relates the quarrels and disorders of it,
to save the undecent appearance of them on the
stage, and to abbreviate the story and this in
express imitation of Terence, who had done the
ነ
80
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
8
same before him in his EUNUCH, where Pythias
makes the like relation of what had happened
within at the Soldier's entertainment. The relations
likewise of Sejanus's death, and the prodigies before
it, are remarkable; the one of which was hid from
sight, to avoid the horrour and tumult of the repre-
sentation; the other, to shun the introducing of
things impossible to be believed. In that excellent
play, THE KING AND NO KING, Fletcher goes
yet farther; for the whole unravelling of the plot.
is done by narration in the fifth act, after the
manner of the ancients; and it moves great con-
cernment in the audience, though it be only a
relation of what was done many years before the
play. I could multiply other instances, but these
are sufficient to prove that there is no errour in
choosing a subject which requires this sort of
narrations; in the ill management of them, there
may.
But I find I have been too long in this discourse,
since the French have many other excellencies not
common to us; as that you never see any of their
plays end with a conversion, or simple change of
will, which is the ordinary way which our poets
use to end theirs. It shews little art in the con-
clusion of a dramatick poem, when they who have
hindered the felicity during the four acts, desist
from it in the fifth, without some powerful cause
8 A KING AND NO KING is one of the few plays in which
Fletcher had the aid of Beaumont. It was acted at court
in 1613, two years before Beaumont's death.
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
81
to take them off their design; and though I deny
not but such reasons may be found, yet it is a path
that is cautiously to be trod, and the poet is to be
sure he convinces the audience that the motive is
strong enough. As for example, the conversion
of the Usurer in THE SCORNFUL LADY, seems to
me a little forced; for, being an Usurer, which
implies a lover of money to the highest degree of
covetousness,—and such the poet has represented
him, the account he gives for the sudden change
is, that he has been duped by the wild young
fellow; which in reason might render him more
wary another time, and make him punish himself
with harder fare and coarser clothes, to get up
again what he had lost but that he should look
on it as a judgment, and so repent, we may expect
to hear in a sermon, but I should never endure
it in a play.
I
pass by this; neither will I insist on the care
they take, that no person after his first entrance
shall ever appear, but the business which brings
him upon the stage shall be evident; which rule,
if observed, must needs render all the events in
the play more natural; for there
you see the
pro-
bability of every accident, in the cause that pro-
duced it; and that which appears chance in the
play, will seem so reasonable to you, that you will
there find it almost necessary: so that in the exit
of the actor you have a clear account of his purpose
and design in the next entrance; (though, if the
scene be well wrought, the event will commonly
VOL. I.
Ꮐ
82
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
deceive you ;) for there is nothing so absurd, says
Corneille, as for an actor to leave the stage, only
because he has no more to say.
I should now speak of the beauty of their rhyme,
and the just reason I have to prefer that way of
writing in tragedies before ours in blank verse ;
but because it is partly received by us, and there-
fore not altogether peculiar to them, I will say no
more of it in relation to their plays. For our own,
I doubt not but it will exceedingly beautify them;
and I can see but one reason why it should not
generally obtain, that is, because our poets write
so ill in it. This indeed may prove a more pre-
vailing argument than all others which are used to
destroy it, and therefore I am only troubled when
great and judicious poets, and those who are ac-
knowledged such, have writ or spoke against it: as
for others, they are to be answered by that one
sentence of an ancient author: -Sed ut primo ad
consequendos eos quos priores ducimus, accendimur, ita
ubi aut præteriri, aut æquari eos posse desperavimus,
studium cum spe senescit : quod, scilicet, assequi non
potest, sequi desinit ;---præteritoque eo in quo eminere
non possumus, aliquid in quo nitamur, conquirimus.
8
Lisideius concluded in this manner; and Ne-
ander, after a little pause, thus answered him :
I shall grant Lisideius, without much dispute, a
great part of what he has urged against us; for I
acknowledge that the French contrive their plots
more regularly, and observe the laws of comedy,
8 Velleius Paterculus, i. 17.
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
83
and decorum of the stage, (to speak generally,) with
more exactness than the English. Farther, I deny
not but he has taxed us justly in some irregularities
of ours, which he has mentioned; yet, after all, I
am of opinion that neither our faults nor their
virtues are considerable enough to place them
above us.
For the lively imitation of nature being in the
definition of a play, those which best fulfil
that law, ought to be esteemed superior to the
others. 'Tis true, those beauties of the French
poesy are such as will raise perfection higher where
it is, but are not sufficient to give it where it is
not: they are indeed the beauties of a statue, but
not of a man, because not animated with the soul
of poesy, which is imitation of humour and pas-
sions: and this Lisideius himself, or any other,
however biassed to their party, cannot but acknow-
ledge, if he will either compare the humours of
our comedies, or the characters of our serious plays,
with theirs. He who will look upon theirs which
have been written till these last ten years, or there-
abouts, will find it an hard matter to pick out two
or three passable humours amongst them. Cor-
neille himself, their arch-poet, what has he pro-
duced except THE LIAR, and you know how it was
cried up in France; but when it came upon the
English stage, though well translated, and that
part of Dorant acted to so much advantage* as I
" *
By Mr. Hart."-These words, which were in the
first edition of this Essay, our author omitted in the
84
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
am confident it never received in its own country,
the most favourable to it would not put it in com-
petition with many of Fletcher's or Ben Jonson's.
In the rest of Corneille's comedies you have little
humour; he tells you himself, his way is, first to
shew two lovers in good intelligence with each
other; in the working up of the play to embroil
them by some mistake, and in the latter end to
clear it, and reconcile them.
9
But of late years Moliere, the younger Corneille,
Quinault, and some others, have been imitating
afar off the quick turns and graces of the English
stage. They have mixed their serious plays with
mirth, like our tragi-comedies, since the death of
Cardinal Richelieu; which Lisideius and many
others not observing, have commended that in
them for a virtue which they themselves no longer
practise. Most of their new plays are, like some
of ours, derived from the Spanish novels. There
is scarce one of them without a veil, and a trusty
Diego, who drolls much after the rate of THE
ADVENTURES." But their humours, if I may grace
them with that name, are so thin-sown, that never
above one of them comes up in any play. I dare
second. The play alluded to is, THE MISTAKEN BEAUTY,
OR, THE LIAR, 4to. 1685; of which there is said to have
been a former edition in 1661, under the latter title only.
9 Cardinal Richelieu died in 1642.
'THE ADVENTURES OF FIVE HOURS, written by Sir
Samuel Tuke, and printed in 1663. Diego is one of the
characters in it.
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
85
take upon me to find more variety of them in some
one play of Ben Jonson's, than in all theirs together;
as he who has seen THE ALCHEMIST, THE SILENT
WOMAN, or BARTHOLOMEW-FAIR, cannot but
acknowledge with me.
I grant the French have performed what was
possible on the ground-work of the Spanish plays;
what was pleasant before, they have made regular:
but there is not above one good play to be writ on
all those plots; they are too much alike to please
often; which we need not the experience of our
own stage to justify. As for their new way of
mingling mirth with serious plot, I do not, with
Lisideius, condemn the thing, though I cannot
approve their manner of doing it. He tells us, we
cannot so speedily recollect ourselves after a scene
of great passion and concernment, as to pass to
another of mirth and humour, and to enjoy it with
any relish: but why should he imagine the soul
of man more heavy than his senses? Does not the
eye pass from an unpleasant object to a pleasant in
a much shorter time than is required to this? and
does not the unpleasantness of the first commend
the beauty of the latter? The old rule of logick
might have convinced him, that contraries, when
placed near, set off each other. A continued
gravity keeps the spirit too much bent; we must
refresh it sometimes, as we bait in a journey, that
we may go on with greater ease. A scene of mirth,
mixed with tragedy, has the same effect upon us
which our musick has betwixt the acts; which we
find a relief to us from the best plots and language
86
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
of the stage, if the discourses have been long. I
must therefore have stronger arguments, ere I am
convinced that compassion and mirth in the same
subject destroy each other; and in the mean time
cannot but conclude, to the honour of our nation,
that we have invented, increased, and perfected a
more pleasant way of writing for the stage, than
was ever known to the ancients or moderns of any
nation, which is tragi-comedy.
And this leads me to wonder why Lisideius and
many others should cry up the barrenness of the
French plots, above the variety and copiousness of
the English. Their plots are single; they carry on
one design, which is pushed forward by all the actors,
every scene in the play contributing and moving
towards it. Our plays, besides the main design,
have under-plots or by-concernments, of less con-
siderable persons and intrigues, which are carried
on with the motion of the main plot: as they say
the orb of the fixed stars, and those of the planets,
though they have motions of their own, are whirled
about by the motion of the primum mobile, in which
they are contained. That similitude expresses
much of the English stage; for if contrary motions
may be found in nature to agree; if a planet cán
go east and west at the same time ;-one way by
virtue of his own motion, the other by the force of
the first mover;-it will not be difficult to imagine
how the under-plot, which is only different, not
contrary to the great design, may naturally be
conducted along with it.
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
87
Eugenius has already shewn us, from the con-
fession of the French poets, that the unity of
action is sufficiently preserved, if all the imperfect
actions of the play are conducing to the main
design; but when those petty intrigues of a play
are so ill ordered, that they have no coherence
with the other, I must grant that Lisideius has
reason to tax that want of due connexion; for co-
ordination in a play is as dangerous and unnatural
as in a state. In the mean time he must acknow-
ledge, our variety, if well ordered, will afford a
greater pleasure to the audience.
As for his other argument, that by pursuing one
single theme they gain an advantage to express
and work up the passions, I wish any example he
could bring from them would make it good; for I
confess their verses are to me the coldest I have
ever read. Neither, indeed, is it possible for them,
in the way they take, so to express passion, as that
the effects of it should appear in the concernment
of an audience, their speeches being so many
declamations, which tire us with the length; so
that instead of persuading us to grieve for their
imaginary heroes, we are concerned for our own
trouble, as we are in tedious visits of bad company;
we are in pain till they are gone. When the
French stage came to be reformed by Cardinal
Richelieu, those long harangues were introduced
to comply with the gravity of a churchman. Look
upon the CINNA and the POMPEY; they are not
so properly to be called plays, as long discourses of
88
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
reason of state; and POLIEUCTE in matters of
religion is as solemn as the long stops upon our
organs. Since that time it is grown into a custom,
and their actors speak by the hour-glass, like our
parsons : 3
nay, they account it the grace of their
parts, and think themselves disparaged by the
poet, if they may not twice or thrice in a play
entertain the audience with a speech of an hundred
lines. I deny not but this may suit well enough
with the French; for as we, who are a more sullen
people, come to be diverted at our plays, so they,
who are of an airy and gay temper, come thither
to make themselves more serious: and this I con-
ceive to be one reason why comedies are more
pleasing to us, and tragedies to them. But to
speak generally: it cannot be denied that short
speeches and replies are more apt to move the
passions and beget concernment in us, than the
other; for it is unnatural for any one in a gust of
passion to speak long together, or for another in
the same condition, to suffer him, without inter-
ruption. Grief and passion are like floods raised
in little brooks by a sudden rain; they are quickly
up; and if the concernment be poured unexpect-
edly in upon us, it overflows us: but a long sober
shower gives them leisure to run out as they came
in, without troubling the ordinary current.
for comedy, repartee is one of its chiefest graces;
As
3 Formerly an hour-glass was fixed on the pulpit in all
our churches.
.
89
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
the greatest pleasure of the audience is a chace of
wit, kept up on both sides, and swiftly managed.
And this our forefathers, if not we, have had in
Fletcher's plays, to a much higher degree of
perfection than the French poets can reasonably
hope to reach.
There is another part of Lisideius his discourse,
in which he has rather excused our neighbours,
than commended them; that is, for aiming only
to make one person considerable in their plays.
'Tis very true what he has urged, that one character
in all plays, even without the poet's care, will have
advantage of all the others; and that the design
of the whole drama will chiefly depend on it. But
this hinders not that there may be more shining
characters in the play: many persons of a second
magnitude, nay, some so very near, so almost equal
to the first, that greatness may be opposed to
greatness, and all the persons be made considerable,
not only by their quality, but their action. "Tis
evident that the more the persons are, the greater
will be the variety of the plot. If then the parts
are managed so regularly, that the beauty of the
whole be kept entire, and that the variety become
not a perplexed and confused mass of accidents,
you will find it infinitely pleasing to be led in a
labyrinth of design, where you see some of your
way before you, yet discern not the end till you
arrive at it. And that all this is practicable, I can
produce for examples many of our English plays
as THE MAID'S TRAGEDY, THE ALCHEMIST, THE
90
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
SILENT WOMAN: I was going to have named
THE Fox, but that the unity of design seems not
exactly observed in it; for there appear two actions
in the play; the first naturally ending with the
fourth act; the second forced from it in the fifth :
which yet is the less to be condemned in him,
because the disguise of Volpone, though it suited
not with his character as a crafty or covetous
person, agreed well enough with that of a volup-
tuary; and by it the poet gained the end at which
he aimed, the punishment of vice, and the reward
of virtue, both which that disguise produced. So
that to judge equally of it, it was an excellent
fifth act, but not so naturally proceeding from the
former.
But to leave this, and pass to the latter part of
Lisideius his discourse, which concerns relations:
I must acknowledge with him, that the French
have reason to hide that part of the action which
would occasion too much tumult on the stage,
and to choose rather to have it made known by
narration to the audience. Farther, I think it
very convenient, for the reasons he has given, that
all incredible actions were removed; but, whether
custom has so insinuated itself into our country-
men, or nature has so formed them to fierceness, I
know not; but they will scarcely suffer combats
and other objects of horrour to be taken from them.
And indeed, the indecency of tumults is all which
can be objected against fighting: for why may not
our imagination as well suffer itself to be deluded
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
91
with the probability of it, as with any other thing in
the play? For my part, I can with as great ease
persuade myself that the blows are given in good
earnest, as I can, that they who strike them are
kings or princes, or those persons which they repre-
sent. For objects of incredibility,-I would be
satisfied from Lisideius, whether we have any so
removed from all appearance of truth, as are those
of Corneille's ANDROMEDE; a play which has been
frequented the most of any he has writ. If the
Perseus, or the son of an heathen god, the Pegasus,
and the Monster, were not capable to choke a
strong belief, let him blame any representation of
ours hereafter. Those indeed were objects of
delight; yet the reason is the same as to the pro-
bability: for he makes it not a ballet or masque,
but a play, which is to resemble truth. But for
death, that it ought not to be represented, I have,
besides the arguments alledged by Lisideius, the
authority of Ben Jonson, who has forborn it in his
tragedies; for both the death of Sejanus and
Catiline are related: though in the latter I cannot
but observe one irregularity of that great poet; he
has removed the scene in the same act from Rome
to Catiline's army, and from thence again to Rome;
4 One cannot, without some degree of admiration and
concern, find in various parts of this Essay the merits and
conduct of these miserably tedious and uninteresting
dramas, which at their first representation were scarcely
endured, and are now read only as an exercise, gravely
discussed, as if they were the most splendid and perfect
productions of the English stage.
92
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
T
and besides, has allowed a very inconsiderable time,
after Catiline's speech, for the striking of the
battle, and the return of Petreius, who is to relate
the event of it to the senate: which I should not
animadvert on him, who was otherwise a painful
observer of rò gérov, or the decorum of the stage,
if he had not used extreme severity in his judg-
ment on the incomparable Shakspeare for the same
fault.*-To conclude on this subject of relations ;
if we are to be blamed for shewing too much of
the action, the French are as faulty for discovering
too little of it: a mean betwixt both should be
observed by every judicious writer, so as the audi-
ence may neither be left unsatisfied by not seeing
* The only passage in which Jonson expressly men-
tions Shakspeare, is found in his DISCOVERIES; but it
contains nothing relative to the present point. He has
not, however, been, sparing of covert sarcasms on that
incomparable poet in various parts of his works; and
probably meant to sneer at him in the following dialogue
in EVERY MAN OUT OF HIS HUMOUR, to which, I
suppose, our author here alludes.
Mit. He cannot alter the scene without crossing the
seas.
Cor. He need not, having a whole island to run
through, I thinke.
"Mit. No! how comes it then that in some one play we
"see so many seas, countries, and kingdoms pass'd over with
"such admirable dexteritie?
Cor. O, that but shews how well the authors can
“ travaile in their vocation, and outrun the apprehension
#6
of their auditorie."
See also the Prologue to EVERY MAN IN HIS HUMOUR,
folio, 1616.
ON DRAMATICK_POESY.
93
what is beautiful, or shocked by beholding what is
either incredible or undecent.
I hope I have already proved in this discourse,
that though we are not altogether so punctual as
the French, in observing the laws of comedy, yet
our errours are so few, and little, and those things
wherein we excel them so considerable, that we
ought of right to be preferred before them. But
what will Lisideius say, if they themselves acknow-
ledge they are too strictly bounded by those laws,
for breaking which he has blamed the English?
I will alledge Corneille's words, as I find them in
the end of his Discourse of the three Unities :-I
Ik
est facile aux speculatifs d'estre severes, &c. ""Tis
easy for speculative persons to judge severely;
"but if they would produce to publick view ten
" or twelve pieces of this nature, they would per-
CC
CC
haps give more latitude to the rules than I have
"done, when, by experience, they had known
"how much we are limited and constrained by
"them, and how many beauties of the stage they
"banished from it." To illustrate a little what he
has said:-By their servile observations of the
unities of time and place, and integrity of scenes,
they have brought on themselves that dearth of
plot, and narrowness of imagination, which may
be observed in all their plays. How many beautiful
accidents might naturally happen in two or three
days, which cannot arrive with any probability in
the compass of twenty-four hours? There is time
to be allowed also for maturity of design, which,
amongst great and prudent persons, such as are
94
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
often represented in tragedy, cannot, with any
likelihood of truth, be brought to pass at so short
a warning. Farther; by tying themselves strictly
to the unity of place, and unbroken scenes, they
are forced many times to omit some beauties which
cannot be shewn where the act began; but might,
if the scene were interrupted, and the stage cleared.
for the persons to enter in another place; and
therefore the French poets are often forced upon
absurdities for if the act begins in a chamber, all
the persons in the play must have some business
or other to come thither, or else they are not to be
shewn that act; and sometimes their characters
are very unfitting to appear there: as, suppose it
were the king's bed-chamber; yet the meanest
man in the tragedy must come and dispatch his
business there, rather than in the lobby or court-
yard, (which is fitter for him,) for fear the stage
should be cleared, and the scenes broken. Many
times they fall by it into a greater inconvenience;
for they keep their scenes unbroken, and yet
change the place; as in one of their newest plays,
where the act begins in the street. There a
gentleman is to meet his friend; he sees him with
his man, coming out from his father's house; they
talk together, and the first goes out the second,
who is a lover, has made an appointment with his
mistress; she appears at the window, and then we
are to imagine the scene lies under it. This
gentleman is called away, and leaves his servant
with his mistress: presently her father is heard
from within; the young lady is afraid the serving-
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
95
S
man should be discovered, and thrusts him into a
place of safety, which is supposed to be her closet.
After this, the father enters to the daughter, and
now the scene is in a house; for he is seeking
from one room to another for this poor Philipin, or
French Diego, who is heard from within, drolling
and breaking many a miserable conceit on the
subject of his sad condition. In this ridiculous
manner the play goes forward, the stage being
never empty all the while: so that the street, the
window, the two houses, and the closet, are made
to walk about, and the persons to stand still. Now,
what I beseech you is more easy than to write a
regular French play, or more difficult than to write
an irregular English one, like those of Fletcher, or
of Shakspeare?
If they content themselves, as Corneille did, with
some flat design, which, like an ill riddle, is found
out ere it be half proposed, such plots we can
make every way regular, as easily as they; but
whenever they endeavour to rise to any quick turns
and counterturns of plot, as some of them have
attempted, since Corneille's plays have been less in
vogue, you see they write as irregularly as we,
though they cover it more speciously. Hence the
reason is perspicuous, why no French plays, when
translated, have, or ever can succeed on the
5 A servant in Sir Samuel Tuke's ADVENTURES OF
FIVE HOURS; who is described by the author as "a great
coward, and a pleasant droll." Philipin is, I suppose, a
character in the French play alluded to.
96
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
>
English stage. For, if you consider the plots, our
own are fuller of variety; if the writing, ours are
more quick and fuller of spirit; and therefore
'tis a strange mistake in those who decry the way
of writing plays in verse, as if the English therein
imitated the French. We have borrowed nothing
from them; our plots are weaved in English
looms: we endeavour therein to follow the variety
and greatness of characters which are derived to us
from Shakspeare and Fletcher; the copiousness
and well-knitting of the intrigues we have from
Jonson; and for the verse itself we have English
precedents of elder date than any of Corneille's
plays. Not to name our old comedies before
Shakspeare, which were all writ in verse of six feet,
or Alexandrines, such as the French now use,-
I can shew in Shakspeare, many scenes of rhyme
6
6 This assertion is made with too great latitude. Many
of the old Interludes and Moralities before the time of
Shakspeare were chiefly, but not entirely, composed of
lines of twelve or fourteen syllables; and that sort of
metre was generally appropriated to the Vice in the
Moralities, and to the Clown or buffoon in other Interludes.
But several of Lily's comedies, which were exhibited
before the time of Shakspeare, were written almost entirely
in prose; and some other comedies of that period, such
as THE TAMING OF A SHREW, THE OLD WIVES TALE,
THE FAMOUS VICTORIES OF HENRY THE FIFTH, &c.
were written in blank verse, with prose occasionally
intermixed. Of the long hobbling metre alluded to by
our author, various specimens may be found at the end of
THE COMEDY OF ERRORS;--Shakspeare's PLAYS and
POEMS, vol. ii. p. 203. edit. 1790.
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
97
together, and the like in Ben Jonson's tragedies:
in Catiline and Sejanus sometimes thirty or forty
lines,-I mean besides the Chorus, or the mono-
logues; which, by the way, shewed Ben no enemy
to this way of writing, especially if you read his
SAD SHEPHERD, which goes sometimes on rhyme,
sometimes on blank verse, like an horse who eases
himself on trot and amble. You find him likewise
commending Fletcher's pastoral of THE FAITHFUL
SHEPHERDESS, which is for the most part rhyme,
though not refined to that purity to which it hath
since been brought.
And these examples are
enough to clear us from a servile imitation of the
French.
But to return whence I have digressed: I dare
boldly affirm these two things of the English
drama ;-First, that we have many plays of ours as
regular as any of theirs, and which, besides, have
more variety of plot and characters; and secondly,
that in most of the irregular plays of Shakspeare
or Fletcher, (for Ben Jonson's are for the most
part regular,) there is a more masculine fancy
and greater spirit in the writing, than there
is in any of the French. I could produce even in
Shakspeare's and Fletcher's works, some plays
which are almost exactly formed; as THE MERRY
WIVES OF WINDSOR, and THE SCORNFUL LADY:
but because (generally speaking) Shakspeare, who
writ first, did not perfectly observe the laws of
comedy, and Fletcher, who came nearer to per-
fection, yet through carelessness made many faults;
VOL. I.
H
98
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
I will take the pattern of a perfect play from Ben
Jonson, who was a careful and learned observer of
the dramatick laws, and from all his comedies I
shall select THE SILENT WOMAN; of whch 'I will
make a short examen, according to those rules
which the French observe.
As Neander was beginning to examine THE
SILENT WOMAN, Eugenius, earnestly regarding
him; I beseech you, Neander, said he, gratify the
company, and me in particular, so far, as before
you speak of the play, to give us a character of the
author; and tell us frankly your opinion, whether
you do not think all writers, both French and
English, ought to give place to him.
I fear, replied Neander, that in obeying your
commands I shall draw some envy on myself.
Besides, in performing them, it will be first necessary
to speak somewhat of Shakspeare and Fletcher,
his rivals in poesy; and one of them, in my opinion,
at least his equal, perhaps his superior.
7
To begin, then, with Shakspeare. He was the
man who of all modern, and perhaps ancient poets,
had the largest and most comprehensive soul. All
the images of nature were still present to him, and
he drew them not laboriously, but luckily when
he describes any thing, you more than see it, you
7 It is curious to observe with what caution our author
speaks, when he ventures to place Shakspeare above
Jonson; a caution which proves decisively the wretched
taste of the period when he wrote.
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
99
feel it too. Those who accuse him to have wanted
learning, give him the greater commendation: he
was naturally learned; he needed not the spectacles
of books to read nature; he looked inwards, and
found her there. I cannot say he is every where
alike; were he so, I should do him injury to
compare him with the greatest of mankind. He
is many times flat, insipid; his comick wit dege-
nerating into clenches, his serious swelling into
bombast. But he is always great, when some
great occasion is presented to him; no man can
say he ever had a fit subject for his wit, and
did not then raise himself as high above the rest
of poets,
Quantum lenta solent inter viburna cupressi.
⁹
The consideration of this made Mr. Hales of
Eton say, that there was no subject of which any
poet ever writ, but he would produce it much
better done in Shakspeare; and however others
are now generally preferred before him, yet the
age wherein he lived, which had contemporaries
with him, Fletcher and Jonson, never equalled
them to him in their esteem: and in the last king's
court, when Ben's reputation was at highest, Sir
John Suckling, and with him the greater part of
the courtiers, set our Shakspeare far above him.
8 See an account of a remarkable challenge on this
subject, given by Mr. Hales to Ben Jonson and his par-
tisans, PLAYS and POEMS of SHAKSPEARE, ut supr. vol. i.
part i. p. 114.
100
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
Beaumont and Fletcher, of whom I am next to
speak, had, with the advantage of Shakspeare's
wit, which was their precedent, great natural gifts,
improved by study; Beaumont especially being
so accurate a judge of plays, that Ben Jonson,
while he lived, submitted all his writings to his
censure, and 'tis thought, used his judgment in
correcting, if not contriving, all his plots. What
value he had for him, appears by the verses he
writ to him; and therefore I need speak no farther
of it. The first play that brought Fletcher and
him in esteem was their PHILASTER: for before
that, they had written two or three very unsuc-
cessfully: as the like is reported of Ben Jonson,
before he writ EVERY MAN IN HIS HUMOUR.
Their plots were generally more regular than
Shakspeare's, especially those which were made
before Beaumont's death; and they understood
9 Sir Aston Cokain long since complained, that the
booksellers who, in 1647, published thirty-four plays
under the names of Beaumont and Fletcher, had not
ascertained how many of them were written solely by
Fletcher:
"In the large book of playes you late did print,
"In Beaumont's and in Fletcher's name, why in't
"Did you not justice? give to each his due ?
"For Beaumont of those many writ in few;
"And Massinger in other few: the main
Being sole issues of sweet Fletcher's brain."
Pope, as Mr. Spence has recorded in his ANECDotes,
asserted, that "Beaumont was not concerned in above
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
101
and imitated the conversation of gentlemen much
better; whose wild debaucheries, and quickness of
wit in repartees, no poet before them could paint
as they have done. Humour, which Ben Jonson
derived from particular persons, they made it not
their business to describe: they represented all the
passions very lively, but above all, love. I am apt
to believe the English language in them arrived to
its highest perfection; what words have since been
taken in, are rather superfluous than ornamental.
Their plays are now the most pleasant and fre-
quent entertainments of the stage; two of theirs
being acted through the year for one of Shakspeare's
or Jonson's the reason is, because there is a
certain gaiety in their comedies, and pathos in
four or five plays with Fletcher." But he was certainly
mistaken; for the following nine plays were undoubtedly
the joint production of him and Fletcher: PHILASTER,—
THE MAID'S TRAEGDY,-KING AND NO KING, THE
KNIGHT OF THE BURNINGPESTLE, CUPID'S REVENGE,
-THE COXCOMB, THE CAPTAIN, THE HONEST
MAN'S FORTUNE, THE SCORNFUL LADY. Perhaps to
this list should also be added THE FALSE ONE. Of these
plays four only were included in the edition of 1647. All
the other plays ascribed to these authors jointly, were, I be-
lieve, written by Fletcher alone, or in conjunction with
Massinger, Field, Rowley, and others. The last four
plays which Fletcher produced were-A WIFE FOR A
MONTH, RULE A WIFE AND HAVE A WIFE, THE
FAIR MAID OF THE INN, and THE NOBLE GENTLE-
MAN. He died in August, 1625; and the two pieces last
named were not exhibited till after his death.- See
Shakspeare's PLAYS, &c. ut supr. vol. i. p. ii. p. 222.
102
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
their more serious plays, which suits generally with
all men's humours. Shakspeare's language is like-
wise a little obsolete,' and Ben Jonson's wit
comes short of theirs.
As for Jonson, to whose character I am now
arrived, if we look upon him while he was himself,
(for his last plays were but his dotages,) I think
him the most learned and judicious writer which
any theatre ever had. He was a most severe judge
of himself, as well as others. One cannot say he
wanted wit, but rather that he was frugal of it.
In his works you find little to retrench or alter.
Wit, and language, and humour also in some
measure, we had before him; but something of
art was wanting to the drama, till he came. He
managed his strength to more advantage than any
who preceded him. You seldom find him making
love in any of his scenes, or endeavouring to
move the passions; his genius was too sullen and
saturnine to do it gracefully, especially when he
knew he came after those who had performed both
to such an height. Humour was his proper
sphere; and in that he delighted most to represent
This observation, made only fifty years after the death
of Shakspeare, shews how little he was studied at the
time this Essay was written, and how few of his readers
had perused the works of his contemporaries. Dryden
himself, it is clear, was not very conversant with our early
writers; for in a subsequent piece he ascribes both to
Jonson and Shakspeare, as anomalies, phrases which were
the ordinary language of their time.-See his "Defence
of the Epilogue" to THE CONQUEST OF GRANada.
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
103
mechanick people. He was deeply conversant in
the ancients, both Greek and Latin, and he bor-
rowed boldly from them: there is scarce a poet
or historian among the Roman authors of those
times whom he has not translated in Sejanus and
Catiline. But he has done his robberies so openly,
that one may see he fears not to be taxed by any
law. He invades authors like a monarch; and
what would be theft in other poets, is only victory
in him. With the spoils of these writers he so
represents old Rome to us, in its rites, ceremonies
and customs, that if one of their poets had written
either of his tragedies, we had seen less of it than
in him. If there was any fault in his language,
'twas that he weaved it too closely and laboriously,
in his comedies especially: perhaps too, he did a
little too much Romanize our tongue, leaving the
words which he translated almost as much Latin
as he found them: wherein, though he learnedly
followed their language, he did not enough comply
with the idiom of ours. If I would compare him
with Shakspeare, I must acknowledge him the
more correct poet, but Shakspeare the greater
wit. Shakspeare was the Homer, or father of our
dramatick poets; Jonson was the Virgil, the pattern
of elaborate writing; I admire him, but I love
Shakspeare. To conclude of him; as he has given
us the most correct plays, so in the precepts which
he has laid down in his DISCOVERIES, we have as
many and profitable rules for perfecting the stage,
as any wherewith the French can furnish us.
104
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
Having thus spoken of the author, I proceed
to the examination of his comedy, THE SILENT
WOMAN.
EXAMEN OF THE SILENT WOMAN.
2
To begin first with the length of the action; it
is so far from exceeding the compass of a natural
day, that it takes not up an artificial one. 'Tis all
included in the limits of three hours and an half,
which is no more than is required for the present-
ment on the stage: a beauty perhaps not much
observed; if it had, we should not have looked on
the Spanish translation of FIVE HOURS with so
much wonder. The scene of it is laid in London;
the latitude of place is almost as little as you can
imagine; for it lies all within the compass of two
houses, and after the first act, in one. The con-
tinuity of scenes is observed more than in any of
our plays, except his own Fox and ALCHEMIST.
They are not broken above twice or thrice at most
in the whole comedy; and in the two best of
Corneille's plays, the CID and CINNA, they are
interrupted once. The action of the play is en-
tirely one; the end or aim of which is the settling
Morose's estate on Dauphine. The intrigue of it
is the greatest and most noble of any pure unmixed
comedy in any language: you see in it many
persons of various characters and humours, and all
delightful. As first, Morose, or an old man, to
whom all noise but his own talking is offensive.
2 Sir Samuel Tuke's play, already mentioned.
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
105
Some who would be thought criticks, say this
huqur of his is forced: but to remove that
objection, we may consider him first to be naturally
of a delicate hearing, as many are, to whom all
sharp sounds are unpleasant; and secondly, we
may attribute much of it to the peevishness of his
age, or the wayward authority of an old man in his
own house, where he may make himself obeyed;
and to this the poet seems to allude in his name
Morose. Beside this, I am assured from divers
persons, that Ben Jonson was actually acquainted
with such a man, one altogether as ridiculous as
he is here represented. Others say, it is not enough
to find one man of such an humour; it must be
common to more, and the more common the more
natural. To prove this, they instance in the best
of comical characters, Falstaff. There are many
men resembling him; old, fat, merry, cowardly,
drunken, amorous, vain, and lying. But to con-
vince these people, I need but tell them, that
humour is the ridiculous extravagance of conversa-
tion, wherein one man differs from all others. If
then it be common, or communicated to many,
how differs it from other men's? or what indeed
causes it to be ridiculous so much as the singularity
of it? As for Falstaff, he is not properly one
humour, but a miscellany of humours or images,
drawn from so many several men: that wherein he
is singular is his wit, or those things he says præter
expectatum, unexpected by the audience; his quick
evasions, when you imagine him surprised, which,
}
106
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
T
as they are extremely diverting of themselves, so
receive a great addition from his person; for the
very sight of such an unwieldy old debauched
fellow is a comedy alone. And here, having a
place so proper for it, I cannot but enlarge some-
what upon this subject of humour into which I am
fallen. The ancients had little of it in their
comedies; for the rò you of the old comedy, of
which Aristophanes was chief, was not so much to
imitate a man, as to make the people laugh at
some odd conceit, which had commonly somewhat
of unnatural or obscene in it. Thus, when you
see Socrates brought upon the stage, you are not
to imagine him made ridiculous by the imitation
of his actions, but rather by making him perform
something very unlike himself: something so
childish and absurd, as by comparing it with the
gravity of the true Socrates, makes a ridiculous
object for the spectators. In their new comedy
which succeeded, the poets sought indeed to
express the 90s, as in their tragedies the wάos of
mankind. But this 90s contained only the general
characters of men and manners; as old men,
lovers, serving-men, courtezans, parasites, and such
other persons as we see in their comedies; all
which they made alike: that is, one old man or
father, one lover, one courtezan, so like another,
as if the first of them had begot the rest of every
sort: Ex homine hunc natum dicas. The same
custom they observed likewise in their tragedies.
As for the French, though they have the word
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
107
humeur among them, yet they have small use of it
in their comedies or farces; they being but ill
imitations of the ridiculum, or that which stirred
up laughter in the old comedy. But among the
English 'tis otherwise: where by humour is meant
some extravagant habit, passion, or affection, par-
ticular (as I said before) to some one person, by
the oddness of which, he is immediately distin-
guished from the rest of men; which being lively
and naturally represented, most frequently begets
that malicious pleasure in the audience which is
testified by laughter; as all things which are
deviations from customs are ever the aptest to
produce it though by the way this laughter is
only accidental, as the person represented is fan-
tastick or bizarre; but pleasure is essential to it,
as the imitation of what is natural. The description
of these humours, drawn from the knowledge and
observation of particular persons, was the peculiar
genius and talent of Ben Jonson; to whose play I
now return.
Besides Morose, there are at least nine or ten
different characters and humours in THE SILENT
WOMAN; all which persons have several concern-
ments of their own, yet are all used by the poet,
to the conducting of the main design to perfection.
I shall not waste time in commending the writing
of this play; but I will give you my opinion, that
there is more wit and acuteness of fancy in it than
any of Ben Jonson's. Besides, that he has here
described the conversation of gentlemen in the
in
108
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
persons of True-Wit, and his friends, with more
gaiety, air, and freedom, than in the rest of his
comedies. For the contrivance of the plot, 'tis
extreme elaborate, and yet withal easy; for the
aúσs, or untying of it, 'tis so admirable, that when
it is done, no one of the audience would think the
poet could have missed it; and yet it was concealed
so much before the last scene, that any other way
would sooner have entered into your thoughts.
But I dare not take upon me to commend the
fabrick of it, because it is altogether so full of art,
that I must unravel every scene in it to commend
it as I ought. And this excellent contrivance is
still the more to be admired, because 'tis comedy,
where the persons are only of common rank, and
their business private, not elevated by passions or
high concernments, as in serious plays. Here every
one is a proper judge of all he sees, nothing is
represented but that with which he daily converses:
so that by consequence all faults lie open to dis-
covery, and few are pardonable. 'Tis this which
Horace has judiciously observed:
Creditur, ex medio quia res arcessit, habere
Sudoris minimum; sed habet Comedia tanto
Plus oneris, quanto veniæ minus.
But our poet, who was not ignorant of these
difficulties, has made use of all advantages; as he
who designs a large leap takes his rise from the
highest ground. One of these advantages is that
which Corneille has laid down as the greatest
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
109
which can arrive to any poem, and which he
himself could never compass above thrice in all his
plays; viz. the making choice of some signal and
long-expected day, whereon the action of the play
is to depend. This day was that designed by
Dauphine for the settling of his uncle's estate upon
him; which, to compass, he contrives to marry
him. That the marriage had been plotted by him
long beforehand, is made evident by what he tells
True-wit in the second act, that in one moment
he had destroyed what he had been raising many
months.
There is another artifice of the poet, which I
cannot here omit, because by the frequent practice
of it in his comedies, he has left it to us almost
as a rule; that is, when he has any character or
humour wherein he would shew a coup de maître,
or his highest skill, he recommends it to your
observation by a pleasant description of it before
the person first appears. Thus, in BARTHOLOMEW-
FAIR he gives you the pictures of Numps and
Cokes, and in this those of Daw, Lafoole, Morose,
and the Collegiate Ladies; all which you hear
described before you see them. So that before
they come upon the stage, you have a longing
expectation of them, which prepares you to receive
them favourably; and when they are there, even
from their first appearance you are so far acquainted
with them, that nothing, of their humour is lost
to you.
I will observe yet one thing further of this
110
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
admirable plot; the business of it rises in every
act. The second is greater than the first; the
third than the second; and so forward to the
fifth. There too you see, till the very last scene,
new difficulties arising to obstruct the action of
the play; and when the audience is brought into
despair that the business can naturally be effected,
then, and not before, the discovery is made. But
that the poet might entertain you with more
variety all this while, he reserves some new cha-
racters to shew you, which he opens not till the
second and third act; in the second Morose, Daw,
the Barber, and Otter; in the third the Collegiate
Ladies all which he moves afterwards in by-
walks, or under-plots, as diversions to the main
design, lest it should grow tedious, though they
are still naturally joined with it, and somewhere or
other subservient to it. Thus, like a skilful chess-
player, by little and little he draws out his men,
and makes his pawns of use to his greater per-
sons. 3
If this comedy, and some others of his, were
translated into French prose, (which would now
* Of the piece on which our author has given so high
an encomium, Drummond of Hawthornden, Jonson's
contemporary and friend, has left the following anecdote :
"When his play of THE SILENT WOMAN was first
acted, there were found verses after on the stage against.
him, concluding, that that play was well named THE
SILENT WOMAN, because there was never one man to
say plaudite to it." WORKS, folio, 1711, p. 226.
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
111
be no wonder to them, since Moliere has lately
given them plays out of verse, which have not
displeased them,) I believe the controversy would
soon be decided betwixt the two nations, even
making them the judges. But we need not call
our heroes to our aid. Be it spoken to the honour
of the English, our nation can never want in any
age such who are able to dispute the empire of
wit with any people in the universe. And though
the fury of a civil war, and power for twenty years
together abandoned to a barbarous race of men,
enemies of all good learning, had buried the muses
under the ruins of monarchy; yet, with the
restoration of our happiness, we see revived poesy
lifting up its head, and already shaking off the
rubbish which lay so heavy on it. We have seen
since his majesty's return, many dramatick poems
which yield not to those of any foreign nation,
and which deserve all laurels but the English. I
will set aside flattery and envy: it cannot be denied
but we have had some little blemish either in the
plot or writing of all those plays which have been
made within these seven years; and perhaps there
is no nation in the world so quick to discern them,
or so difficult to pardon them, as ours: yet if we
can persuade ourselves to use the candour of that
poet, who, though the most severe of criticks, has
left us this caution by which to moderate our
censures----
ubi plura nitent in carmine, non ego paucis
Offendar maculis ;—
112
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
Y
if, in consideration of their many and great beauties,
we can wink at some slight and little imperfections,
if we,
we, I
say, can be thus equal to ourselves, I ask
no favour from the French. And if I do not
venture upon any particular judgment of our late
plays, 'tis out of the consideration which an ancient
writer gives me vivorum, ut magna admiratio,
ita censura difficilis: betwixt the extremes of ad-
miration and malice, 'tis hard to judge uprightly of
the living. Only I think it may be permitted me
to say, that as it is no lessening to us to yield to
some plays, and those not many, of our own
nation in the last age, so can it be no addition to
pronounce of our present poets, that they have far
surpassed all the ancients, and the modern writers
of other countries.
This was the substance of what was then spoke
on that occasion; and Lisideius, I think, was going
to reply, when he was prevented thus by Crites:
I am confident, said he, that the most material
things that can be said, have been already urged
on either side; if they have not, I must beg of
Lisideius that he will defer his answer till another
time: for I confess I have a joint quarrel to you
both, because you have concluded, without any
reason given for it, that rhyme is proper for the
stage. I will not dispute how ancient it hath been
among us to write this way; perhaps our ancestors
knew no better till Shakspeare's time.* I will
*See p. 96, n. 6.
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
113
grant it was not altogether left by him, and that
Fletcher and Ben Jonson used it frequently in
their Pastorals, and sometimes in other plays.
Farther, I will not argue whether we received it
originally from our own countrymen, or from the
French; for that is an inquiry of as little benefit,
as theirs who, in the midst of the late plague, were
not so solicitous to provide against it, as to know
whether we had it from the malignity of our own
air, or by transportation from Holland. I have
therefore only to affirm, that it is not allowable in
serious plays; for comedies, I find you already
concluding with me. To prove this, I might
satisfy myself to tell you, how much in vain it is
for you to strive against the stream of the people's
inclination; the greatest part of which are pre-
possessed so much with those excellent plays of
Shakspeare, Fletcher, and Ben Jonson, which have
been written out of rhyme, that except you could
bring them such as were written better in it, and
those too by persons of equal reputation with them,
it will be impossible for you to gain your cause with
them, who will still be judges. This it is to which,
in fine, all your reasons must submit. The unani-
mous consent of an audience is so powerful, that
even Julius Cæsar, (as Macrobius reports of him,).
when he was perpetual dictator, was not able to
balance it on the other side; but when Laberius,
a Roman Knight, at his request contended in the
Mime with another poet, he was forced to cry out,
Etiam favente me victus es, Laberi. But I will not
VOL. I.
I
114
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
on this occasion take the advantage of the greater
number, but only urge such reasons against rhyme,
as I find in the writings of those who have argued
for the other way. First then, I am of opinion,
that rhyme is unnatural in a play, because dialogue
there is presented as the effect of sudden thought:
for a play is the imitation of nature; and since
no man, without premeditation speaks in rhyme,
neither ought he to do it on the stage. This
hinders not but the fancy may be there elevated
to an higher pitch of thought than it is in ordinary
discourse; for there is a probability that men of
excellent and quick parts may speak noble things
extempore: but those thoughts are never fettered
with the numbers or sound of verse without study,
and therefore it cannot be but unnatural to present
the most free way of speaking in that which
is the most constrained. For this reason, says
Aristotle, 'tis best to write tragedy in that kind of
verse which is the least such, or which is nearest
prose and this amongst the ancients was the
Iambick, and with us is blank verse, or the measure
of verse kept exactly without rhyme. These
numbers therefore are fittest for a play; the others
for a paper of verses, or a poem ; blank verse being
as much below them, as rhyme is improper for
the drama. And if it be objected that neither are
blank verses made extempore, yet, as nearest nature,
they are still to be preferred.-But there are two
particular exceptions, which many besides myself
have had to verse; by which it will appear yet
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
115
more plainly how improper it is in plays. And the
first of them is grounded on that very reason for
which some have commended rhyme; they say,
the quickness of repartees in argumentative scenes
receives an ornament from verse. Now what is
more unreasonable than to imagine that a man
should not only light upon the wit, but the rhyme
too, upon the sudden? This nicking of him who
spoke before both in sound, and measure, is so
great an happiness, that you must at least suppose
the persons of your play to be born poets: Arcades
omnes, et cantare pares, et respondere parati: they
must have arrived to the degree of quicquid conabar
dicere ;—to make verses almost whether they will
or no. If they are any thing below this, it will
look rather like the design of two, than the answer
of one it will appear that your actors hold intel-
ligence together; that they perform their tricks
like fortune-tellers, by confederacy. The hand of
art will be too visible in it, against that maxim of
all professions-Ars est celare artem; that it is the
greatest perfection of art to keep itself undisco-
vered. Nor will it serve you to object, that
however you manage it, 'tis still known to be a
play; and consequently, the dialogue of two per-
sons, understood to be the labour of one poet.
For a play is still an imitation of nature; we know
we are to be deceived, and we desire to be so;
but no man ever was deceived but with a proba-
bility of truth; for who will suffer a gross lie to
be fastened on him? Thus we sufficiently under-
1
116
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
stand, that the scenes which represent cities and
countries to us, are not really such, but only
painted on boards and canvass; but shall that
excuse the ill painture or designment of them?
Nay, rather ought they not to be laboured with
so much the more diligence and exactness, to help
the imagination? since the mind of man does
naturally tend to truth; and therefore the nearer
any thing comes to the imitation of it, the more
it pleases.
Thus, you see, your rhyme is uncapable of
expressing the greatest thoughts naturally, and the
lowest it cannot with any grace: for what is more
unbefitting the majesty of verse, than to call a
servant, or bid a door be shut in rhyme? and yet
you are often forced on this miserable necessity.
But verse, you say, circumscribes a quick and
luxuriant fancy, which would extend itself too far
on every subject, did not the labour which is
required to well-turned and polished rhyme, set
bounds to it. Yet this argument, if granted,
would only prove that we may write better in
verse, but not more naturally. Neither is it able
to evince that; for he who wants judgment to
confine his fancy in blank verse, may want it as
much in rhyme: and he who has it will avoid
errors in both kinds. Latin verse was as great a
2
All the arguments here adduced by Crites against
rhyme, are found almost verbatim in the Preface of Sir
Robert Howard, printed in a preceding part of this
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
117
confinement to the imagination of those poets, as
rhyme to ours; and yet you find Ovid saying
too much on every subject. Nescivit (says Seneca)
quod bene cessit relinquere: of which he gives
you one famous instance in his description of the
deluge:
Omnia pontus erat, deerant quoque litora ponto.
Now all was sea, nor had that sea a shore.
"Thus Ovid's fancy was not limited by verse, and
Virgil needed not verse to have bounded his.
In our own language we see Ben Jonson con-
fining himself to what ought to be said, even in
the liberty of blank verse; and yet Corneille, the
most judicious of the French poets, is still varying
the same sense an hundred ways, and dwelling
eternally on the same subject, though confined by
volume. On second thoughts, therefore, I believe that
he, and not lord Roscommon, was shadowed under the
character of CRITES; though that nobleman might with
sufficient propriety have been introduced employing the
printed arguments of Sir Robert Howard on this subject.
With respect to the words noticed in a former page,
(p. 40)" for hear your Horace saying," &c.-though
Lord Roscommon had not yet published his translation
of THE ART OF POETRY, Dryden might have known
that he was a favourite author of Roscommon's, and hence
have thus described the Roman poet: but Sir Robert
Howard having in his Preface frequently quoted Horace,
and appealed to his authority, these words may with equal
propriety denote his admired author; and therefore suf-
ficiently well agree with what is now suggested,-that Sir
Robert Howard is the CRITES of the piece before us.
118
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
rhyme. Some other exceptions I have to verse;
but since these I have named are for the most part
already publick, I conceive it reasonable they
should first be answered.
It concerns me less than any, said Neander,
(seeing he had ended,) to reply to this discourse;
because when I should have proved that verse may
be natural in plays, yet I should always be ready
to confess, that those which I have written in
this kind* come short of that perfection which is
required. Yet since you are pleased I should
undertake this province, I will do it, though with
all imaginable respect and deference, both to that
person³
3 from whom you have borrowed your
strongest arguments, and to whose judgment, when
I have said all, I finally submit. But before I
proceed to answer your objections, I must first
remember you, that I exclude all comedy from my
defence; and next that I deny not but blank
verse may be also used; and content myself only
to assert, that in serious plays where the subject
and characters are great, and the plot unmixed
with mirth, which might allay or divert these
concernments which are produced, rhyme is there
as natural and more effectual than blank verse.
* I have suggested in a former page, that the character
of NEANDER was intended to represent our author. The
passage before us, and the subsequent defence of rhyming
tragedies, are the grounds of my conjecture.
3 Sir Robert Howard.
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
119
And now having laid down this as a foundation,
-to begin with Crites,-I must crave leave to tell
him, that some of his arguments against rhyme
reach no farther than from the faults or defects of
ill rhyme, to conclude against the use of it in
general. May not I conclude against blank verse
by the same reason? If the words of some poets
who write in it, are either ill chosen, or ill placed,
which makes not only rhyme, but all kind of verse
in any language unnatural, shall I, for their vicious
affectation, condemn those excellent lines of
Fletcher, which are written in that kind? Is there
any thing in rhyme more constrained than this
line in blank verse?—I heaven invoke, and strong
resistance make; where you see both the clauses
are placed unnaturally, that is, contrary to the
common way of speaking, and that without the
excuse of a rhyme to cause it: yet you would
think me very ridiculous, if I should accuse the
stubbornness of blank verse for this, and not rather
the stiffness of the poet. Therefore, Crites, you
must either prove that words, though well chosen,
and duly placed, yet render not rhyme natural in
itself; or that however natural and easy the rhyme
may be, yet it is not proper for a play. If you
insist on the former part, I would ask you, what
other conditions are required to make rhyme
natural in itself, besides an election of apt words,
and a right disposition of them? For the due
choice of your words expresses your sense natu-
rally, and the due placing them adapts the rhyme
120
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
to it. If you object that one verse may be made
for the sake of another, though both the words
and rhyme be apt, I answer, it cannot possibly so
fall out; for either there is a dependance of sense
betwixt the first line and the second, or there is
none if there be that connection, then in the
natural position of the words the latter line must
of necessity flow from the former; if there be no
dependance, yet still the due ordering of words
makes the last line as natural in itself as the other:
so that the necessity of a rhyme never forces any
but bad or lazy writers to say what they would
not otherwise. 'Tis true, there is both care and
art required to write in verse. A good poet never
establishes the first line, till he has sought out
such a rhyme as may fit the sense, already pre-
pared to heighten the second: many times the
close of the sense falls into the middle of the next
verse, or farther off, and he may often prevail
himself of the same advantages in English which
Virgil had in Latin, he may break off in the hemi-
stick, and begin another line. Indeed, the not
observing these two last things, makes plays which
are writ in verse, so tedious: for though, most
commonly, the sense is to be confined to the
couplet, yet nothing that does perpetuo tenore fluere,
run in the same channel, can please always. 'Tis
like the murmuring of a stream, which not varying
in the fall, causes at first attention, at last drowsi-
ness. Variety of cadences is the best rule; the
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
121
greatest help to the actors, and refreshment to the
audience.
If then verse may be made natural in itself, how
becomes it unnatural in a play? You say the
stage is the representation of nature, and no man
in ordinary conversation speaks in rhyme. But
you foresaw when you said this, that it might be
answered-neither does any man speak in blank
verse, or in measure without rhyme. Therefore
you concluded, that which is nearest nature is still
to be preferred. But you took no notice that
rhyme might be made as natural as blank verse,
by the well placing of the words, &c. All the
difference between them, when they are both
correct, is, the sound in one, which the other
wants; and if so, the sweetness of it, and all the
advantage resulting from it, which are handled in
the Preface to THE RIVAL LADIES, will yet stand
good. As for that place of Aristotle, where he
says, plays should be writ in that kind of verse
which is nearest prose, it makes little for you;
blank verse being properly but measured prose.
Now measure alone, in any modern language, does
not constitute verse; those of the ancients in
Greek and Latin consisted in quantity of words,
and a determinate number of feet. But when, by
the inundation of the Goths and Vandals into
Italy, new languages were introduced, and barba-
rously mingled with the Latin, of which the Italian,
Spanish, French, and ours, (made out of them and
the Teutonick,) are dialects, a new way of poesy
122
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
4
was practised; new, I say, in those countries, for
in all probability it was that of the conquerors in
their own nations: at least we are able to prove,
that the eastern people have used it from all
antiquity. This new way consisted in measure
or number of feet, and rhyme; the sweetness of
rhyme, and observation of accent, supplying the
place of quantity in words, which could neither
exactly be observed by those barbarians, who knew
not the rules of it, neither was it suitable to their
tongues, as it had been to the Greek and Latin.
No man is tied in modern poesy to observe any
farther rule in the feet of his verse, but that they
be dissyllables; whether Spondee, Trochee, or
Iambick, it matters not; only he is obliged to
rhyme neither do the Spanish, French, Italian, or
Germans, acknowledge at all, or very rarely, any
such kind of pocsy as blank verse amongst them.
Therefore, at most 'tis but a poetick prose, a sermo
pedestris; and as such, most fit for comedies,
where I acknowledge rhyme to be improper.-
Farther; as to that quotation of Aristotle, our
couplet verses may be rendered as near prose as
blank verse itself, by using those advantages I
lately named, as breaks in an hemistick, or
running the sense into another line,—thereby
making art and order appear as loose and free as
nature or not tying ourselves to couplets strictly,
we may use the benefit of the Pindarick way prac-
:
• Vide Daniel his Defence of Rhyme. D.
ON DRAMATICK POESY
123
tised in THE SIEGE OF RHODES: where the num-
bers vary,
and the rhyme is disposed carelessly, and
far from often chyming. Neither is that other
advantage of the ancients to be despised, of
changing the kind of verse when they please, with
the change of the scene, or some new entrance;
for they confine not themselves always to iambicks,
but extend their liberty to all lyrick numbers, and
sometimes even to hexameter. But I need not go
so far to prove that rhyme, as it succeeds to all
other offices of Greek and Latin verse, so especially
to this of plays, since the custom of nations at this
day confirms it; the French, Italian, and Spanish
tragedies are generally writ in it; and sure the
universal consent of the most civilized parts of the
world, ought in this, as it doth in other customs,
to include the rest.
But perhaps you may tell me, I have proposed
such a way to make rhyme natural, and conse-
quently proper to plays, as is unpracticable; and
that I shall scarce find six or eight lines together
in any play, where the words are so placed and
chosen as is required to make it natural. I answer,
no poet need constrain himself at all times to it.
It is enough he makes it his general rule; for I
deny not but sometimes there may be a greatness
in placing the words otherwise; and sometimes
they may sound better; sometimes also the variety
itself is excuse enough. But if, for the most part,
the words be placed as they are in the negligence
prose, it is sufficient to denominate the way
of
124
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
practicable; for we esteem that to be such, which
in the trial oftner succeeds than misses. And thus
far you may find the practice made good in many
plays: where you do not, remember still, that if
you cannot find six natural rhymes together, it
will be as hard for you to produce as many lines
in blank versc, even among the greatest of our
poets, against which I cannot make some reason-
able exception.
And this, Sir, calls to my remembrance the be-
ginning of your discourse, where you told us we
should never find the audience favourable to this
kind of writing, till we could produce as good
plays in rhyme, as Ben Jonson, Fletcher, and
Shakspeare, had writ out of it. But it is to raise
envy to the living, to compare them with the dead.
They are honoured, and almost adored by us, as
they deserve; neither do I know any so presump-
tuous of themselves as to contend with them. Yet
give me leave to say thus much, without injury to
their ashes; that not only we shall never equal
them, but they could never equal themselves, were
they to rise and write again. We acknowledge
them our fathers in wit; but they have ruined
their estates themselves, before they came to their
children's hands. There is scarce an humour, a
character, or any kind of plot, which they have not
used. All comes sullied or wasted to us: and
were they to entertain this age, they could not
now make so plenteous treatments out of such
decayed fortunes. This therefore will be a good
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
125
argument to us, either not to write at all, or to
attempt some other way. There is no bays to be
expected in their walks: tentanda via est, quà me
quoque possum tollere humo.
This way of writing in verse they have only
left free to us; our age is arrived to a perfection.
in it, which they never knew; and which (if we
may guess by what of theirs we have seen in verse,
as THE FAITHFUL SHEPHERDESS, and SAD SHEP-
HERD) 'tis probable they never could have reached.
For the genius of every age is different; and
though ours excel in this, I deny not but that to
imitate nature in that perfection which they did in
prose, is a greater commendation than to write in
verse exactly. As for what you have added-that
the people are not generally inclined to like this
way, if it were true, it would be no wonder, that
betwixt the shaking off an old habit, and the
introducing of a new, there should be difficulty.
Do we not see them stick to Hopkins' and Stern-
hold's psalms, and forsake those of David, I mean
Sandys his translation of them? If by the people
you understand the multitude, the wool, 'tis
no matter what they think; they are sometimes in
the right, sometimes in the wrong: their judgment
is a mere lottery. Est ubi plebs rectè putat, est ubi
peccat. Horace says it of the vulgar, judging
poesy. But if you mean the mixed audience of
4 Our author here again has quoted from memory.
Horace's line is-
Interdum vulgus rectum videt, est ubi peccat.
126
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
the populace and the noblesse, I dare confidently
affirm that a great part of the latter sort are
already favourable to verse; and that no serious
plays written since the king's return have been
more kindly received by them, than THE SIEGE
OF RHODES, the MUSTAPHA, THE INDIAN QUEEN,
and INDIAN EMPEROR.
But I come now to the inference of your first
argument. You said that the dialogue of plays is
presented as the effect of sudden thought, but no
man speaks suddenly, or extempore, in rhyme; and
you inferred from thence, that rhyme, which you
acknowledge to be proper to epick poesy, cannot
equally be proper to dramatick, unless we could
suppose all men born so much more than poets,
that verses should be made in them, not by them.
It has been formerly urged by you, and con-
fessed by me, that since no man spoke any kind of
verse extempore, that which was nearest nature
was to be preferred. I answer you, therefore, by
distinguishing betwixt what is nearest to the nature
of comedy, which is the imitation of common per-
sons and ordinary speaking, and what is nearest the
nature of a serious play this last is indeed the
representation of nature, but 'tis nature wrought
up to an higher pitch. The plot, the charaters,
the wit, the passions, the descriptions, are all
exalted above the level of common converse, as
high as the imagination of the poet can carry
them, with proportion to verisimility. Tragedy,
we know, is wont to image to us the minds and
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
127
fortunes of noble persons, and to portray these
exactly; heroick rhyme is nearest nature, as being
the noblest kind of modern verse.
Indignatur enim privatis, et prope socco
Dignis, carminibus, narrari cana Thyesta—
says Horace and in another place,
:
Effutire leves indigna tragadia versus—,
Blank verse is acknowledged to be too low for
a poem, nay more, for a paper of verses; but if
too low for an ordinary sonnet, how much more
for tragedy, which is by Aristotle in the dispute
betwixt the epick poesy and the dramatick, for
many reasons he there alledges, ranked above it?
But setting this defence aside, your argument is
almost as strong against the use of rhyme in
poems as in plays; for the epick way is every
where interlaced with dialogue, or discoursive
scenes ; and therefore you must either grant rhyme
to be improper there, which is contrary to your
assertion, or admit it into plays by the same title
which you have given it to poems. For though
tragedy be justly preferred above the other, yet
there is a great affinity between them, as, may
easily be discovered in that definition of a play
which Lisideius gave us.
The
genus of them is the
same,—a just and lively image of human nature,
in its actions, passions, and traverses of fortune :
so is the end,—namely, for the delight and benefit
of mankind. The characters and persons are still
the same, viz. the greatest of both sorts; only the
128
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
manner of acquainting us with those actions,
passions, and fortunes, is different. Tragedy per-
forms it viva voce, or by action, in dialogue;
wherein it excels the epick poem, which does it
chiefly by narration, and therefore is not so lively
an image of human nature. However, the agree
ment betwixt them is such, that if rhyme be proper
for one, it must be for the other. Verse, 'tis true,
is not the effect of sudden thought; but this
hinders not that sudden thought may be repre-
sented in verse, since those thoughts are such as
must be higher than nature can raise them without
premeditation, especially to a continuance of them,
even out of verse; and consequently you cannot
imagine them to have been sudden either in the
poet or the actors. A play, as I have said, to be
like nature, is to be set above it; as statues which
are placed on high are made greater than the
life, that they may descend to the sight in their
just proportion.
Perhaps I have insisted too long on this objec-
tion; but the clearing of it will make my stay
shorter on the rest. You tell us, Crites, that
rhyme appears most unnatural in repartees, or
short replies: when he who answers, (it being
presumed he knew not what the other would say,
yet) makes up that part of the verse which was
left incomplete, and supplies both the sound and
measure of it. This you say looks rather like the
confederacy of two, than the answer of one.
+
This, I confess, is an objection which is in every
man's mouth, who loves not rhyme: but suppose,
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
129
I beseech you, the repartee were made only in
blank verse, might not part of the same argument
be turned against you? for the measure is as often
supplied there, as it is in rhyme; the latter half
of the hemistick as commonly made up, or a second
line subjoined as a reply to the former; which any
one leaf in Jonson's plays will sufficiently clear to
you. You will often find in the Greek tragedians,
and in Seneca, that when a scene grows up into
the warmth of repartees, which is the close fighting
of it, the latter part of the trimeter is supplied by
him who answers; and yet it was never observed
as a fault in them by any of the ancient or modern
criticks. The case is the same in our verse, as
it was in theirs; rhyme to us being in lieu of
quantity to them. But if no latitude is to be
allowed a poet, you take from him not only his
licence of quidlibet audendi, but you tie him up in
a straiter compass than you would a philosopher.
This is indeed Musas colere severiores. You would
have him follow nature, but he must follow her
on foot: you have dismounted him from his
Pegasus. But
tell us,
you
this supplying the last
half of a verse, or adjoining a whole second to the
former, looks more like the design of two, than
the answer of one. Suppose we acknowledge it:
how comes this confederacy to be more displeasing
to you, than in a dance which is well contrived?
5 This position is not true.
not true. It is accent, not rhyme,
which in English verse stands in the place of quantity.
VOL. I.
K
130
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
You see there the united design of many persons
to make up one figure: after they have separated
themselves in many petty divisions, they rejoin
one by one into a gross: the confederacy is plain
amongst them, for chance could never produce
any thing so beautiful; and yet there is nothing
in it, that shocks your sight. I acknowledge the
hand of art appears in repartee, as of necessity it
must in all kind of verse. But there is also the
quick and poignant brevity of it (which is an high
imitation of nature in those sudden gusts of pas-
sion) to mingle with it; and this, joined with the
cadency and sweetness of the rhyme, leaves nothing
in the soul of the hearer to desire. "Tis an art
which appears; but it appears only like the sha-
dowings of painture, which being to cause the
rounding of it, cannot be absent; but while that is
considered, they are lost: so while we attend to the
other beauties of the matter, the care and labour
of the rhyme is carried from us, or at least
drowned in its own sweetness, as bees are some-
times buried in their honey. When a poet has
found the repartee, the last perfection he can add
to it, is to put it into verse. However good the
thought may be, however apt the words in which
'tis couched, yet he finds himself at a little unrest,
while rhyme is wanting: he cannot leave it till that
comes naturally, and then is at ease, and sits down
contented.
From replies, which are the most elevated
thoughts of verse, you pass to those which are
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
131
most mean, and which are common with the lowest
of houshold conversation. In these, you say, the
majesty of verse suffers. You instance in the
calling of a servant, or commanding a door to be
shut, in rhyme. This, Crites, is a good observa-
tion of your's, but no argument: for it proves no
more but that such thoughts should be waved, as
often as may be, by the address of the poet. But
suppose they are necessary in the places where he
uses them, yet there is no need to put them into
rhyme. He may place them in the beginning of
a verse, and break it off, as unfit, when so
debased, for any other use; or granting the worst,—
that they require more room than the hemistick
will allow, yet still there is a choice to be made
of the best words, and least vulgar, provided they
be apt to express such thoughts. Many have
blamed rhyme in general, for this fault, when the
poet with a little care might have redressed it.
But they do it with no more justice, than if
English poesy should be made ridiculous for the
sake of the Water-poet's" rhymes. Our language is
noble, full, and significant; and I know not why
he who is master of it may not clothe ordinary
things in it as decently as the Latin, if he use the
same diligence in his choice of words: delectus
verborum origo est eloquentiæ. It was the saying of
Julius Cæsar, one so curious in his, that none of
6 John Taylor, who was thus denominated, from his
being a waterman on the Thames. See an account of
him in Wood's ATH. OXON. ii. col. 373.
132
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
them can be changed but for a worse.
One would
think, unlock the door, was a thing as vulgar as
could be spoken; and yet Seneca could make it
sound high and lofty in his Latin :
Reserate clusos regii postes laris.
Set wide the palace gates.
But I turn from this exception, both because it
happens not above twice or thrice in any play that
those vulgar thoughts are used; and then too,
were there no other apology to be made, yet the
necessity of them, which is alike in all kind of
writing, may excuse them. For if they are little.
and mean in rhyme, they are of consequence such
in blank verse. Besides that the great eagerness
and precipitation with which they are spoken,
makes us rather mind the substance than the
dress; that for which they are spoken, rather than
what is spoke. For they are always the effect of
some hasty concernment, and something of con-
sequence depends on them.
Thus, Crites, I have endeavoured to answer
your objections: it remains only that I should
vindicate an argument for verse, which you have
gone about to overthrow. It had formerly been
said, that the casiness of blank verse renders the
poet too luxuriant, but that the labour of rhyme
bounds and circumscribes an over-fruitful fancy;
the sense there being commonly confined to the
*
7 The edition of 1684, and all the modern editions,
read-“the scene there," &c. The true reading is found
in the original copy of 1668.
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
133
couplet, and the words so ordered that the rhyme
naturally follows them, not they the rhyme. To
this you answered, that it was no argument to the
question in hand; for the dispute was not which
way a man may write best, but which is most
proper for the subject on which he writes.
First, give me leave, Sir, to remember
you, that
the argument against which you raised this objec-
tion, was only secondary: it was built on this
hypothesis, that to write in verse was proper for
serious plays. Which supposition being granted,
(as it was briefly made out in that discourse, by
shewing how verse might be made natural,) it
asserted, that this way of writing was an help to
the poet's judgment, by putting bounds to a wild
overflowing fancy. I think, therefore, it will not
be hard for me to make good what it was to prove
on that supposition. But you add, that were this
let pass, yet he who wants judgment in the liberty
of his fancy, may as well shew the defect of it
when he is confined to verse; for he who has
judgment will avoid errors, and he who has it not,
will commit them in all kinds of writing.
This argument, as you have taken it from a
most acute person,* so I confess it carries much
weight in it but by using the word judgment
here indefinitely, you seem to have put a fallacy
upon us. I grant, he who has judgment, that is,
so profound, so strong, or rather so infallible a
judgment, that he needs no helps to keep it always
* See Sir Robert Howard's Preface, ante p. 21.
134
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
poised and upright, will commit no faults either in
rhyme or out of it. And on the other extreme,
he who has a judgment so weak and crazed that
no helps can correct or amend it, shall write
scurvily out of rhyme, and worse in it. But the
first of these judgments is no where to be found,
and the latter is not fit to write at all. To speak
therefore of judgment as it is in the best poets;
they who have the greatest proportion of it, want
other helps than from it, within. As for example,
you would be loth to say, that he who is endued
with a sound judgment has no need of history,
geography, or moral philosophy, to write correctly.
Judgment is indeed the master-workman in a
play; but he requires many subordinate hands,
many tools to his assistance. And verse I affirm
to be one of these: 'tis a rule and line by which
he keeps his building compact and even, which
otherwise lawless imagination would raise either
irregularly or loosely; at least, if the poet commits
errors with this help, he would make greater and
more without it :-'tis, in short, a slow and painful,
but the surest kind of working. Ovid, whom you
accuse for luxuriancy in verse, had perhaps been
farther guilty of it, had he writ in prose. And for
your instance of Ben Jonson, who, you say, writ
exactly without the help of rhyme; you are to
remember, 'tis only an aid to a luxuriant fancy,
which his was not as he did not want imagination,
so none ever said he had much to spare. Neither
was verse then refined so much, to be an help to
that age, as it is to ours. Thus then the second
ON DRAMATICK POESY,
135
thoughts being usually the best, as receiving the
maturest digestion from judgment, and the last
and most mature product of those thoughts being
artful and laboured verse, it may well be inferred,
that verse is a great help to a luxuriant fancy; and
this is what that argument which you opposed was
to evince.
Neander was pursuing this discourse so eagerly,
that Eugenius had called to him twice or thrice,
ere he took notice that the barge stood still, and
that they were at the foot of Somerset-stairs, where
they had appointed it to land. The company
were all sorry to separate so soon, though a great
part of the evening was already spent ; and stood
a-while looking back on the water, upon which
the moon-beams played, and made it appear like
floating quicksilver: at last they went up through
a crowd of French people, who were merrily
dancing in the open air, and nothing concerned.
for the noise of guns which had alarmed the town
that afternoon. Walking thence together to the
Piazze, they parted there; Eugenius and Lisideius
to some pleasant appointment they had made, and
Crites and Neander to their several lodgings.
8
* This Essay is printed from the author's second edition,
published in 1684, collated verbatim with the first edition
of 1668. That collation furnished me with the correction
of some gross errors of the press which are found in the
second copy, and which have disfigured all the modern
editions. See p. 40: "We may guess at Menander's
excellency by the plays of Terence, who translated some
136
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
of his."
read-
sense.
I
The edition of 1684, and the modern editions,
some of them
of them;" which renders the passage non-
The true reading is found in the first edition.-
So again, in p. 132" the sense there being commonly
confined to the couplet,"-instead of which, we have in
the second, and all the subsequent editions, "the scene
there," &c. ' In one other place also, I have adhered to
the first copy: (see p. 115.) "Now what is more unrea-
sonable, than to imagine that a man should not only light
upon the wit, but the rhyme too, upon the sudden ?"-
The revised edition reads-" Now what is more unrea-
sonable, than to imagine that a man should imagine," &c.
This, I conceive, was not a correction of the author's,
but an error of the press, in consequence of the word
imagine having occurred just before. To imagine wit, is
sufficiently intelligible; but to imagine a rhyme, is an
expression that our author would hardly have used.
Between the first and second edition of this Essay
sixteen years elapsed, in which interval he appears to
have revised and corrected it with great care, various
changes being made, chiefly in the language, in almost
every page; a degree of solicitude and attention which, I
believe, few of his poetical productions exhibit. As the
progressive improvement of so great a writer may afford
matter of curiosity and instruction to many readers. I
subjoin the principal variations between the two copies.
The passages printed chiefly in Italicks are given as they
stand in the revised edition of 1684; those principally in
the Roman character, as they appear in the original copy
of 1668. The pages referred to are those of the present
edition.
P. 34. " so that all men being alarmed with it, and in
a dreadful suspence of the event which they knew
was then deciding." (1684.)
which we knew was then deciding." (1668).
1
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
137
17
P. 35.
66
(6
Ibid.
tr
they perceived the air to break about them-"
they perceived the air break about them-"
adding that we had but this—
adding we had but this-"
>>
P. 36. "—as to let them be often desired, and long ex-
pected."
Ibid.
GE
as to let them be often called for, and long
expected."
"a funeral elegy on the duke."
The original edition has-" upon the duke." In almost
every other passage where the preposition upon occurs, it
is changed in the second copy, as in the present instance,
to on.
Ibid.
P. 37·
Ibid.
P. 39.
Ibid.
"wherein after they have crowned his valour
with many laurels, they will at last deplore-"
$4
(C
<<
and after they have crowned, &c. at last
deplore.—'
I would not have them worse used than one of
their brethren was by Sylla the Dictator.”
I would not have them worse used than Sylla
the Dictator did one of their brethren."
one who is so much a well-wisher to the satire,
that he intends at least to spare no man; and
though, &c. yet he ought to be punished—”
one that is se much a well-wisher to the
satire, that he spares no man; and though, &c.
yet ought to be punished—.
especially him whom you first described—”
especially him who you first described."
but what will you say, if he has been received
amongst great persons. I can assure you he is
at this day the envy of one who—"
but what will you say, if he has been received
138
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
amongst the great ones.
I assure you he is at
this day the envy of a person who-."
P. 40. "I cannot think so contemptibly of the age in
P 41.
P. 42.
which I live-"
"I cannot think so contemptibly of the age I
live in-.'
"Crites --- told Eugenius that if he pleased-"
Crites --- told Eugenius that he approved
his proposition, and if he pleased, &c."
"—as we have many now living, or who lately.
were."
"—as we have many now living, or who lately.
were so."
P. 45. "—yet wishing they had it, that desire is incitement
enough—"
P. 46.
Co
Ibid.
yet wishing they had it, it is incitement
enough."
if yet they had ability to go through the work.”
if yet they had ability to go through with
it—”
of which none boast in this our age—'
which none boast of in this our age-”
In like manner, in various instances where the prepo-
sition had been improperly placed at the end of the
sentence, he corrected the error in the second copy.
P. 47.
P. 48.
"—that all the parts of it are (as near as may be)
to be equally subdivided—”
"that all the parts of it are to be equally
subdivided."
te
they suffer you not to behold him till he is in
sight of the goal-an
"—you behold him not till he is in sight," &c.
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
139
P. 49.
P. 51.
"
tr
he who enters second, has business with him who
was on before; and before the second quits the stage,
a third appears who has business with him."
he that enters second, &c.-a third appears
who has business with the first."
"so long as Aristophanes and Plautus are
extant-
so long as Aristophanes in the old, and Plautus
in the new comedy," &c.
Ibid. "the wit of which depended upon some custom or
story"
P. 52.
P. 54.
P. 56.
P. 57.
Ibid.
"
CC
66
whose wit depended on some custom," &c.
whether you consider the bad plays of our age,
or regard the good plays of the last, both the best
and worst of the modern poets will instruct you to
admire the ancients."
whether you consider the bad plays of our
age, or the good ones of the last, &c.—to respect
the ancients."
Thirdly, the Catastasis, called by the Romans,
Status, the height and full growth of the play;
we may call it properly the Counterturn—”
Thirdly, the Catastasis, or Counterturn—”
till he was to come with his eyes pulled out, to
speak a hundred or more verses—
till, &c. to speak a hundred or two of
verses-N
kind in nature to his mistress-
kind in nature to his wench—.”
"the old Elizabeth way, which was for maids to
be seen," &c.
the old Elizabeth way, for maids to be
seen," &c.
E
140
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
P. 58. “ His Heautontimorumenos
P. 59.
takes up visibly two
days, says Scaliger; the two first acts concluding
the first day; the three last the day ensuing-.'
two days;
"His Heautontimorumenos
P. 60. "
therefore, says Scaliger, the two first acts con-
cluding the first day, were acted over-night, the
three last on the ensuing day."
"to give ample relation of the disorders he has
raised.
""
to give ample relation of the garboils he has
raised-."
which, by the way, was very inartificial, be-
cause" &c.
which, by the way, was very inartificial to
do, because"-&c.
P. 62."— the elegancy of which
P. 66. "
P. 77.
on our souls.”
leaves an impression
the elegancy of which
pression of the wit upon our souls.
leaves an im-
as the women in Juvenal's time used to cry out
in the fury of their lust. Any sudden gust," &c.
"as the women in Juvenal's time used to cry
"
t
out in the fury of their lust. Then indeed to
speak sense were an offence. Any sudden gust,”
&c.
a deeper impression of belief in us than all the
actor can insinuate into us.
a deeper, &c. than all the actor can persuade
us to."
P. 81. and make him punish himself with harder
fare
to get up again what he had lost."
"and make him, &c. to get it up again."
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
141
P. 87.
CC
"— and their actors speak by the hour-glass, like
our parsons.'
""
and their actors, &c. as our parsons do."
P. 88. " with a speech of an hundred lines."
Ibid.
with a speech of an hundred or two hundred
lines."
"— to a much higher degree of perfection than the
French poets can reasonably hope to reach."
than the French poets
to a much, &c.
can arrive at.”
P. 89. "for there appear two actions in the play"
"for there appears two actions," &c.
P. 90.
C
P. 94.
P. 96.
P. 99.
that the French have reason to hide
to choose," &c.
"that the French have reason when they hide,
and choose," &c.
and
and thrusts him into a place of safety, which
is supposed to be her closet.”
"and thrusts him through a door, which is
supposed to be her closet."
(6
- epecially if you read his Sad Shepherd-"
especially if you look upon his Sad Shepherd."
"but he would produce it much better done in
Shakspeare."
"- but he would produce it much better treated
of in Shakspeare."
P. 101."—no poet before them could paint as they have
done."
P. 103.
no poet can ever paint as they have done.”
"he weaved it too closely and laboriously, in his
comedies especially.”
he weaved it too closely and laboriously, in
his serious plays especially."
142
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
P. 104." and in the Cid and Cinna
rupted once."
"
and in the Cid and Cinna
interrupted once a-piece.”
they are inter-
they are
P. 108."— our poet has made use of all advantages."
"—our poet has prevailed himself of all advan-
tages."
P. 112."
This was the substance-" &c.
This, my lord, was the substance—.
P. 118." but since these I have named
P. 119.
publick—"
"but being these I have named," &c.
"—and a right disposition of them.”
"—and a right disposing of them."
are already
P. 120. "A good poet never establishes the first line--"
"A good poet never concludes upon the first
line-'
P. 122." at least we are able to prove that the eastern people
have used it from all antiquity.”
These words are not in the first edition.
P. 124." — There is scarce an humour, &c. which they have
not used."
There is scarce an humour, &c. which they
have not blown upon.'
Other minute variations I have not thought it necessary
to set down.
*
DEFENCE OF THE ESSAY
OF
DRAMATICK POESY;
FIRST PRINTED IN QUARTO, IN 1668.
་
or,
PROLEGOMENA.
Sir Robert Howard, in the same year in which the
ESSAY OF DRAMATICK POESY was published,
produced a play, entitled THE GREAT FAVOURITE,
OR, THE DUKE OF LERMA; to which he prefixed
Address to the Reader, containing some
observations on that Essay. This Address having
occasioned a Reply from our author, I have thought
it proper to give it a place here.
TO THE READER.
I CANNOT plead the usual excuse for publish-
ing this trifle, which is commonly the subject of
most Prefaces, by charging it upon the importunity
of friends; for, I confess, I was myself willing, at
the first desire of Mr. Herringman, to print it;
not for any great opinion that I had entertained,
but for the opinion that others were pleased to
express which being told me by some friends, I
was concerned to let the world judge what subject
matter of offence was contained in it. Some were
pleased to believe little of it mine: but they are
both obliging to me, though perhaps not inten-
VOL. I.
I
146
PROLEGOMENA.
tentionally; the last, by thinking there was any
thing in it that was worth so ill-designed an envy,
as to place it to another author; the others, (per-
haps the best-bred informers,) by continuing their
displeasure towards me, since I most gratefully
acknowledge to have received some advantage in
the opinion of the sober part of the world, by the
loss of theirs.
For the subject, I came accidentally to write
upon it; for a gentleman brought a play to the
King's Company, called THE DUKE OF LERMA;
and by them I was desired to peruse it, and return
my opinion, whether I thought it fit for the stage.
After I had read it, I acquainted them, that in my
judgment it would not be of much use for such a
design; since the contrivance scarce would merit
the name of a plot, and some of that assisted by
a disguise; and it ended abruptly and on the
person of Philip the Third there was fixed such a
mean character, and on the daughter of the Duke
of Lerma such a vicious one, that I could 'not but
judge it unfit to be presented by any that had a
respect, not only to princes, but indeed to either
man or woman. And about that time, being to go
into the country, I was persuaded by Mr. Hart to
make it my diversion there; that so great a hint
might not be lost, as the Duke of Lerma saving
himself in his last extremity by his unexpected
disguise, which is as well in the true story as the
old play and besides that and the names,—my
altering the most part of the characters, and the
PROLEGOMENA.
147
whole design, made me uncapable to use much
more; though perhaps written with higher style
and thoughts than I could attain to.
I intend not to trouble myself nor the world any
more in such subjects, but take my leave of these
my too long acquaintances; since that little fancy
and liberty I once enjoyed, is now fettered in
business of more unpleasant natures: yet, were I
free to apply my thoughts as my own choice
directed them, I should hardly again venture into
the civil wars of censures,
9
Ubi―nullos habitura triumphos.'
In the next place, I must ingenuously confess,
that the manner of plays which now are in most
esteem, is beyond my power to perform: nor do
I condemn in the least any thing of what nature
soever, that pleases, since nothing could appear to
me a ruder folly than to censure the satisfaction
of others: I rather blame the unnecessary under-
standing of some, that have laboured to give strict
rules to things that are not mathematical; and with
such eagerness pursuing their own seeming reasons,
that at last we are to apprehend such argumenta-
tive poets will grow as strict as Sancho Panco's
9 Sir Robert Howard was about this time, I believe,
made Secretary to the Lords Commissioners of the Trea-
sury. A few years afterwards he was appointed Auditor
of the Exchequer, which valuable office he held to the
time of his death in September, 1698.
I
Bella geri placuit nullos habitura triumphos?
Lucan. i. 12.
148
PROLEGOMENA.
doctor was, to our very appetites; for in the
difference of tragedy and comedy, and of farce
itself, there can be no determination but by the
taste, nor in the manner of their composure; and
whoever would endeavour to like or dislike by the
rules of others, he will be as unsuccessful as if he
should try to be persuaded into a power of be-
lieving, not what he must, but what others direct
him to believe.
But, I confess, 'tis not necessary for poets to
study strict reason; since they are so used to a
greater latitude than is allowed by that severe
inquisition, that they must infringe their own
jurisdiction, to profess themselves obliged to argue
well. I will not therefore pretend to say why I
writ this play, some scenes in blank verse, others
in rhyme, since I have no better a reason to give
than chance, which waited upon my present fancy;
and I expect no better a reason from any ingenious
person, than his fancy for which he best relishes.
I cannot therefore but beg leave of the reader
to take a little notice of the great pains the author
of an ESSAY OF DRAMATICK POESY has taken, to
prove rhyme as natural in a serious play, and more
effectual than blank verse: thus he states the
question, but pursues that which he calls natural
in a wrong application; for 'tis not the question,
whether rhyme or not rhyme, be best, or most
natural for a grave and serious subject, but what
is nearest the nature of that which it presents,
Now, after all the endeavours of that ingenious
person, a play will still be supposed to be a com-
PROLEGOMENA.
149
position of several persons speaking extempore; and
'tis as certain, that good verses are the hardest
things that can be imagined to be so spoken; so
that if any will be pleased to impose the rule of
measuring things to be the best, by being nearest
nature, it is granted by consequence, that which is
most remote from the thing supposed, must needs
be most improper; and therefore I may justly
say, that both I and the question were equally
mistaken; for I do own, I had rather read good
verses, than either blank verse or prose; and there-
fore the author did himself injury, if he like verse
so well in plays, to lay down rules to raise argu-
ments only unanswerable against himself.
But the same author being filled with the pre-
cedents of the ancients' writing their plays in verse,
commends the thing, and assures us, that our
language is noble, full, and significant; charging
all defects upon the ill placing of words; and proves
it by quoting Seneca, loftily expressing such an
ordinary thing as shutting a door :
Reserate clusos regi postes laris.
I suppose he was himself highly affected with
the sound of these words; but to have completed
his dictates together with his arguments, he should
have obliged us, by charming our ears with such
an art of placing words, as in an English verse to
express so loftily the shutting of a door, that we
might have been as much affected with the sound
of his words. This, instead of being an argument
150
PROLEGOMENA.
upon the question rightly stated, is an attempt to
prove that nothing may seem something, by the
help of a verse, which I easily grant to be the ill-
fortune of it; and therefore the question being
so much mistaken, I wonder to see that author
trouble himself twice about it," with such an abso-
lute triumph declared by his own imagination:
but I have heard that a gentleman in parliament
going to speak twice, and being interrupted by
another member, as against the orders of the
house, he was excused by a third, assuring the
house he had not yet spoken to the question.
But if we examine the general rules laid down
for plays by strict reason, we shall find the errors
equally gross; for the great foundation that is laid
to build upon is nothing, as it is generally stated;
which will appear upon the examination of the
particulars.
First, we are told the plot should not be so
ridiculously contrived, as to crowd two several
countries into one stage; secondly, to cramp the
accidents of many years or days into the repre-
sentation of two hours and a half: and lastly, a
conclusion drawn, that the only remaining dispute
is concerning time, whether it should be contained
in twelve, or four-and-twenty hours; and the place
to be limited to the spot of ground, either in
town or city, where the play is supposed to begin.
2 In the Dedication of THE RIVAL LADIES, and in
the ESSAY ON DRAMATICK POESY.
PROLEGOMENA.
151
And this is called nearest to nature; for that is
concluded most natural which is most probable,
and nearest to that which it presents.
I am so well pleased with any ingenuous offers,
as all these are, that I should not examine this
strictly, did not the confidence of others force me
to it; there being not any thing more unreason-
able to my judgment, than the attempt to infringe
the liberty of opinion by rules so little demon-
strative.
To shew, therefore, upon what ill grounds they
dictate laws for Dramatick Poesy, I shall endea-
vour to make it evident, that there is no such
thing as what they all pretend; for, if strictly and
duly weighed, 'tis as impossible for one stage to
present two houses, or two rooms truly, as two
countries or kingdoms ;3 and as impossible that five
hours, or four-and-twenty hours should be two
hours and a half, as that a thousand hours or years
should be less than what they are, or the greatest
part of time to be comprehended in the less; for
all being impossible, they are none of them nearest
the truth, or nature, of what they present; for
impossibilities are all equal, and admit no degrees:
and then if all those poets that have so fervently
laboured to give rules as maxims, would but be
3 Dr. Johnson, in his admirable Preface to his edition.
of Shakspeare, has used some of the arguments here
urged in defence of a breach of the unities of place and
time; but in language how different! He had probably
never seen Sir Robert Howard's play.
152
PROLEGOMENA.
pleased to abbreviate, or endure to hear their
reasons reduced into one strict definition, it must
be, that there are degrees in impossibilities, and
that many things which are not possible, may yet
be more or less impossible; and from this proceed
to give rules to observe the least absurdity in
things which are not at all.
I
suppose I need not trouble the reader with so
impertinent a delay to attempt a farther confuta-
tion of such ill-grounded reasons, than thus by
opening the true state of the case; nor do I design
to make any farther use of it, than from hence to
draw this modest conclusion ;-that I would have
all attempts of this nature be submitted to the
fancy of others, and bear the name of propositions,
not of confident laws, or rules made by demon-
stration; and then I shall not discommend any
poet that dresses his play in such a fashion as his
fancy best approves; and fairly leave it for others
to follow, if it appears to them most convenient,
and fullest of ornament.
But writing this Epistle in so much haste, I had
almost forgot one argument or observation, which
that author has most good fortune in ;-it is in his
Epistle Dedicatory, before his ESSAY OF DRAMATICK
POESY, where, speaking of rhyme in plays, he
desires it may be observed, that none are violent
against it, but such as have not attempted it, or who
have succeeded ill in the attempt; which, as to
myself and him, I easily acknowledge: for I con-
fess none has written in that way better than
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
153
himself, nor few worse than I. Yet, I hope, he
is so ingenuous, that he would not wish this
argument should extend further than to him and
me for if it should be received as a good one,
all divines and philosophers would find a readier
way of confutation than they yet have done, of
that should oppose the least thesis or definition,
by saying, they were denied by none but such as
never attempted to write, or succeeded ill in the
attempt.
any
Thus, as I am one that am extremely well
pleased with most of the propositions, which are
ingeniously laid down in that Essay for regulating
the stage, so I am also always concerned for the
true honour of reason, and would have no spurious
issue fathered upon her. Fancy may be allowed
her wantonness; but reason is always pure and
chaste and as it resembles the sun in making all
things clear, it also resembles it in its several
positions; when it shines in full height, and directly
ascendant over any subject, it leaves but little
shadow; but when descended and grown low,
its oblique shining renders the shadow larger than
the substance, and gives the deceived person a
wrong measure of his own proportion.
Thus, begging the Reader's excuse for this
seeming impertinency, I submit what I have written
to the liberty of his unconfined opinion, which is
all the favour I ask of others to afford to me.
A
DEFENCE
OF AN ESSAY
OF DRAMATICK POESY,
BEING AN ANSWER TO
SIR ROBERT HOWARD'S PREFACE OF THE GREAT
FAVOURITE, OR THE DUKE OF LERMA.*
THE
HE former edition of THE INDIAN EMPEROR
being full of faults, which had escaped the printer,
I have been willing to overlook this second with
more care; and though I could not allow myself
so much time as was necessary, yet, by that little I
have done, the press is freed from some errors
4 Our author married, probably about the year 1664,
Lady Elizabeth Howard, sister of Sir Robert Howard, knt.
and daughter of Thomas, the first Earl of Berkshire. In
1660, he had addressed some complimentary verses to Sir
Robert, which were prefixed to his Poems, published in
8vo. in that year. In 1666 they appear to have been on
good terms; Dryden having then addressed to him an
encomiastick Epistle in prose, which is dated from Charle-
ton, in Wiltshire, (the seat of the Earl of Berkshire,) and
156
DEFENCE OF THE ESSAY
1
which it had to answer for before. As for the
more material faults of writing, which are properly
mine, though I see many of them, I want leisure
to amend them. It is enough for those who make
one poem the business of their lives, to leave that
correct yet, excepting Virgil, I never met with
any which was so in any language.
But while I was thus employed about this
impression, there came to my hands a new printed
play, called, THE GREAT FAVOURITE, OR THE
{
was prefixed to his ANNUS MIRABILIS, published in
8vo. in 1667, by Sir Robert Howard, who revised the
sheets at the press, for the author, who was then in the
country; and in the EPISTLE he describes him as one
whom he knew-not to be of the number of those, qui
carpere amicos suos judicium vocant. In the ESSAY ON
DRAMATICK POESY, as we have already seen, he speaks
of Sir Robert Howard with great respect. That gentleman,
however, having in 1668 published the foregoing reflec-
tions on the Essay, our author retorted in the following
observations, which are found prefixed to the second.
edition of THE INDIAN EMPEROR, published in the
same year. In many copies, however, of that edition,
they are wanting; nor were they reprinted in any other
edition of that play which appeared in the life-time of the
author: so that it should seem he was induced by good
nature, or the interposition of friends, to suppress this
witty and severe replication. One of the lampoons of the
time gives a more invidious turn to this suppression; and
insinuates that he was compelled to retract. They lived
afterwards probably in good correspondence together;
at least, it appears from an original letter of our author
now before me, that towards the close of his life they were
on friendly terms.
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
157
DUKE OF LERMA; the author of which, a noble
and most ingenious person, has done me the favour
to make some observations and animadversions
upon my DRAMATICK ESSAY. I must confess he
might have better consulted his reputation, than
by matching himself with so weak an adversary.
But if his honour be diminished in the choice of
his antagonist, it is sufficiently recompensed in the
election of his cause: which being the weaker, in
all appearance, as combating the received opinions
of the best ancient and modern authors, will add
to his glory, if he overcome, and to the opinion of
his generosity, if he be vanquished: since he
engages at so great odds, and, so like a cavalier,
undertakes the protection of the weaker party. I
have only to fear on my own behalf, that so good
a cause as mine may not suffer by my ill manage-
ment, or weak defence; yet I cannot in honour
but take the glove, when it is offered me: though
I am only a champion by succession; and no
more able to defend the right of Aristotle and
Horace, than an infant Dimock to maintain the
title of a King.
For my own concernment of the controversy, it
is so small, that I can easily be contented to be
driven from a few notions of Dramatick Poesy;
especially by one, who has the reputation of
understanding all things: and I might justly make
that excuse for my yielding to him, which the
Philosopher made to the Emperor,-why should I
offer to contend with him, who is master of more than
twenty legions of arts and sciences? But I am
158
DEFENCE OF THE ESSAY
forced to fight, and therefore it will be no shame
to be overcome.
Yet I am so much his servant, as not to meddle
with any thing which does not concern me in his
Preface; therefore, I leave the good sense and
other excellencies of the first twenty lines to be
considered by the criticks. As for the play of
THE DUKE OF LERMA, having so much altered
and beautified it, as he has done, it can justly
belong to none but him. Indeed, they must be
extreme ignorant as well as envious, who would
rob him of that honour; for you see him putting
in his claim to it, even in the first two lines:
Repulse upon repulse, like waves thrown back,
That slide to hang upon obdurate rocks.
After this, let detraction do its worst; for if this
be not his, it deserves to be. For my part, I
declare for distributive justice; and from this
and what follows, he certainly deserves those advan-
tages which he acknowledges to have received from
the opinion of sober men.
In the next place, I must beg leave to obscrve
his great address in courting the reader to his
party. For intending to assault all poets, both
ancient and modern, he discovers not his whole
design at once, but seems only to aim at me, and
attacks me on my weakest side, my defence of
verse.
To begin with me, he gives me the compella-
tion of The Author of a Dramatick Essay, which is
a little discourse in dialoguc, for the most part
borrowed from the observations of others there-
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
159
•
fore, that I may not be wanting to him in civility,
I return his compliment by calling him The
Author of THE DUKE OF LERMA.
But (that I may pass over his salute) he takes
notice of my great pains to prove rhyme as natural
in a serious play, and more effectual than blank
verse. Thus, indeed, I did state the question ;
but he tells me, I pursue that which I call natural
in a wrong application: for 'tis not the question
whether rhyme or not rhyme be best or most natural
for a serious subject, but what is nearest the nature of
that it represents.
If I have formerly mistaken the question, I must
confess my ignorance so far, as to say I continue
still in my mistake: but he ought to have proved
that I mistook it; for it is yet but gratis dictum : I
still shall think I have gained my point, if I can
prove that rhyme is best or most natural for a
serious subject. As for the question as he states
it, whether rhyme be nearest the nature
what it represents, I wonder he should think me
so ridiculous as to dispute whether prose or verse
be nearest to ordinary conversation.
of
• It still remains for him to prove his inference,-
that, since verse is granted to be more remote
than prose from ordinary conversation, therefore
no serious plays ought to be writ in verse and
when he clearly makes that good, I will acknow-
ledge his victory as absolute as he can desire it.
The question now is, which of us two has
mistaken it; and if it appear I have not, the world
will suspect what gentleman that was, who was
160
DEFENCE OF THE ESSAY
allowed to speak twice in parliament, because he had
not yet spoken to the question; and perhaps conclude
it to be the same, who, as it is reported, maintained
a contradiction in terminis, in the face of three
hundred persons.
But to return to verse; whether it be natural or
not in plays, is a problem which is not demon-
strable of either side. It is enough for me that he
acknowledges he had rather read good verse than
prosc: for if all the enemies of verse will confess
as much, I shall not need to prove that it is
natural. I am satisfied, if it cause delight: for
delight is the chief, if not the only, end of
poesy:
instruction can be admitted but in the second
place; for poesy only instructs as it delights. It
is true, that to imitate well is a poet's work; but
to affect the soul, and excite the passions, and
above all to move admiration, which is the delight
of serious plays, a bare imitation will not serve.
The converse, therefore, which a poet is to imitate,
must be heightened with all the arts and orna-
ments of poesy; and must be such, as, strictly
considered, could never be supposed spoken by
any without premeditaton.
As for what he urges, that a play will still be
supposed to be a composition of several persons speaking
extempore; and that good verses are the hardest
things which can be imagined to be spoken; I must
crave leave to dissent from his opinion, as to the
former part of it: for, if I am not deceived, a
play is supposed to be the work of the poet,
imitating or representing the conversation of several
*
161
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
}
persons; and this I think to be as clear, as he
thinks the contrary.
But I will be bolder, and do not doubt to make
it good, though a paradox, that one great reason
why prose is not to be used in serious plays, is,
because it is too near the nature of converse.
There may be too great a likeness; as the most
skilful painters affirm, that there may be too near
a resemblance in a picture: to take every lineament
and feature, is not to make an excellent piece; but
to take so much only as will make a beautiful
resemblance of the whole; and, with an ingenious
flattery of nature, to heighten the beauties of
some parts, and hide the deformities of the rest.
For so says
Horace:
Ut pictura poesis erit.....
Hæc amat obscurum, vult hæt sub luce videri,
Judicis argutum quæ non formidat acumen.
et quæ
Desperat tractata nitescere posse, relinquit.
i
In BARTHOLOMEW FAIR, or the lowest kind of
comedy, that degree of heightening is used, which
is proper to set off that subject. It is true the
author was not there to go out of prose, as he does
in his higher arguments of comedy, THE Fox,
and ALCHEMIST; yet he does so raise his matter
in that prose, as to render it delightful; which he
could never have performed, had he only said or
done those very things that are daily spoken or
practised in the Fair; for then the Fair itself would
be as full of pleasure to an ingenious person as the
VOL. I.
M
162
DEFENCE OF THE ESSAY
play; which we manifestly see it is not. But he
hath made an excellent lazar of it: the copy is of
price, though the original be vile. You see in
CATILINE and SEJANUS, where the argument is
great, he sometimes ascends to verse,' which shews
he thought it not unnatural in serious plays: and
had his genius been as proper for rhyme, as it was
for humour, or had the age in which he lived
attained to as much knowledge in verse as ours, it
is probable he would have adorned those subjects
with that kind of writing.
Thus prose, though the rightful prince, yet is
by common consent deposed, as too weak for the
government of serious plays; and he failing, there
now start up two competitors; one the nearer in
blood, which is blank verse; the other more fit
for the ends of government, which is rhyme.
Blank verse is, indeed, the nearer prose, but he is
blemished with the weakness of his predecessor.
Rhyme (for I will deal clearly) has somewhat of
the usurper in him; but he is brave and generous,
and his dominion pleasing. For this reason of
delight, the Ancients (whom I will still believe as
wise as those who so confidently correct them)
wrote all their tragedies in verse, though they
knew it most remote from conversation.
But I perceive I am falling into the danger of
another rebuke from my opponent; for when I
5 By verse our author here, and in some other places,
means-rhyming couplets.
ON DRAMATÍCK POESY.
163
plead that the Ancients used verse, I prove not that
they would have admitted rhyme, had it then
been written. All I can say is only this; that it
seems to have succeeded verse by the general
consent of poets in all modern languages: for
almost all their serious plays are written in it:
which, though it be no demonstration that there-
fore they ought to be so, yet at least the practice
first, and then the continuation of it, shews that
it attained the end,-which was to please; and if
that cannot be compassed here, I will be the first
who shall lay it down: for I confess my chief
endeavours are to delight the age in which I live.
If the humour of this be for low comedy, small
accidents, and raillery, I will force my genius to
obey it, though with more reputation I could write
I know I am not so fitted by nature to
write comedy: I want that gaiety of humour which
is required to it. My conversation is slow and
dull, my humour saturnine and reserved: in short,
I am none of those who endeavour to break jests
in company, or make repartees. So that those
who decry my comedies, do me no injury, except
it be in point of profit: reputation in them is the
last thing to which I shall pretend. I beg pardon
for entertaining the reader with so ill a subject;
but before I quit that argument, which was the
cause of this digression, I cannot but take notice
how I am corrected for my quotation of Seneca, in
my defence of plays in verse. My words are
these: "Our language is noble, full, and signi-
in verse.
164
DEFENCE OF THE ESSAY
ficant; and I know not why he who is master of
it, may not clothe ordinary things in it as decently
as in the Latin, if he use the same diligence in
his choice of words. One would think, unlock a
door, was a thing as vulgar as could be spoken ;
yet Seneca could make it sound high and lofty in
his Latin:
Reserate clusos regi postes laris."
But he says of me, That being filled with the
precedents of the Ancients, who writ their plays in
verse, I commend the thing; declaring our language
to be full, noble, and significant, and charging all
defects upon the ill placing of words, which I
prove
by quoting Seneca loftily expressing such an ordinary
thing as shutting a door.
Here he manifestly mistakes; for I spoke not of
the placing, but of the choice of words; for which
I quoted that aphorism of Julius Cæsar :-Delectus
verborum est origo eloquentie: but delectus verborum
is no more Latin for the placing of words, than
reserate is Latin for shut the door, as he interprets
it, which I ignorantly construed unlock or open it.
He supposes I was highly affected with the sound
of those words; and I suppose I may more justly
imagine it of him; for if he had not been ex-
tremely satisfied with the sound, he would have
minded the sense a little better.
But these are now to be no faults; for ten days
after his book is published, and that his mistakes
are grown so famous that they are come back to
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
165
him, he sends his Errata to be printed, and annexed
to his play; and desires, that instead of shutting
you would read opening; which, it seems, was the
printer's fault. I wonder at his modesty, that he
did not rather say it was Seneca's, or mine; and
that in some authors, reserate was to shut as well as
to open, as the word barach, say the learned, is both
to bless and curse.
Well, since it was the printer, he was a naughty
man to commit the same mistake twice in six
lines: I warrant you delectus verborum for placing
of words was his mistake too, though the author
forgot to tell him of it: if it were my book, I
assure you I should. For those rascals ought to
be the proxies of every gentleman author, and to
be chastised for him, when he is not pleased to own
an errour. Yet since he has given the Errata, I
wish he would have enlarged them only a few
sheets more, and then he would have spared me
the labour of an answer: for this cursed printer is
so given to mistakes, that there is scarce a sentence
in the Preface, without some false grammar, or
hard sense in it; which will all be charged upon
the poet, because he is so good-natured as to lay
but three errours to the printer's account, and to
take the rest upon himself, who is better able to
support them. But he needs not apprehend that
I should strictly examine those little faults, except
I am called upon to do it: I shall return therefore to
that quotation of Seneca, and answer, not to what
he writes, but to what he means. I never intended
166
DEFENCE OF THE ESSAY
1
:
it as an argument, but only as an illustration of
what I had said before concerning the election of
words and all he can charge me with is only
this,—that if Seneca could make an ordinary thing
sound well in Latin by the choice of words, the
same, with the like care, might be performed in
English. If it cannot, I have committed an errour
on the right hand, by commending too much the
copiousness and well-sounding of our language;
which I hope my countrymen will pardon me. At
least the words which follow in my Dramatick
Essay will plead somewhat in my behalf; for I say
there, that this objection happens but seldom in a
play; and then too either the meanness of the
expression may be avoided, or shut out from the
verse by breaking it in the midst.
But I have said too much in the defence of
verse; for after all, it is a very indifferent thing
to me, whether it obtain or not. I am content
hereafter to be ordered by his rule, that is, to write
it sometimes, because it pleases me; and so much
the rather, because he has declared that it pleases
him. But he has taken his last farewell of the
Muses, and he has done it civilly, by honouring
them with the name of his long acquaintances ;
which is a compliment they have scarce deserved
from him. For my own part, I bear a share in
the publick loss; and how emulous soever I may
be of his fame and reputation, I cannot but give
this testimony of his style,-that it is extreme
poetical, even in oratory; his thoughts elevated
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
167
sometimes above common apprehension; his no-
tions politick and grave, and tending to the in-
struction of princes, and reformation of states;
that they are abundantly interlaced with variety of
fancies, tropes, and figures, which the criticks
have enviously branded with the name of obscurity
and false grammar.
Well, he is now fettered in business of more
unpleasant nature: the Muses have lost him, but
the commonwealth gains by it; the corruption of
a poet is the generation of a statesman.
He will not venture again into the civil wars of
censure; ubi ---- nullos habitura triumphos. If he
had not told us he had left the Muses, we might
have half suspected it by that word, ubi, which
does not any way belong to them in that place;
the rest of the verse is indeed Lucan's; but that
ubi, I will answer for it, is his own. Yet he has
another reason for this disgust of Poesy; for he
says immediately after, that the manner of plays
which are now in most esteem, is beyond his power to
perform to perform the manner of a thing, I
confess is new English to me. However, he
condemns not the satisfaction of others; but rather
their unnecessary understanding, who, like Sancho
Pança's doctor, prescribe too strictly to our appetites;
for, says he, in the difference of tragedy and comedy,
and of farce itself, there can be no determination but
by the taste, nor in the manner of their composure.
:
We shall see him now as great a critick as he
was a poet; and the reason why he excelled so
much in poetry will be evident, for it will appear
168
DEFENCE OF THE ESSAY
to have proceeded from the exactness of his judg-
ment. In the difference of tragedy, comedy, and
farce itself, there can be no determination but by the
taste. I will not quarrel with the obscurity of his
phrase, though I justly might; but beg his pardon
if I do not rightly understand him. If he means,
that there is no essential difference betwixt comedy,
tragedy, and farce, but what is only made by the
people's taste, which distinguishes one of them
from the other, that is so manifest an errour, that I
need not lose time to contradict it. Were there
neither judge, taste, nor opinion in the world, yet
they would differ in their natures; for the action,
character, and language of tragedy, would still be
great and high; that of comedy lower and more
familiar. Admiration would be the delight of
one, and satire of the other.
I have but briefly touched upon these things,
because, whatever his words are, I can scarce ima-
gine, that he who is always concerned for the true
honour of reason, and would have no spurious issue
fathered upon her, should mean any thing so absurd
as to affirm that there is no difference betwixt
comedy and tragedy, but what is made by the taste
only unless he would have us understand the
comedies of my lord L., where the first act should
be pottages, the second fricassees, &c. and the fifth
a chere entiere of women.
I suppose, lord Lauderdale. He was not created a
duke till 1672.
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
169
I rather guess he means, that betwixt one
comedy or tragedy and another, there is no other
difference but what is made by the liking or
disliking of the audience. This is indeed a less
errour than the former, but yet it is a great one.
The liking or disliking of the people gives the
play the denomination of good or bad; but does
not really make or constitute it such. To please
the people ought to be the poet's aim, because
plays are made for their delight; but it does not
follow that they are always pleased with good
plays, or that the plays which please them are
always good. The humour of the people is now
for comedy; therefore, in hope to please them, I
write comedies rather than serious plays; and so
far their taste prescribes to me: but it does not
follow from that reason, that comedy is to be
preferred before tragedy in its own nature; for
that which is so in its own nature, cannot be
otherwise; as a man cannot but be a rational
creature: but the opinion of the people may
alter, and in another age, or perhaps in this, serious
plays may be set up above comedies.
This I think a sufficient answer: if it be not,
he has provided me of an excuse. It seems, in
his wisdom, he foresaw my weakness, and has
found out this expedient for me;—that it is not
necessary for poets to study strict reason; since they
are so used to a greater latitude than is allowed by
that severe inquisition, that they must infringe their
170
DEFENCE OF THE ESSAY
own jurisdiction, to profess themselves obliged to argue
well.
I am obliged to him for discovering to me this.
back-door; but I am not yet resolved on my
retreat for I am of opinion that they cannot be
good poets, who are not accustomed to argue
well. False reasonings and colours of speech are
the certain marks of one who does not understand
the stage; for moral truth is the mistress of the
poet, as much as of the philosopher. Poesy must
resemble natural truth, but it must be ethical.
Indeed the poet dresses truth, and adorns nature,
but does not alter them:
Ficta voluptatis causâ sint proxima veris.
This
Therefore, that is not the best poesy, which re-
sembles notions of things that are not, to things
that are though the fancy may be great, and the
words flowing, yet the soul is but half satisfied
when there is not truth in the foundation.
is that which makes Virgil be preferred before the
rest of poets. In variety of fancy and sweetness of
expression, you see Ovid far above him; for Virgil
rejected many of those things which Ovid wrote.
A great wit's great work is to refuse, as my worthy
friend, Sir John Berkenhead, has ingeniously ex-
pressed it. You rarely meet with any thing in
Virgil but truth, which therefore leaves the strongest
impression of pleasure in the soul. This I thought
myself obliged to say in behalf of Poesy; and to
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
171
declare, though it be against myself, that when
poets do not argue well, the defect is in the work-
men, not in the art.
And now I come to the boldest part of his
discourse, wherein he attacks not me, but all the
ancients and moderns; and undermines, as he
thinks, the very foundations on which Dramatick
Poesy is built. I could wish he would have de-
clined that envy which must of necessity follow
such an undertaking, and contented himself with
triumphing over me in my opinions of verse, which
I will never hereafter dispute with him; but he
must pardon me, if I have that veneration for
Aristotle, Horace, Ben Jonson, and Corneille, that
I dare not serve him in such a cause, and against
such heroes, but rather fight under their protec-
tion, as Homer reports of little Teucer, who shot
the Trojans from under the large buckler of Ajax
Telamon:
Στη δ᾽ ἄρ᾽ ὑπ' Αία & σακέϊ Τελαμωνιάδαο.
He stood beneath his brother's ample shield;
And cover'd there, shot death through all the field.
The words of my noble adversary are these:
But if we examine the general rules laid down
for plays by strict reason, we shall find the errours
equally gross; for the great foundation which is laid
to build upon, is nothing, as it is generally stated, as
will appear upon the examination of the particulars.
These particulars, in due time, shall be ex-
amined. In the mean while, let us consider what
172
DEFENCE OF THE ESSAY
this great foundation is, which he says is nothing,
as it is generally stated. I never heard of any
other foundation of Dramatick Poesy than the
imitation of nature; neither was there ever pre-
tended any other by the ancients, or moderns, or
me, who endeavour to follow them in that rule.
This I have plainly said in my definition of a play;
that it is a just and lively image of human nature,
&c. Thus the foundation, as it is generally stated,
will stand sure, if this definition of a play be true ;
if it be not, he ought to have made his exception
against it, by proving that a play is not an imita-
tion of nature, but somewhat else which he is
pleased to think it.
But it is very plain, that he has mistaken the
foundation for that which is built upon it, though
not immediately. For the direct and immediate
consequence is this; if nature be to be imitated,
then there is a rule for imitating nature rightly;
otherwise there may be an end, and no means
conducing to it. Hitherto I have proceeded by
demonstration; but as our divines,-when they
have proved a Deity, because there is order, and
have inferred that this Deity ought to be wor-
shipped,-differ afterwards in the manner of the
worship; so, having laid down-that nature is to
be imitated, and that proposition proving the next,
-that then there are means which conduce to the
imitating of nature, I dare proceed no farther
positively; but have only laid down some opinions
of the ancients and moderns, and of my own, as
ON DRAMATICK POESY,
173
means which they used, and which I thought
probable for the attaining of that end. Those
means are the same which my antagonist calls the
foundations,-how properly, the world may judge;
and to prove that this is his meaning, he clears it
immediately to you, by enumerating those rules or
propositions against which he makes his particular
exceptions,—as namely, those of time, and place,
in these words: First, we are told the plot should
not be so ridiculously contrived, as to crowd two
several countries into one stage; secondly, to cramp
the accidents of many years or days into the repre-
sentation of two hours and an half; and lastly, a
conclusion drawn, that the only remaining dispute is,
concerning time, whether it should be contained in
twelve or twenty-four hours; and the place to be
limited to that spot of ground where the play is sup-
posed to begin: and this is called nearest nature; for
that is concluded most natural, which is most probable,
and nearest to that which it presents.
Thus he has only made a small mistake-of the
means conducing to the end, for the end itself;
and of the superstructure for the foundation. But
he proceeds: To shew, therefore, upon what ill
grounds they dictate laws for Dramatick Poesy, &c.
He is here pleased to charge me with being
magisterial, as he has done in many other places of
his Preface. Therefore in vindication of myself, I
must crave leave to say, that my whole discourse
was sceptical, according to that way of reasoning
which was used by Socrates, Plato, and all the
174
DEFENCE OF THE ESSAY
Academicks of old, which Tully and the best of
the ancients followed, and which is imitated by the
modest inquisitions of the Royal Society. That it
is so, not only the name will shew, which is, An
Essay, but the frame and composition of the work.
You see, it is a dialogue sustained by persons of
several opinions, all of them left doubtful, to be
determined by the readers in general; and more
particularly deferred to the accurate judgment of
my lord Buckhurst, to whom I made a dedication
of my book. These are my words in my Epistle,
speaking of the persons whom I introduced in
my dialogue: " It is true, they differed in their
"opinions, as it is probable they would; neither
"do I take upon me to reconcile, but to relate
"them, leaving your lordship to decide it in favour
"of that part which you shall judge most reason-
"able.” And after that, in my Advertisement to
the Reader, I said this: "The drift of the ensuing
"discourse is chiefly to vindicate the honour of
"our English writers from the censure of those
"who unjustly prefer the French before them.
"This I intimate, lest any should think me so
"exceeding vain, as to teach others an art which
"they understand much better than myself." But
this is more than necessary to clear my modesty
in that point; and I am very confident that there
is scarce any man who has lost so much time, as
to read that trifle, but will be my compurgator as
to that arrogance whereof I am accused. The
truth is, if I had been naturally guilty of so much
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
175
vanity as to dictate my opinions, yet I do not find
that the character of a positive or self-conceited
person' is of such advantage to any in this age,
that I should labour to be publickly admitted of
that order.
But I am not now to defend my own cause,
when that of all the ancients and moderns is in
question. For this gentleman, who accuses me of
arrogance, has taken a course not to be taxed with
the other extreme of modesty. Those propositions
which are laid down in my discourse, as helps to
the better imitation of nature, are not mine, (as I
have said,) nor were ever pretended so to be, but
derived from the authority of Aristotle and Horace,
and from the rules and examples of Ben Jonson
and Corneille. These are the men with whom
properly he contends, and against whom he will
endeavour to make it evident, that there is no such
thing as what they all pretend.
His argument against the unities of place and
time, is this: That it is as impossible for one stage
to present two rooms or houses truly, as two countries
or kingdoms; and as impossible that five hours or
twenty-four hours should be two hours, as that a
thousand hours or years should be less than what they
are, or the greatest part of time to be comprehended
He is sup-
7 Sir Robert Howard's own character.
posed to have been ridiculed under the character of Sir
Positive Atall, in Shadwell's SULLEN LOVERS, represented
and published in the same year in which this piece was
written.
176
DEFENCE OF THE ESSAY
in the less: for all of them being impossible, they are
none of them nearest the truth or nature of what they
present; for impossibilities are all equal, and admit
of no degree.
This argument is so scattered into parts, that it
çan scarce be united into a syllogism; yet, in
obedience to him, I will abbreviate and compre-
hend as much of it as I can in few words, that my
answer to it may be more perspicuous. I con-
ceive his meaning to be what follows, as to the
unity of place: (if I mistake, I beg his pardon,
professing it is not out of any design to play the
Argumentative Poet.) If one stage cannot pro-
perly present two rooms or houses, much less two
countries or kingdoms, then there can be no unity
of place; but one stage cannot properly perform
this therefore there can be no unity of place.
:
I plainly deny his minor proposition; the force
of which, if I mistake not, depends on this; that
the stage being one place cannot be two. This,
indeed, is as great a secret, as that we are all
mortal; but to require it with another, I must
crave leave to tell him, that though the stage
8
8 There is here, I believe, a covert allusion to the
character in Shadwell's play already mentioned, who in
the first scene, addressing Sandford, says, "betwixt
you and I, let me tell you, we are all mortal;" in which
wise remark the author probably had in view Sir Robert
Howard's poem
Against the Fear of Death." See
particularly the opening and concluding lines. Nichols's
COLLECTION, ii. 330.
1
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
177
cannot be two places, yet it may properly represent
them, successively, or at several times. His argu-
ment is indeed no more than a mere fallacy, which
will evidently appear, when we distinguish place,
as it relates to plays, into real and imaginary.
The real place is that theatre, or piece of ground,
on which the play is acted. The imaginary, that
house, town, or country, where the action of the
drama is supposed to be; or more plainly, where
the scene of the play is laid. Let us now
apply this to that Herculean argument, which, if
strictly and duly weighed, is to make it evident,
that there is no such thing as what they all pretend.
It is impossible, he says, for one stage to present
two rooms or houses. I answer, it is neither
impossible, nor improper, for one real place to
represent two or more imaginary places, so it be
done successively; which in other words is no
more than this, that the imagination of the audi-
ence, aided by the words of the poet, and painted
scenes, may suppose the stage to be sometimes
one place, sometimes another; now a garden, or
wood, and immediately a camp: which, I appeal
to every man's imagination, if it be not true.
Neither the ancients nor moderns, as much fools
as he is pleased to think them, ever asserted that
they could make one place two; but they might
hope, by the good leave of this author, that the
change of a scene might lead the imagination to
suppose the place altered: so that he cannot fasten
those absurdities upon this scene of a play, or
VOL. I.
N
178
DEFENCE OF THE ESSAY
imaginary place of action, that it is one place, and
yet two. And this being so clearly proved, that
it is past any show of a reasonable denial, it will
not be hard to destroy that other part of his
argument which depends upon it; namely, that it is
as impossible for a stage to represent two rooms or
houses, as two countries or kingdoms; for his
reason is already overthrown, which was, because
both were alike impossible. This is manifestly
otherwise; for it is proved that a stage may pro-
perly represent two rooms or houses; for the
imagination being judge of what is represented,
will in reason be less choked with the appearance
of two rooms in the same house, or two houses in
the same city, than with two distant cities in the
same country, or two remote countries in the same
universe. Imagination in a man or reasonable
creature, is supposed to participate of reason; and
when that governs, as it does in the belief of
fiction, reason is not destroyed, but misled, or
blinded that can prescribe to the reason, during
the time of the representation, somewhat like a
weak belief of what it sees and hears; and reason
suffers itself to be so hood-winked, that it may
better enjoy the pleasures of the fiction. But it iş
never so wholly made a captive, as to be drawn
headlong into a persuasion of those things which
are most remote from probability. It is in that
case a free-born subject, not a slave; it will con-
tribute willingly its assent, as far as it sees conve-
nient, but will not be forced. Now there is a
greater vicinity in nature betwixt two rooms than
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
179
1
betwixt two houses, betwixt two houses than
betwixt two cities, and so of the rest; Reason
therefore can sooner be led by Imagination to step
from one room into another, than to walk to two
distant houses, and yet rather to go thither, than
to fly like a witch through the air, and be hurried
from one region to another. Fancy and Reason
go hand in hand; the first cannot leave the last
behind; and though Fancy, when it sees the wide
gulph, would venture over as the nimbler, yet it is
withheld by Reason, which will refuse to take the
leap, when the distance over it appears too large.
If Ben Jonson himself will remove the scene from
Rome into Tuscany in the same act, and from thence
return to Rome, in the scene which immediately
follows, Reason will consider there is no propor→
tionable allowance of time to perform the journey,
and therefore will chuse to stay at home. So
then, the less change of place there is, the less
time is taken up in transporting the persons of the
drama, with analogy to reason; and in that
analogy, or resemblance of fiction to truth, consists
the excellency of the play.
For what else concerns the unity of place, I
have already given my opinion of it in my Essay;
-that there is a latitude to be allowed to it,-as
several places in the same town or city, or places
adjacent to each other in the same country, which
may all be comprehended under the larger deno-
mination of one place; yet with this restriction,
that the nearer and fewer those imaginary places
are, the greater resemblance they will have to
180
DEFENCE OF THE ESSAY
truth; and reason, which cannot make them one,
will be more easily led to suppose them so.
What has been said of the unity of place, may
easily be applied to that of time. I grant it
to be impossible, that the greater part of time
should be comprehended in the less, that twenty-
four hours should be crowded into three: but
there is no necessity of that supposition.-
For as place, so time relating to a play, is either
imaginary or real: the real is comprehended in
those three hours, more or less, in the space of
which the play is represented; the imaginary
is that which is supposed to be taken up in
the representation, as twenty-four hours more or
less. Now no man ever could suppose that
twenty-four real hours could be included in the
space of three: but where is the absurdity of
affirming that the feigned business of twenty-four
imagined hours may not more naturally be repre-
sented in the compass of three real hours, than the
like feigned business of twenty-four years in the
same proportion of real time? For the proportions.
are always real, and much nearer, by his per-
mission, of twenty-four to three, than of four
thousand to it.*
* Our author has here stated, with great strength and
acuteness, all that can be urged in favour of observing
the unities of time and place. Dr. Johnson's masterly
refutation of this argument is as follows:
"The objection arising from the impossibility of passing
the first hour at Alexandria, and the next at Rome,
supposes, that when the play opens the spectator really
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
181
I am almost fearful of illustrating any thing by
similitude, lest he should confute it for an argu-
ment; yet I think the comparison of a glass will
discover very aptly the fallacy of his argument,
imagines himself at Alexandria, and believes that his
walk to the theatre has been a voyage to Egypt, and that
he lives in the days of Antony and Cleopatra. Surely he
that imagines this may imagine more.
He that can take
the stage at one time for the palace of the Ptolemies, may
take it in half an hour for the promontory of Actium.
Delusion, if delusion be admitted, has no certain limitation;
if the spectator can be once persuaded, that his old
acquaintance are Alexander and Cæsar, that a room illu-
minated with candles is the plain of Pharsalia, or the
bank of Granicus, he is in a state of elevation above the
reach of reason, or of truth; and from the heights of
empyrean poetry, may despise the circumscriptions of
terrestrial nature. There is no reason why a mind thus
wandering in ecstasy should count the clock, or why an
hour should not be a century in that calenture of the
brains that can make the stage a field.
"The truth is, that the spectators are always in their
senses, and know, from the first act to the last, that the
stage is only a stage, and that the players are only players.
They come to hear a certain number of lines recited with
just gesture and elegant modulation. The lines relate to
some action, and an action must be in some place; but
the different actions that complete a story may be in places
very remote from each other; and where is the absurdity
of allowing that space to represent first Athens, and then
Sicily, which was always known to be neither Sicily nor
Athens, but a modern theatre.
"By supposition, as place is introduced, time may be
extended the time required by the fable elapses for the
most part between the acts; for, of so much of the action
182
DEFENCE OF THE ESSAY
both concerning time and place. The strength
of his reason depends on this, that the less cannot
comprehend the greater. I have already answered,
that we need not suppose it does: I say not that
the less can comprehend the greater, but only that
it may represent it: as in a glass or mirror of
half a yard diameter, a whole room and many
persons in it may be seen at once
be seen at once; not that it can
comprehend that room or those persons, but that
it represents them to the sight.
But the Author of THE DUKE OF LERMA is to
be excused for his declaring against the unity of
time; for, if I be not much mistaken, he is an
interested person, the time of that play taking up
so many years as the favour of the Duke of Lerma
as is represented, the real and poetical duration is the
same. If, in the first act, preparations for war against
Mithridates are represented to be made in Rome, the
event of the war may, without absurdity, be represented,
in the catastrophe, as happening in Pontus; we know
that there is neither war, nor preparation for war; we
know that we are neither in Rome nor Pontus; that
neither Mithridates nor Lucullus are before us. The
drama exhibits successive imitations of successive actions ;
and why may not the second imitation represent an action
that happened years after the first, if it be so connected
with it, that nothing but time can be supposed to inter-
vene? Time is, of all modes of existence, most obse
quious to the imagination; a lapse of years is as easily
conceived as a passage of hours. In contemplation we
easily contract the time of real actions, and therefore
willingly permit it to be contracted when we only see
their imitation." Preface to Shakspeare's Plays.
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
183
:
continued; nay the second and third act including
all the time of his prosperity, which was a great
part of the reign of Philip the Third for in the
beginning of the second act he was not yet a
a favourite, and before the end of the third, was in
disgrace. I say not this with the least design of
limiting the stage too servilely to twenty-four
hours, however he be pleased to tax me with
dogmatizing in that point. In my dialogue, as I
before hinted, several persons maintained their
several opinions. One of them, indeed, who
supported the cause of the French poesy, said,
how strict they were in that particular; but he
who answered in behalf of our nation, was willing
to give more latitude to the rule; and cites the
words of Corneille himself, complaining against
the severity of it, and observing what beauties it
banished from the stage.' In few words, my own
opinion is this,-(and I willingly submit it to my
adversary, when he will please impartially to con-
sider it,) that the imaginary time of every play
ought to be contrived into as narrow a compass as
the nature of the plot, the quality of the persons,
and variety of accidents will allow. In comedy I
would not exceed twenty-four or thirty hours: for
the plot, accidents, and persons of comedy are
small, and may be naturally turned in a little.
compass but in tragedy the design is weighty,
and the persons great; therefore there will natu-
rally be required a greater space of time in which
› See p. 93.
184
DEFENCE OF THE ESSAY
to move them. And this thoughi Ben Jonson has
not told us, yet it is manifestly his opinion: for
you see that to his comedies he allows generally
but twenty-four hours; to his two tragedies,
SEJANUS and CATILINE, a much larger time :
though he draws both of them into as narrow a
compass as he can; for he shews you only the
latter end of Sejanus his favour, and the con-
spiracy of Catiline already ripe, and just breaking
out into action.
But as it is an errour on the one side, to make
too great a disproportion betwixt the imaginary
time of the play, and the real time of its repre-
sentation; so on the other side, it is an over-
sight to compress the accidents of a play into a
narrower compass than that in which they could
naturally be produced. Of this last errour the
French are seldom guilty, because the thinness
of their plots prevents them from it; but few
Englishmen, except Ben Jonson, have ever made
a plot with a variety of design in it, included in
twenty-four hours, which was altogether natural.
For this reason, I prefer THE SILENT WOMAN
before all other plays, I think justly, as I do its
author, in judgment, above all other poets. Yet
of the two, I think that errour the most pardonable,
which in too strait a compass crowds together
many accidents; since it produces more variety,
and consequently more pleasure to the audience;
and because the nearness of proportion betwixt the
imaginary and real time, does speciously cover the
compression of the accidents.
ON DRAMATICK POESY.
185
Thus I have endeavoured to answer the meaning
of his argument; for as he drew it, I humbly
conceive that it was none; as will appear by his
proposition, and the proof of it. His proposition
was this:
If strictly and duly weighed, it is as impossible for
one stage to present two rooms or houses, as two coun-
tries or kingdoms, &c. And his proof this: For all
being impossible, they are none of them nearest the
truth or nature of what they present.
Here you see, instead of proof or reason, there
is only petitio principii. For in plain words, his
sense is this: two things are as impossible as one
another, because they are both equally impossible.
But he takes those two things to be granted as
impossible which he ought to have proved such,
before he had proceeded to prove them equally
impossible he should have made out first, that it
it was impossible for one stage to represent two
houses, and then have gone forward to prove that
it was as equally impossible for a stage to present
two houses, as two countries.
After all this, the very absurdity to which he
would reduce me, is none at all: for he only drives
at this ;—that if his. argument be true, I must then
acknowledge that there are degrees in impossi-
bilities, which I easily grant him without dispute:
and if I mistake not, Aristotle and the School are
of my opinion. For there are some things which
are absolutely impossible, and others which are
only so ex parte; as it is absolutely impossible
for a thing to be, and not to be, at the same time;
186
}
DEEENCE OF THE ESSAY, &c.
but for a stone to move naturally upward, is only
impossible ex parte materiæ; but it is not impossible
for the first mover to alter the nature of it.
His last assault, like that of a Frenchman, is
most feeble for whereas I have observed, that
none have been violent against verse, but such
only as have not attempted it, or have succeeded
ill in their attempt, he will needs, according to his
usual custom, improve my observation to an argu-
ment, that he might have the glory to confute it.
But I lay my observation at his feet, as I do my
pen, which I have often employed willingly in his
deserved commendations, and now most unwillingly
against his judgment. For his person and parts, I
honour them as much as any man living, and have
had so many particular obligations to him, that I
should be very ungrateful, if I did not acknowledge
them to the world. But I gave not the first
occasion of this difference in opinions. In my
Epistle Dedicatory before my RIVAL LADIES, I
have said somewhat in behalf of verse, which he
was pleased to answer in his Preface to his plays:
that occasioned my réply in my Essay; and that
reply begot this rejoinder of his in his Preface to
THE DUKE OF LERMA. But as I was the last who
took up arms, I will be the first to lay them down.
For what I have here written, I submit it wholly to
him; and if I do not hereafter answer what may be
objected against this paper, I hope the world will
not impute it to any other reason, than only the due
respect which I have for so noble an opponent.
PREFACE
TO THE
MOCK ASTROLOGER:
FIRST PRINTED IN QUARTO, IN 1671.
11
2
"This Preface," says Dr. Johnson,
seems very
elaborately written, and contains many just remarks on
the Fathers of the English drama. Shakspeare's plots, he
says, are in the hundred Novels of Cinthio; those of
Beaumont and Fletcher in Spanish Stories; Jonson alone
made them for himself. His criticisms upon tragedy,
comedy, and farce, are judicious and profound. He
endeavours to defend the immorality of some of his
comedies by the example of former writers; which is
only to say, that he was not the first, nor perhaps the
greatest, offender." Life of DRYDEN.
1
PREFACE
TO THE
MOCK ASTROLOGER.
I HAD thought, Reader, in this Preface, to
have written somewhat concerning the difference
betwixt the plays of our age, and those of our
predecessors, on the English stage: to have shewn
in what parts of Dramatick Poesy we were excelled
by Ben Jonson, I mean, humour, and contrivance
of comedy; and in what we may justly claim
precedence of Shakspeare and Fletcher, namely,
in heroick plays; but this design I have waved on
second considerations; at least deferred it till I
publish THE CONQUEST OF GRANADA, where the
discourse will be more proper. I had also pre-
pared to treat of the improvement of our language
since Fletcher's and Jonson's days, and conse-
quently of our refining the courtship, raillery, and
conversation of plays: but as I am willing to
decline that envy which I should draw on myself
from some old opiniatre judges of the stage, so
likewise I am pressed in time so much, that I have
not. leisure, at present, to go through with it.
Neither, indeed, do I value a reputation gained
190
PREFACE TO THE
from comedy, so far as to concern myself about it,.
any more than I needs must in my own defence:
for I think it, in its own nature, inferior to all
sorts of dramatick writing. Low comedy espe
cially requires, on the writer's part, much of con-
versation with the vulgar, and much of ill nature
in the observation of their follies. But let all
men please themselves according to their several
tastes: that which is not pleasant to me, may be
to others who judge better. And, to prevent an
accusation from my enemies, I am sometimes ready
to imagine, that my disgust of low comedy pro-
ceeds not so much from my judgment as from my
temper; which is the reason why I so seldom
write it; and that when I succeed in it, (I mean
so far as to please the audience,) yet I am nothing
satisfied with what I have done; but am often
vexed to hear the people laugh, and clap, as they
perpetually do, where I intended them no jest;
while they let pass the better things without taking
notice of them. Yet even this confirms me in my
opinion of slighting popular applause, and of con-
temning that approbation which those very people
give, equally with me, to the zany of a mounte-
bank; or to the appearance of an antick on the
theatre, without wit on the poet's part, or any oc-
casion of laughter from the actor, besides the
ridiculousness of his habit and his grimaces.²
2 Our author probably here alludes to Mr. James Noke,
(corruptly called by his contemporaries Nokes,) who in the
preceding year, (1670) by a fantastick dress and ridiculous
MOCK ASTROLOGER.
191
But I have descended before I was aware, from
comedy to farce; which consists principally of
grimaces. That I admire not any comedy equally
with tragedy, is, perhaps, from the sullenness of
my humour; but that I detest those farces, which
are now the most frequent entertainments of
the stage, I am sure I have reason on my side.
Comedy consists, though of low persons, yet of
natural actions and characters; I mean such
humours, adventures, and designs, as are to be
found and met with in the world. Farce, on
the other side, consists of forced humours, and
unnatural events. Comedy presents us with the
imperfections of human nature; farce entertains
us with what is monstrous and chimerical: the
one causes laughter in those who can judge of
men and manners, by the lively representation of
their folly or corruption; the other produces the
same effect in those who can judge of neither,
and that only by its extravagancies. The first
works on the judgment and fancy; the latter on
the fancy only: there is more of satisfaction in the
former kind of laughter, and in the latter more of
scorn. But, how it happens, that an impossible
adventure should cause our mirth, I cannot so
easily imagine. Something there may be in the
oddness of it, because on the stage it is the com-
grimaces, had gained great applause in the part of Sir
Arthur Addle, in the play of Sir SALOMON SINGLE,
written by John Caryl, Esq. See Downes's Roscius
ANGLICANUS, 8vo. 1708, p. 29.
192
PREFACE TO THE
mon effect of things unexpected to surprise us
into a delight; and that is to be ascribed to the
strange appetite, as I may call it, of the fancy;
which, like that of a longing woman, often runs
out into the most extravagant desires, and is
better satisfied sometimes with loam, or with the
rinds of trees, than with the wholesome nourish-
ments of life. In short, there is the same differ-
ence betwixt farce and comedy, as betwixt an
empirick and a true physician: both of them may
attain their ends, but what the one performs by
hazard, the other does by skill. And as the artist
is often unsuccessful, while the mountebank suc-
ceeds, so farces more commonly take the people
than comedies. For to write unnatural things, is
the most probable way of pleasing them, who
understand not nature; and a true poet often
misses of applause, because he cannot debase him-
self to write so ill as to please his audience.
After all, it is to be acknowledged, that most of
those comedies which have been lately written,
have been allied too much to farce: and this must
of necessity fall out, till we forbear the translation
of French plays: for their poets, wanting judgment
to make or to maintain true characters, strive to
cover their defects with ridiculous figures and
grimaces. While I say this, I accuse myself as
well as others and this very play would rise up
in judgment against me, if I would defend all
things I have written to be natural: but I confess
I have given too much to the people in it, and am
:
MOCK ASTROLOGER.
193
ashamed for them as well as for myself, that I have
pleased them at so cheap a rate. Not that there
is any thing here, which I would not defend to an
ill-natured judge; (for I despise their censures,
who I am sure would write worse on the same
subject:) but because I love to deal clearly and
plainly, and to speak of my own faults with more
criticism, than I would of another poet's. Yet I
think it no vanity to say-that this comedy has
as much of entertainment in it as many others
which have been lately written and, if I find my
own errours in it, I am able at the same time to
arraign all my contemporaries for greater. As I
pretend not that I can write humour, so none of
them can reasonably pretend to have written it as
they ought. Jonson was the only man of all
ages and nations, who has performed it well; and
that but in three or four of his comedies: the rest
are but a crambe bis cocta; the same humours a
little varied, and written worse. Neither was it
more allowable in him, than it is in our present
poets, to represent the follies of particular persons;
of which many have accused him. Parcere per-
sonis, dicere de vitiis, is the rule of plays. And
Horace tells you, that the old comedy amongst
the Grecians was silenced for the too great liberties
of the poets:
in vitium libertas excidit et vim
Dignam lege regi: lex est accepta, chorusque
Turpiter obticuit, sublato jure nocendi.
VOL. I.
:
194
PREFACE TO THE
Of which he gives you the reason in another place:
where, having given the
precept―
Neve immunda crepent, ignominiosaque dicta,-
he immediately subjoins,
Offenduntur enim quibus est equus, et pater, et res.
But Ben Jonson is to be admired for many
excellencies; and can be taxed with fewer failings
than any English poet. I know I have been
accused as an enemy of his writings; but without
any
other reason than that I do not admire him
blindly, and without looking into his imperfec-
tions. For why should he only be exempted from
those frailties, from which Homer and Virgil are
not free? Or why should there be any ipse dixit in
our poctry, any more than there is in our philosophy?
I admire and applaud him where I ought: those
who do more, do but value themselves in their
admiration of him; and by telling you they extol
Ben Jonson's way, would insinuate to you that
they can practise it. For my part, I declare that
I want judgment to imitate him; and should think
it a great impudence in myself to attempt it. To
make men appear pleasantly ridiculous on the
stage was, as I have said, his talent; and in this he
needed not the acumen of wit, but that of judg-
ment. For the characters and representations
of folly are only the effects of observation; and
observation is an effect of judgment. Some inge-
nious men, for whom I have a particular esteem,
have thought I have much injured Ben Jonson,
MOCK ASTROLOGER.
195
when I have not allowed his wit to be extraordi-
nary; but they confound the notion of what is
witty, with what is pleasant. That Ben Jonson's
plays were pleasant, he must want reason whọ
denies; but that pleasantness was not properly
wit, or the sharpness of conceit, but the natural
imitation of folly: which I confess to be excellent
in its kind, but not to be of that kind which they
pretend. Yet if we will believe Quintilian in his
chapter de movendo risu, he gives his opinion of
both in these following words: Stulta reprehendere
facillimum est; nam per se sunt ridicula, et à derisu
non procul abest risus: sed rem urbanam facit aliqua
ex nobis adjectio.
And some perhaps would be apt to say of Jonson,
as it was said of Demosthenes,-non displicuisse illi
jocos, sed non contigisse. I will not deny but that I
approve most the mixed way of comedy; that
which is neither all wit, nor all humour, but the
result of both: neither so little of humour as
Fletcher shews, nor so little of love and wit, as
Jonson neither all cheat, with which the best
plays of the one are filled, nor all adventure,
which is the common practice of the other. I
would have the characters well chosen, and kept
distant from interfering with each other; which
is more than Fletcher or Shakspeare+ did: but I
would have more of the urbana, venusta, salsa,
+ This censure of Shakspeare is wholly unfounded.
His nice distinction of character is one of his acknow-
ledged merits; as our author himself, in a subsequent
Essay, allows.
196
PREFACE TO THE
faceta, and the rest which Quintilian reckons up
as the ornaments of wit; and these are extremely
wanting in Ben Jonson. As for repartee in par-
ticular, as it is the very soul of conversation, so it
is the greatest grace of comedy, where it is proper
to the characters. There may be much of acute-
ness in a thing well said; but there is more in a
quick reply: sunt enim longè venustiora omnia in
respondendo quàm in provocando. Of one thing I
am sure, that no man ever will decry wit, but he
who despairs of it himself; and who has no other
quarrel to it but that which the fox had to the
grapes. Yet, as Mr. Cowley (who had a greater
portion of it than any man I know) tells us in his
Character of Wit,-rather than all wit, let there
be none. I think there is no folly so great in any
poet of our age, as the superfluity and waste of wit
was in some of our predecessors: particularly we
may say of Fletcher and of Shakspeare, what was
said of Ovid, In omni ejus ingenio, facilius quod rejici,
quàm quodadjici potest, invenies: the contrary of which
was true in Virgil, and our incomparable Jonson.
Some enemies of repartee have observed to us,
that there is a great latitude in their characters,
which are made to speak it; and that it is easier
to write wit than humour; because in the charac-
ters of humour, the poet is confined to make the
person speak what is only proper to it; whereas
all kind of wit is proper in the character of a
witty person. But, by their favour, there are as
different characters in wit as in folly. Neither is
all kind of wit proper in the mouth of every inge-
MOCK ASTROLOGER.
197
nious person. A witty coward, and a witty brave,
must speak differently. Falstaff and the Liar s
speak not like Don John in THE CHANCES, and
Valentine in WIT WITHOUT MONEY; and Jonson's
Truewit in THE SILENT WOMAN is a character
different from all of them. Yet it appears, that
this one character of wit was more difficult to the
author, than all his images of humour in the
play; for those he could describe and manage
from his observation of men; this he has taken,
at least a part of it, from books: witness the
speeches in the first act, translated verbatim out of
Ovid DE ARTE AMANDI;-to omit what afterwards
he borrowed from the sixth satire of Juvenal
against women.
However, if I should grant, that there were a
greater latitude in characters of wit, than in those
of humour, yet that latitude would be of small
advantage to such poets who have too narrow an
imagination to write it. And to entertain an
audience perpetually with
humour, is to carry
them from the conversation of gentlemen, and
treat them with the follies and extravagancies of
Bedlam.
I find I have launched out farther than I in-
tended in the beginning of this Preface; and
that, in the heat of writing, I have touched at
something which I thought to have avoided. It
is time now to draw homeward; and to think
83.
5 A character in a play already mentioned. See p.
198
PREFACE TO THE
rather of defending myself, than assaulting others.
I have already acknowledged that this play is far
from perfect but I do not think myself obliged
to discover the imperfections of it to my adver-
saries, any more than a guilty person is bound to
accuse himself before his judges. It is charged
upon me, that I make debauched persons (such
as they say my Astrologer and Gamester are) my
protagonists, or the chief persons of the drama,
and that I make them happy in the conclusion of
my play; against the law of comedy, which is to
reward virtue, and punish vice. I answer first,
that I know no such law to have been constantly
observed in comedy, either by the ancient or
modern poets. Chærea is made happy in THE
EUNUCH, after having deflowered a virgin; and
Terence generally does the same through all his
plays; where you perpetually see, not only de-
bauched young men enjoy their mistresses, but
even the courtezans themselves rewarded and
honoured in the catastrophe. The same may be
observed in Plautus almost every where. Ben
Jonson himself, after whom I may be proud to err,
has given me more than once the example of it.
That in THE ALCHEMIST is notorious, where Face,
after having contrived and carried on the great
cozenage of the play, and continued in it, without
repentance, to the last, is not only forgiven by his
master, but enriched, by his consent, with the
spoils of those whom he had cheated. And, which
is more,―his master himself, a grave man, and a
MOCK ASTROLOGER.
199
widower, is introduced taking his man's counsel,
debauching the widow first, in hope to marry her
afterward. In THE SILENT WOMAN, Dauphine
(who with the other two gentlemen, is of the same
character with my Celadon in THE MAIDEN
QUEEN, and with Wildblood in this) professes
himself in love with all the Collegiate ladies; and
they likewise are all of the same character with
each other, excepting only Madam Otter, who
has something singular: yet this naughty Dau-
phine is crowned in the end with the possession of
his uncle's estate, and with the hopes of enjoying
all his mistresses. And his friend Mr. Truewit
(the best character of a gentleman which Ben
Jonson ever made) is not ashamed to pimp for
him. As for Beaumont and Fletcher, I need not
alledge examples out of them; for that were to
quote almost all their comedies.
But now it will be objected, that I patronize
vice by the authority of former poets, and exte-
nuate my own faults by recrimination. I answer,
that as I defend myself by their example, so that
example I defend by reason, and by the end of all
dramatick poesy. In the first place, therefore,
give me leave to shew you their mistake, who have
accused me. They have not distinguished as they
ought, betwixt the rules of tragedy and comedy.
In tragedy, where the actions and persons are
great, and the crimes horrid, the laws of justice
are more strictly to be observed; and examples of
punishment to be made, to deter mankind from
200
PREFACE TO THE
:
the pursuit of vice. Faults of this kind have been
rare amongst the ancient poets; for they have
punished in Oedipus, and in his posterity, the sin
which he knew not he had committed. Medea
is the only example I remember at present, who
escapes from punishment after murder. Thus
tragedy fulfils one great part of its institution;
which is by example to instruct. But in comedy
it is not so; for the chief end of it is divertisement
and delight and that so much, that it is disputed,
I think, by Heinsius, before Horace his Art of
Poetry, whether instruction be any part of its
employment. At least I am sure it can be but
its secondary end; for the business of the poet is
to make you laugh: when he writes humour, he
makes folly ridiculous; when wit, he moves you,
if not always to laughter, yet to a pleasure that is
more noble. And if he works a cure on folly,
and the small imperfections in mankind, by ex-
posing them to publick view, that cure is not
performed by an immediate operation for it
works first on the ill-nature of the audience; they
are moved to laugh by the representation of
deformity; and the shame of that laughter teaches
us to amend what is ridiculous in our manners.
This being then established,-that the first end of
comedy is delight, and instruction only the second,
it may reasonably be inferred, that comedy is not
so much obliged to the punishment of the faults
which it represents, as tragedy. For the persons
in comedy are of a lower quality, the action is
MOCK ASTROLOGER.
201
}
6
little, and the faults and vices are but the sallies
of youth, and the frailties of human nature, and
not premeditated crimes: such to which all men
are obnoxious, not such as are attempted only by
few, and those abandoned to all sense of virtue;
such as move pity and commiseration, not detesta-
tion and horrour; such, in short, as may be for-
given, not such as must of necessity be punished.
But, lest any man should think that I write this
to make libertinism amiable, or that I cared not
to debase the end and institution of comedy, so I
might thereby maintain my own errours, and those
of better poets, I must farther declare, both for
them and for myself, that we make not vicious
persons happy, but only as heaven makes sinners
so,—that is, by reclaiming them first from vice; for
so it is to be supposed they are, when they resolve
to marry; for then enjoying what they desire in
one, they cease to pursue the love of many. So
Chærea is made happy in Terence, in marrying
her whom he had deflowered; and so are Wild-
blood, and the Astrologer, in this play.
There is another crime with which I am charged,
at which I am yet much less concerned, because
it does not relate to my manners, as the former
did, but only to my reputation as a poet; a name
of which I assure the reader I am nothing proud,
and therefore cannot be very solicitous to defend
not.
6 I cared not is here used in the sense of-I scrupled
202
PREFACE TO THE
it. I am taxed with stealing all my plays, and
that by some who should be the last men from
whom I would steal any part of them. There is
one answer which I will not make; but it has
been made for me by him to whose grace and
patronage I owe all things,--"
Et spes et ratio studiorum in Casare tantum—
and without whose command they should no
longer be troubled with any thing of mine ;-
that he only desired, that they who accused me of
theft, would always steal him plays like mine.
But though I have reason to be proud of this
defence, yet I should wave it, because I have a
worse opinion of my own comedies, than any of
my enemies can have. It is true, that wherever I
have liked any story in a romance, novel, or
foreign play, I have made no difficulty, nor ever
shall, to take the foundation of it, to build it up,
and to make it proper for the English stage. And
I will be so vain to say-it has lost nothing in my
hands; but it always cost ime so much trouble to
heighten it for our theatre, which is incomparably
more curious in all the ornaments of dramatick
poesy, than the French or Spanish, that when I
had finished my play, it was like the hulk of Sir
Francis Drake, so strangely altered, that there
scarce remained any plank of the timber which
7 King Charles the Second. His Majesty is known
to have been fond of theatrical entertainments, and some-
times condescended so far as to suggest subjects for plays
to the poets of the time.
MOCK ASTROLOGER.
203
:
first built it. To witness this, I need go no
farther than this play. It was first Spanish, and
called EL ASTROLOGO FINGIDO; then made French
by the younger Corneille; and is now translated
into English, and in print, under the name of THE
FEIGNED ASTROLOGER. What I have performed
in this, will best appear, by comparing it with
those you will see that I have rejected some
adventures which I judged were not divertising;
that I have heightened those which I have chosen;
and that I have added others which were neither
in the French nor Spanish. And besides. you
will easily discover, that the walk of the Astrologer
is the least considerable in my play; for the design
of it turns more on the parts of Wildblood and
Jacintha, who are the chief persons in it. I have
farther to add, that I seldom use the wit and
language of any romance or play which I under-
take to alter; because my own invention (as ba l
as it is) can furnish me with nothing so dull as
what is there. Those who have called Virgil,
Terence, and Tasso, plagiaries, though they much
injured them, had yet a better colour for their
accusation; for Virgil has evidently translated
Theocritus, Hesiod, and Homer, in many places;
besides what he has taken from Ennius in his
own language: Terence was not only known to
translate Menander, (which he avows also in his
Prologues,) but was said also to be helped in
those translations by Scipio the African, and
8 Published in quarto in 1668.
204
PREFACE TO THE
Lælius and Tasso, the most excellent of modern
poets, and whom I reverence next to Virgil, has
taken both from Homer many admirable things
which were left untouched by Virgil, and from
Virgil himself, where Homer could not furnish
him. Yet the bodies of Virgil's and Tasso's
poems were their own; and so are all the orna-
ments of language and elocution in them. The
same, if there were any thing commendable in
this play, I could say for it. But I will come
nearer to our own countrymen. Most of Shak-
speare's plays, I mean the stories of them, are to
be found in the HECATOMITHI, or Hundred
Novels of Cinthio. I have, myself, read in his
Italian, that of ROMEO AND JULIET, THE MOOR
OF VENICE,' and many others of them. Beaumont
and Fletcher had most of theirs from Spanish
novels: witness THE CHANCES, THE SPANISH
CURATE, RULE A WIFE AND HAVE A WIFE,
THE LITTLE FRENCH LAWYER,' and so many
9 The story of OTHELLO may be read in CINTHIO,
(Deca Terza, novel. vii. p. 159. edit. 1583,) but that of
ROMEO AND JULIET is not found in that writer's HE-
CATOMITHI. It was originally related by Luigi da
Porto, a gentleman of Vicenza, whose work (LA GIU-
LIETTA) was printed at Venice in 1535.
In 1554,
Bandello published a Novel on the same subject. This
in 1562 was formed by Arthur Brooke into a poem,
entitled "The Tragical History of ROMEUS AND JULIET;"
on which Shakspeare founded his play.
All the plays here named appear to have been written
by Fletcher alone.
MOCK ASTROLOGER.
205
others of them, as compose the greatest part of
their volume in folio. Ben Jonson, indeed, has
designed his plots himself; but no man has bor-
rowed so much from the Ancients as he has done :
and he did well in it, for he has thereby beautified
our language.
But these little criticks do not well consider
what is the work of a poet, and what the graces
of a poem.
The story is the least part of either
I mean the foundation of it, before it is modelled
by the art of him who writes it; who forms it
with more care, by exposing only the beautiful
parts of it to view, than a skilful lapidary sets a
jewel. On this foundation of the story the cha-
racters are raised; and, since no story can afford
characters enough for the variety of the English
stage, it follows that it is to be altered, and
enlarged, with new persons, accidents, and designs,
which will almost make it new. When this is
done, the forming it into acts and scenes, disposing
of actions and passions into their proper places,
and beautifying both with descriptions, similitudes,
and propriety of language, is the principal employ-
ment of the poet; as being the largest field of
fancy, which is the principal quality required in
him for so much the word TonTns implies.-
Judgment, indeed, is necessary in him; but it is
fancy that gives the life-touches, and the secret
graces to it; especially in serious plays, which
depend not much on observation.
ե
TOIN
For to write
humour in comedy, (which is the theft of poets
3
206
PREFACE, &c.
from mankind,) little of fancy is required; the
poet observes only what is ridiculous and pleasant
folly, and by judging exactly what is so, he pleases
in the representation of it.²
But in general, the employment of a poet is
like that of a curious gunsmith or watchmaker:
the iron or silver is not his own, but they are the
least part of that which gives the value; the price
lies wholly in the workmanship. And he who
works dully on a story, without moving laughter
in a comedy, or raising concernments in a serious
play, is no more to be accounted a good poet, than
a gunsmith of the Minories is to be compared with
the best workman of the town.
But I have said more of this than I intended;
and more, perhaps, than I needed to have done.
I shall but laugh at them hereafter, who accuse
me with so little reason; and withal, contemn
their dulness, who, if they could ruin that little
reputation I have got, and which I value not, yet
would want both wit and learning to establish
their own, or to be remembered in after ages for
any thing, but only that which makes them
ridiculous in this.
2 Our author, in my apprehension, has here, by an-
ticipation, given a complete answer to the intemperate
invectives.which many years afterwards Langbaine pub-
lished against him on the subject of plagiarism. See
his "Account of the English Dramatick Poets," 8vo.
1691, pp. 130-177.
or
HEROICK PLAYS,
AN ESSAY;
PREFIXED TO
THE CONQUEST OF GRANADA,
first printed IN QUARTO, IN 1672.
}
OF
HEROICK PLAYS:
AN ESSAY.2
:
WHETHER Heroick Verse ought to be
admitted into serious plays, is not now to be dis-
puted it is already in possession of the stage; and
I dare confidently affirm, that very few tragedies,
in this age, shall be received without it.3 All the
arguments which are formed against it, can amount
to no more than this,—that it is not so near
2 This Essay was originally prefixed to our author's
CONQUEST OF GRANADA, which was first published in
1672. That play, however, appears to have been first
acted in the year 1670; for the author in the Epilogue
to the First Part, tells the audience, that he had not yet
attained his fortieth year. He was born in August 1631.
In the Preface to THE MOCK ASTROLOGER, which ap-
peared in 1671, as we have already seen, he mentions
THE CONQUEST OF GRANADA, as having been previously
acted, though not then published.
3 Dryden, says Gildon, (LAWS OF POETRY, 8vo. 1721,
p. 65,)" was so fond of rhyme, that he brought it upon
the stage, and established it so far by his success, that he
ventured in one of his prefaces to say-that it had now so
VOL. I.
P
210
ON HEROICK PLAYS.
conversation as prose; and therefore not so natural.
But it is very clear to all who understand poetry,
that serious plays ought not to imitate conversation
too nearly. If nothing were to be raised above
that level, the foundation of poetry would be
destroyed. And if you once admit of a latitude,
that thoughts may be exalted, and that images and
actions may be raised above the life, and described
in measure without rhyme, that leads
you insen-
sibly from your own principles to mine: you are
already so far onward of your way, that you have
forsaken the imitation of ordinary converse; you
are gone beyond it; and, to continue where
you
are, is to lodge in the open field, betwixt two inns.
You have lost that which you call natural, and
have not acquired the last perfection of art. But
it was only custom which cozened us so long: we
thought, because Shakspeare and Fletcher went
no farther, that there the pillars of poetry were to
strong possession of the stage, that he durst prophecy
no play would take without it; and yet he saw in less
than a year's time that scarce any play could be received
with it. This change was caused not only by THE
REHEARSAL, but also by several admirable reflections in
this Essay." [The ESSAY ON POETRY by the Earl of Mul.
grave.]—With respect to the effect of that Essay, he is
not quite correct; for it could not have co-operated with
THE REHEARSAL in discrediting rhyme at the period
mentioned, not having been published till about ten
years afterwards. See Wood's ATH. OXON, ii, (Fasti)
col. 223.
ON HEROICK PLAYS.
211
be erected; that, because they excellently de-
scribed passion without rhyme, therefore rhyme
was not capable of describing it. But time has
now convinced most men of that errour. It is
indeed so difficult to write verse, that the adver-
saries of it have a good plea against many who
undertake that task, without being formed by art
or nature for it. Yet, even they who have written
worst in it, would have written worse without it:
they have cozened many with their sound, who
never took the pains to examine their sense. In
fine, they have succeeded; though it is true, they
have more dishonoured rhyme by their good
success, than they could have done by their ill.
But I am willing to let fall this argument: it is
free for every man to write, or not to write, in
verse, as he judges it to be or not to be his
talent; or as he imagines the audience will re-
ceive it.
For Heroick Plays, (in which only I have used
it without the mixture of prose,) the first light we
had of them on the English Theatre was from the
late Sir William D'Avenant. It being forbidden
him in the rebellious times to act tragedies and
comedies, because they contained some matter of
scandal to those good people, who could more
easily dispossess their lawful sovereign, than endure
a wanton jest, he was forced to turn his thoughts
another way, and to introduce the examples of
moral virtue, writ in verse, and performed in reci-
}
212
ON HEROICK PLAYS.
}
}
5
tative musick. The original of this musick, and
of the scenes which adorned his work, he had
from the Italian operas; but he heightened his
characters (as I may probably imagine) from the,
example of Corneille and some French poets. In
this condition did this part of poetry remain at his
Majesty's return; when growing bolder, as being
now owned by a publick authority, he reviewed
his SIEGE OF RHODES, and caused it to be acted
as a just drama. But as few men have the hap-
piness to begin and finish any new project, so
neither did he live to make his design perfect:
there wanted the fulness of a plot, and the variety
of characters, to form it as it ought; and perhaps,
something might have been added to the beauty
of the style. All which he would have performed
with more exactness, had he pleased to have given
us another work of the same nature. For myself
and others who come after him, we are bound,
with all veneration to his memory, to acknowledge
4 The first edition of Sir William D'Avenant's SIEGE
OF RHODES was published in 4to. in 1656, with the
following title: "THE SIEGE OF RHODES, made a
representation by the art of prospective in scenes; and
the story sung in recitative musick.-At the back part of
Rutland House, in the upper end of Aldersgate-street,
London."
5 In the time of Shakspeare, and long afterwards, our
English theatres were unfurnished with scenes. See the
PLAYS and POEMS of Shakspeare, vol. i. part ii. p. 67.
ON HEROICK PLAYS.
213
what advantage we received from that excellent
groundwork which he laid; and since it is an
easy thing to add to what already is invented, we
ought all of us, without envy to him, or
to him, or partiality
to ourselves, to yield him the precedence in it.
Having done him this justice, as my guide, I
may do myself so much, as to give an account of
what I have performed after him. I observed
then, as I said, what was wanting to the perfection
of his SIEGE OF RHODES; which was design, and
variety of characters. And in the midst of this
consideration, by mere accident I opened the next
book that lay by me, which was an Ariosto in
Italian; and the very first two lines of that poem
gave me light to all I could desire :
Le donne, i cavalier, l'arme, gli amori,
Le cortesie, l'audaci imprese io canto, &c.
For the very next reflection which I made, was
this, that an heroick play ought to be an imita-
tion, in little, of an heroick poem; and conse-
quently, that love and valour ought to be the
subject of it. Both these Sir William D'Avenant
had begun to shadow; but it was so, as first
discoverers draw their maps, with head-lands, and
promontories, and some few outlines of somewhat
taken at a distance, and which the designer saw
not clearly. The common drama obliged him to
a plot well-formed and pleasant, or as the Ancients
called it, one entire and great action. But this he
afforded not himself in a story, which he neither
filled with persons, nor beautified with characters,
214
ON HEROICK PLAYS.
nor varied with accidents. The laws of an heroick
poem did not dispense with those of the other, but
raised them to a greater height; and indulged
him a farther liberty of fancy, and of drawing all
things as far above the ordinary proportion of the
stage, as that is beyond the common words and
actions of human life; and therefore, in the
scanting of his images, and design, he complied
not enough with the greatness and majesty of an
heroick poem.
I am sorry I cannot discover my opinion of this
kind of writing, without dissenting much from his,
whose memory I love and honour. But I will do
it with the same respect to him, as if he were now
alive, and overlooking my paper while I write.
His judgment of an heroick poem was this:-
That it ought to be dressed in a more familiar and
easy shape; more fitted to the common actions and
passions of human life; and, in short, more like a
glass of nature, shewing us ourselves in our ordinary
habits, and figuring a more practicable virtue to us,
than was done by the ancients or moderns." Thus,
he takes the image of an heroick poem from the
drama, or stage-poetry; and accordingly, intended
to divide it into five books, representing the same
number of acts, and every book into several
cantos, imitating the scenes which compose our
acts.
But this, I think, is rather a play in narration,
as I may call it, than an heroick poem. If at
least you will not prefer the opinion of a single
}
ON HEROICK PLAYS.
215
man to the practice of the most excellent authors
both of ancient and latter ages. I am no admirer
of quotations; but you shall hear, if you please,
one of the ancients delivering his judgment on this
question; it is Petronius Arbiter, the most elegant,
and one of the most judicious authors of the Latin
tongue; who, after he had given many admirable
rules for the structure and beauties of an epick
poem, concludes all in these following words :-
"Non enim res gesta versibus comprehendendæ sunt,
quod longe melius historici faciunt: sed, per ambages,
deorumque ministeria, præcipitandus est liber spiritus,
ut potius furentis animi vaticinatio appareat, quam
religiosa orationis, sub testibus, fides." In which
sentence, and his own Essay of a Poem which
immediately he gives you, it is thought he taxes
Lucan, who followed too much the truth of
history; crowded sentences together; was too full
of points; and too often offered at somewhat
which had more of the sting of an epigram, than
of the dignity and state of an heroick poem. Lucan
used not much the help of his Heathen Deities:
there was neither the ministry of the gods, nor the
precipitation of the soul, nor the fury of a prophet,
(of which my author speaks,) in his PHARSALIA:
he treats you more like a philosopher, than a poet ;
and instructs you in verse, with what he had been
taught by his uncle Seneca in prose. In one
word, he walks soberly a-foot, when he might fly.
Yet Lucan is not always this religious historian.
The oracle of Appius, and the witchcraft of
216
ON HEROICK PLAYS.
Erictho will somewhat atone for him, who was,
indeed, bound up by an ill-chosen and known
argument, to follow truth with great exactness.
For my part, I am of opinion, that neither Homer,
Virgil, Statius, Ariosto, Tasso, nor our English
Spencer, could have formed their poems half so
beautiful, without those gods and spirits, and those
enthusiastick parts of poetry which compose the
most noble parts of all their writings. And I will
ask any man who loves heroick poetry, (for I will
not dispute their tastes who do not,) if the Ghost
of Polydorus in Virgil, the enchanted Wood in
Tasso, and the Bower of Bliss in Spencer, (which
he borrows from that admirable Italian,) could have
been omitted without taking from their works
some of the greatest beauties in them? And if
any man object the improbabilities of a spirit
appearing, or of a palace raised by magick, I
boldly answer him, that an heroick poet is not
tied to a bare representation of what is true, or
exceeding probable, but that he may let himself
loose to visionary objects, and to the representation
of such things as depending not on sense, and
therefore not to be comprehended by knowledge,
may give him a freer scope for imagination. It is
enough, that in all ages and religions the greatest
part of mankind have believed the power of
magick, and that there are spirits or spectres which
have appeared. This, I say, is foundation enough
for poetry: and I dare farther affirm, that the
whole doctrine of separated beings, whether those
ON HEROICK PLAYS.
217
spirits are incorporeal substances, (which Mr.
Hobbes, with some reason, thinks to imply a
contradiction,) or that they are a thinner and more
aerial sort of bodies, (as some of the Fathers have
conjectured,) may better be explicated by poets,
than by philosophers or divines. For their specu-
lations on this subject are wholly poetical; they
have only their fancy for their guide; and that,
being sharper in an excellent poet than it is likely it
should be in a phlegmatick, heavy gown-man, will
see farther in its own empire, and produce more
satisfactory notions on those dark and doubtful
problems.
Some men think they have raised a great argu-
ment against the use of spectres and magick in
heroick poetry, by saying-they are unnatural:
but, whether they or I believe there are such
things, is not material; it is enough that, for
aught we know, they may be in nature; and
whatever is or may be, is not properly unnatural.
Neither am I much concerned at Mr. Cowley's
verses before Gondibert; though his authority is
almost sacred to me. It is true, he has resembled
the old epick poetry to a fantastick fairy-land; but
he has contradicted himself by his own example;
for he has himself made use of angels, and
visions, in his DAVIDEIS, as well as Tasso in his
GODFREY.
What I have written on this subject will not be
thought digression by the reader, if he please to
remember what I said in the beginning of this
218
ON HEROICK PLAYS.
Essay, that I have modelled my Heroick Plays
by the rules of an Heroick Poem. And, if that
be the most noble, the most pleasant, and the most
instructive way of writing in verse, and, withal,
the highest pattern of human life, as all poets
have agreed, I shall need no other argument to
justify my choice in this imitation. One advan-
tage the drama has above the other, namely, that
it represents to view, what the poem only does
relate; and Segnius irritant animum demissa per
aurem, quam quæ sunt oculis subjecta fidelibus, as
Horace tells us.
To those who object my frequent use of drums
and trumpets, and my representations of battles,-
I answer, I introduced them not on the English
stage Shakspeare used them frequently; and,
though Jonson shows no battle in his CATILINE,
yet you hear from behind the scenes, the sounding
of trumpets, and the shouts of fighting armies.
But I add farther; that these warlike instruments,
and, even their presentations of fighting on the
stage, are no more than necessary to produce the
effects of an Heroick Play; that is, to raise the
imagination of the audience, and to persuade them,
for the time, that what they behold on the theatre
is really performed. The poet is, then, to endea-
vour an absolute dominion over the minds of the
spectators; for though our fancy will contribute
to its own deceit, yet a writer ought to help its
operation. And that the Red Bull has formerly
• See p. 71. n. 6.
6
ON HEROICK PLAYS.
219
done the same, is no more an argument against
our practice, than it would be for a physician to
forbear an approved medicine, because a mounte-
bank has used it with success.
Thus I have given a short account of Heroick
Plays. I might now, with the usual eagerness of
an author, make a particular defence of this. But
the common opinion, (how unjust soever,) has been
so much to my advantage, that I have reason to
be satisfied; and to suffer with patience all that
can be urged against it.
For, otherwise, what can be more easy for me
than to defend the character of Almanzor, which
is one great exception that is made against the
play? It is said, that Almanzor is no perfect
pattern of heroick virtue; that he is a contemner
of kings; and that he is made to perform
impossibilities.
I must, therefore avow, in the first place, from
whence I took the character. The first image I
had of him, was from the Achilles of Homer; the
next from Tasso's Rinaldo, who was a copy of the
former; and the third from the Artaban of Mon-
sieur Calpranede; who has imitated both. The
original of these, Achilles, is taken by Homer for
his hero; and is described by him as one, who in
strength and courage surpassed the rest of the
Grecian army, but, withal, of so firy a temper,
so impatient of an injury, even from his king.
and general, that, when his mistress was to be
forced from him by the command of Agamemnon,
220
ON HEROICK PLAYS.
he not only disobeyed it, but returned him an
answer full of contumely, and in the most oppro-
brious terms he could imagine. They are Homer's
words which follow, and I have cited but some few
amongst a multitude:
Οινοβαρές, κυνὸς ὄμματ' ἔχων, κραδίην δ' ἐλάφοιο.
Il. a. v. 225.
Δημοβόρος βασιλεύς, &c. II. a. v. 231.
Nay, he proceeded so far in his insolence, as to
draw out his sword, with intention to kill him :
Ελκε]ο δ᾽ ἐκ κολεοῖο μέγα ξίφΘ. Π. α. v. 194.
εκ
and, if Minerva had not appeared, and held his
hand, he had executed his design; and it was all
she could do to dissuade him from it. The event
was that he left the army, and would fight no
more. Agamemnon gives his character thus to
Nestor :
Αλλ' ὁ δ᾽ ἀνὴρ ἐθέλει περι πάντων ἔμμεναι άλλων,
Πάντων μεν κρατέειν ἐθέλει, πάντεσσι δ' ἀνασσειν.
Il. a. v. 287, 288.
and Horace gives the same description of him in
his Art of Poetry :
Honoratum si fortè reponis Achillem,
Impiger, iracundus, inexorabilis, acer,
Jura neget sibi nata, nihil non arroget armis.
Tasso's chief character, Rinaldo, was a man of
the same temper; for when he had slain Gernando,
in his heat of passion, he not only refused to be
judged by Godfrey, his general, but threatened,
that if he came to seize him, he would right him-
ON HEROICK PLAYS.
221
self by arms upon him; witness these following
lines of Tasso :
Venga egli, o mandi, io terrò fermo il piede :
Giudici fian tra noi la sorte, e l'arme :
Fera tragedia vuol che s'appresenti,
Per lor diporto, alle nemiche genti.
You see how little these great authors did
esteem the point of honour, so much magnified by
the French, and so ridiculously aped by us. They
made their heroes men of honour; but so, as not
to divest them quite of human passions and frail-
ties: they content themselves to shew you, what
men of great spirits would certainly do, when they
were provoked, not what they were obliged to do
by the strict rules of moral virtue. For my own
part, I declare myself for Homer and Tasso; and
am more in love with Achilles and Rinaldo,
than with Cyrus and Oroondates. I shall never
subject my characters to the French standard,
where love and honour are to be weighed by drams
and scruples; yet, where I have designed the
patterns of exact virtues, such as in this play are
the parts of Almahide, of Ozmyn, and Benzayda,
I may safely challenge the best of theirs.
But Almanzor is taxed with changing sides:
and what tie has he on him to the contrary? He
is not born their subject whom he serves; and he
is injured by them to a very high degree. He
threatens them, and speaks insolently of sovereign
power; but so do Achilles and Rinaldo, who were
subjects and soldiers to Agamemnon and Godfrey
222
ON HEROICK PLAYS.
of Bulloigne. He talks extravagantly in his pas-
sion; but, if I would take the pains to quote an
hundred passages of Ben Jonson's Cethegus, I
could easily shew you, that the Rhodomontades of
Almanzor are neither so irrational as his, nor so
impossible to be put in execution; for Cethegus
threatens to destroy nature, and to raise a new one
out of it; to kill all the senate for his part of the
action; to look Cato dead; and a thousand other
things as extravagant, he says, but performs not
one action in the play.
But none of the former calumnies will stick :
and therefore, it is at last charged upon me, that
Almanzor does all things; or if you will have an
absurd accusation, in their nonsense who make it,
that he performs impossibilities: they say, that
being a stranger, he appeases two fighting factions,
when the authority of their lawful sovereign could
not. This is, indeed, the most improbable of all
his actions; but, it is far from being impossible.
Their king had made himself contemptible to his
people, as the History of Granada tells us; and
Almanzor, though a stranger, yet was already
known to them by his gallantry in the Juego de
toros, his engagement on the weaker side, and
more especially by the character of his person and
brave actions, given by Abdalla just before. And,
after all, the greatness of the enterprize consisted
only in the daring; for he had the king's guards
to second him; but we have read both of Cæsar,
and many other generals, who have not only
ON HEROICK PLAYS.
223
calmed a mutiny with a word, but have presented
themselves single before an army of their enemies;
which, upon sight of them, has revolted from their
own leaders, and come over to their trenches. In
the rest of Almanzor's actions, you see him for
the most part victorious; but, the same fortune
has constantly attended many heroes who were
not imaginary. Yet, you see it no inheritance to
him; for, in the first part, he is made a prisoner,
and, in the last, defeated, and not able to preserve
the city from being taken. If the history of the
late Duke of Guise be true, he hazarded more,
and performed not less in Naples, than Almanzor
is feigned to have done in Granada."
7 "The two parts of THE CONQUEST OF GRANADA,"
says Dr. Johnson, "are written with a seeming deter-
mination to glut the publick with dramatick wonders; to
exhibit, in its highest elevation, a theatrical meteor of
incredible love and impossible valour, and to leave no
room for a wilder flight to the extravagance of posterity.
All the rays of romantick heat, whether amorous or
warlike, glow in ALMANZOR by a kind of concentration.
He is above all laws; he is exempt from all restraints; he
ranges the world at will, and governs wherever he appears.
He fights without enquiring the cause, and loves in spite
of the obligations of justice, of rejection by his mistress,
and of prohibition from the dead. Yet the scenes are
for the most part delightful; they exhibit a kind of illus-
trious depravity and majestick madness: such as if it is
sometimes despised, is often reverenced, and in which the
ridiculous is often mingled with the astonishing.'
224
ON HEROICK PLAYS.
}
I have been too tedious in this apology; but to
make some satisfaction, I will leave the rest of
my
play exposed to the criticks, without defence.
The concernment of it is wholly passed from me,
and ought to be in them who have been favourable
to it, and are somewhat obliged to defend their
own opinions. That there are errours in it, I deny
not;
Ast opere in tanto fas est obrepere somnum.8
But I have already swept the stakes; and, with
the common good fortune of prosperous game-
sters, can be content to sit quietly,-to hear my
fortune cursed by some, and my faults arraigned
by others; and to suffer both without reply.
* Horace's line is,
Verum opere in longo fus est obrepere somnum.
1
DEFENCE OF THE EPILOGUE
TO THE SECOND PART OF THE
CONQUEST OF GRANADA:
FIRST PRINTED IN QUARTO, IN 1672.
VOL. I.
EPILOGUE
TO THE SECOND PART OF
THE CONQUEST OF GRANADA.
THEY who have best succeeded on the stage,
Have still conform'd their genius to their age.
Thus Jonson did mechanick humour show,
When men were dull, and conversation low.
Then comedy was faultless, but 'twas coarse:
Cobb's tankard was a jest, and Otter's horse.
And, as their comedy, their love was mean;
Except by chance, in some one labour'd scene,
Which must atone for an ill-written play.
They rose-but at their height could seldom stay.
Fame then was cheap, and the first comer sped;
And they have kept it since, by being dead:
But, were they now to write, when criticks weigh
Each line, and every word, throughout a play,
None of them, no not Jonson in his height,
Could pass, without allowing grains for weight.
Think it not envy, that these truths are told;'
Our Poet's not malicious, though he's bold.
'Tis not to brand them, that their faults are shown,
But, by their errours, to excuse his own.
If love and honour now are higher rais'd,
'Tis not the poet, but the age is prais'd.
Wit's now arriv'd to a more high degree;
Our native language more refin'd and free:
Our ladies and our men now speak more wit
In conversation, than those poets writ.
Then, one of these is, consequently, true;
That what this poet writes, comes short of you,
And imitates you ill, (which most he fears,)
Or else his writing is not worse than theirs.
Yet, though you judge (as sure the criticks will)
That some before him writ with greater skill,
In this one praise he has their fame surpass'd,
To please an age more gallant than the last.
DEFENCE
OF
THE EPILOGUE:
OR
AN ESSAY ON THE DRAMATICK POETRY OF THE
LAST AGE.
THE promises of Authors, that they will
write again, are, in effect, a threatening of their
readers with some new impertinence; and they
who perform not what they promise, will have
their pardon on easy terms. It is from this con-
sideration that I could be glad to spare you the
trouble which I am now giving you, of a Post-
script,' if I were not obliged by many reasons to
write somewhat concerning our present Plays, and
those of our predecessors on the English stage.'
9 It appears from the original copy, which here reads—
Preface, instead of Postscript, that the author at first
intended to prefix this Essay to his play as a preliminary
discourse. As it relates to the Epilogue, it was with
more propriety subjoined to it.
"In the Epilogue to the Second Part of THE CONQUEST
OF GRANADA, Dryden indulges his favourite pleasure in
228
DEFENCE OF THE EPILOGUE.
The truth is, I have so far engaged myself in a
bold Epilogue to this play, wherein I have some-
what taxed the former writing, that it was necessary
for me either not to print it, or to show that I could
defend it. Yet I would so maintain my opinion of
the present age, as not to be wanting in my vene-
ration for the past; I would ascribe to dead authors
their just praises, in those things wherein they have
excelled us; and in those wherein we contend
with them for the pre-eminence, I would acknow-
ledge our advantages to the age, and claim no
victory from our wit. This being what I have
proposed to myself, I hope I shall not be thought
arrogant, when I enquire into their errours. For
discrediting his predecessors; and this Epilogue he has
defended by a long Postscript. He had promised a Second
Dialogue, in which he should more fully treat of the virtues
and faults of the English poets, who have written in the
dramatick, epick, or lyrick way. [See p. 32.] This promise
was never formally performed; but with respect to the
dramatick writers, he has given in his prefaces, and in this
Postscript, something equivalent; but his purpose being to
exalt himself by the comparison, he shews faults distinctly,
and only praises excellence in general terms."-Johnson's
Life of DRYDEN.
Langbaine informs us, that he had seen the two parts
of THE CONQUEST OF GRANADA acted with great ap-
plause. His continuator, Gildon, however, adds a
curious circumstance; that "the success of these plays
was not owing to the excellency of the poet's performance,
but to the extravagance; for he had always observed them
to have the effect of comedy on the audience."
DEFENCE OF THE EPILOGUE.
229
we live in an age so sceptical, that as it deter-
mines little, so it takes nothing from antiquity
on trust; and I profess to have no other ambition
in this Essay, than that poetry may not go back-
ward, when all other arts and sciences are ad-
vancing. Whoever censures me for this enquiry,
let him hear his character from Horace :
Ingeniis non ille favet, plauditque sepultis,
Nostra sed impugnat; nos nostraque lividus odit.
He favours not dead wits, but hates the living.
It was upbraided to that excellent poet, that he
was an enemy to the writings of his predecessor
Lucilius, because he had said, Lucilium lutulentum
fluere, that he ran muddy; and that he ought to
have retrenched from his Satires many unnecessary
verses. But Horace makes Lucilius himself to
justify him from the imputation of envy, by telling
you that he would have done the same, had he
lived in an age which was more refined :
Si foret hoc nostrum fato delapsus in ævum,
Detereret sibi multa, recideret omne quod ultra
Perfectum traheretur: &c.
And, both in the whole course of that Satire,
and in his most admirable Epistle to Augustus, he
makes it his business to prove that antiquity alone
is no plea for the excellency of a poem; but that
one age learning from another, the last (if we can
suppose an equality of wit in the writers,) has the
advantage of knowing more and better than the
former. And this I think is the state of the
230
DEFENCE OF THE Epilogue.
question in dispute. It is therefore my part to
make it clear, that the language, wit, and con-
versation of our age, are improved and refined
above the last; and then it will not be difficult to
infer, that our plays have received some part of
those advantages.
In the first place, therefore, it will be necessary
to state in general, what this refinement is, of
which we treat; and that I think will not be
defined amiss, An improvement of our Wit, Lan-
guage, and Conversation; or, an alteration in them
for the better.
To begin with Language. That an alteration
is lately made in ours, or since the writers of the
last age, (in which I comprehend Shakspeare,
Fletcher, and Jonson,) is manifest. Any man who
reads those excellent poets, and compares their
language with what is now written, will sce it
almost in every line. But, that this is an improve-
ment of the language, or an alteration for the
better, will not so easily be granted. For many
are of a contrary opinion, that the English tongue
was then in the height of its perfection; that from
Jonson's time to ours it has been in a continual
declination; like that of the Romans from the
age of Virgil to Statius, and so downward to
Claudian of which, not only Petronius, but
Quintilian himself so much complains, under the
2
2 Who the author of this deservedly admired Dialogue
was, has long been a question among the learned. Beside
DEFENCE OF THE EPILOGUE.
231
person of Secundus, in his famous Dialogue De
Causis corrupta Eloquentiæ.
But to shew that our language is improved, and
that those people have not a just value for the age
in which they live, let us consider in what the
refinement of a language principally consists: that
is, either in rejecting such old words or phrases
Quintilian, it has been attributed to Suetonius, and to
Tacitus; and Mr. Melmoth, the elegant translator of this
piece, is decidedly of opinion that it was not the pro-
duction of any one of those celebrated writers.
It was,
however, undoubtedly written by Tacitus; as is proved
decisively by a slight circumstance, not noticed by any of
the ancient criticks, and first pointed out by my learned
friend, Dr. Joseph Stock, formerly fellow of Trinity
College, Dublin, in his excellent edition of Tacitus, in
four volumes, 8vo. 1788. This proof is derived from
the following passages in the Dialogue on Oratory, com-
pared with one of Pliny's Epistles.
In the ninth section of the Dialogue, we find these
words:
CC
Adjice, quod poetis, si modo dignum aliquid elaborare
et effingere velint, relinquenda conversatio amicorum, et
jucunditas urbis, deserenda cætera officia, atque ut ipsi
dicunt, in nemora et lucos, id est, in solitudinem receden-
dum est."
Again, in sect. 12.
Nemora vero et luci, et secretum iter, quod Aper
increpabat, tantam mihi afferunt voluptatem, ut inter
præcipuos carminum fructos numerem."
Pliny, (EPIST. lib. ix. ep. 10.) in a letter to TACITUS,
evidently referring to the foregoing passages, thus ad-
dresses him " Itaque poemata quiescunt, que TU inter
nemora et lucos commodissime perfici putas."
232
DEFENCE OF THE EPILOGUE.
which are ill sounding or improper, or in admitting
new, which are more proper, more sounding, and
more significant.
The reader will easily take notice, that when I
speak of rejecting improper words and phrases, I
mention not such as are antiquated by custom
only; and, as I may say, without any fault of
theirs. For in this case the refinement can be
but accidental; that is, when the words and
phrases which are rejected, happen to be improper.
Neither would I be understood, when I speak of
impropriety of language, either wholly to accuse
the last age, or to excuse the present; and least
of all, myself; for all writers have their imper-
fections and failings; but I may safely conclude in
the general, that our improprieties are less fre-
quent, and less gross than theirs. One testimony
of this is undeniable; that we are the first who
have observed them; and, certainly, to observe
errours is a great step to the correcting of them.
But, malice and partiality set apart, let any man
who understands English, read diligently the works
of Shakspeare and Fletcher; and I dare undertake
that he will find in every page either some sole-
cism of speech, or some notorious flaw in sense :3
3 These notorious flaws in sense, I conceive, will be
found only by those who are not well acquainted with the
phraseology of Shakspeare's time, as undoubtedly our
author was not when he wrote this piece. He tells us
himself in his Preface to Juvenal, which is dated August
18, 1692, that about twenty years before, on the suggestion
DEFENCE OF THE EPILOGUE.
233
and yet these men are reverenced, when we are
not forgiven. That their wit is great, and many
times their expressions noble, envy itself cannot
deny :
neque ego illis detrahere ausim
Hærentem capiti multâ cum laude coronam.
4
But the times were ignorant in which they lived.
Poetry was then, if not in its infancy among us, at
least not arrived to its vigour and maturity:
witness the lameness of their plots; many of which,
especially those which they writ first, (for even
that
age refined itself in some measure,) were made
of some ridiculous, incoherent story, which in
one play many times took up the business of an
age. I suppose I need not name PERICLES Prince
of Tyre, nor the historical plays of Shakspeare:
up
of his friend Sir George Mackenzie, (author of Essays
on Moral Subjects, and other ingenious and learned
works,) he read over the principal English poets, with a
view to improve his language, and to catch some of their
"beautiful turns of words and thoughts."-I do not sup-
pose that he was before unacquainted with the best English
poets, but that he had not studied them with care and
attention; nor even after this perusal, did he, I conceive,
ever acquire such a knowledge of the works of Shakspeare,
as every intelligent modern reader may now attain, by
means of those researches which have been made within
these forty years, into the allusions and language of our
incomparable dramatick poet.
4 This surely was said at random, and without authority,
for the writer manifestly did not know which were
Shakspeare's earliest productions. From his subsequent
enumeration, he appears to have thought PERICLES, THE
234
DEFENCE OF THE EPILOGUE.
besides many of the rest, as THE Winter's Tale,
LOVE'S LABOUR LOST, MEASURE FOR MEASURE,
which were either grounded on impossibilities, or
at least so meanly written, that the comedy
neither caused your mirth, nor the serious part
your concernment. If I would expatiate on this
subject, I could easily demonstrate that our ad-
mired Fletcher, who writ after him, neither under-
stood correct plotting, nor that which they call
the decorum of the stage. I would not search in
his worst plays for examples: he who would con-
sider his PHILASTER, his HUMOROUS LIEUTENANT,
his FAITHFUL SHEPHERDESS, and many others
which I could name, will find them much below
the applause which is now given them he will
see Philaster wounding his mistress, and after-
wards his boy, to save himself: not to mention the
Clown who enters immediately, and not only has
the advantage of the combat against the hero, but
diverts you from your
serious concernment, with
WINTER'S TALE, and MEASURE FOR MEASURE, to have
been among that author's early productions: but PERI-
CLES, at least in its present form, was probably produced
in 1607 or 1608; THE WINTER'S TALE there are very
good grounds for believing to have been produced in
1611, and to have been one of Shakspeare's latest works;
and MEASURE FOR MEASURE, it is almost certain, was first
represented in 1603, or 1604, when its author had passed
through more than half of his theatrical career. That
these two plays should have been considered by Dryden as
mean performances, is truly wonderful.
DEFENCE OF THE EPILOGUE.
235
his ridiculous and absurd raillery. In his Hu-
MOROUS LIEUTENANT you find his Demetrius
and Leontius staying in the midst of a routed
army, to hear the cold mirth of the Lieutenant;
and Demetrius afterwards appearing with a pistol
in his hand, in the next age to Alexander the
Great and for his Shepherd, he falls twice into
the former indecency of wounding women. But
these absurdities, which those poets committed,
may more properly be called the age's fault than
theirs. For, besides the want of education and
learning, (which was their particular unhappiness,)
they wanted the benefit of converse: but of that
I shall speak hereafter, in a place more proper for
it. Their audiences knew no better; and there-
fore were satisfied with what they brought. Those
who call theirs the Golden Age of Poetry, have
only this reason for it, that they were then content
with acorns, before they knew the use of bread ;
or that "Axis douds was become a proverb. They
had many who admired them, and few who blamed
them; and, certainly, a severe critick is the greatest
help to a good wit: he does the office of a friend,
while he designs that of an enemy; and his malice
keeps a poet within those bounds, which the
luxuriancy of his fancy would tempt him to over-
leap.
기
​But it is not their plots which I meant, princi-
pally, to tax; I was speaking of their sense and
language; and I dare almost challenge any man
to shew me a page together, which is correct in
236
DEFENCE OF THE EPILOGUE.
both. As for Ben Jonson, I am loth to name
him, because he is a most judicious writer; yet he
very often falls into these errours: and I once
more beg the reader's pardon, for accusing him of
them. Only let him consider, that I live in an
age where my least faults are severely censured;
and that I have no way left to extenuate my fail-
ings, but by shewing as great in those whom we
admire :
Cadimus, inque vicem præbemus crura sagittis.
I cast my eyes but by chance on CATILINE; and
in the three or four last pages, found enough to
conclude that Jonson writ not correctly.
Let the long-hid seeds.
Of treason, in thee, now shoot forth in deeds
Ranker than horrour.
In reading some bombast speeches of MACBETH,
which are not to be understood,' he used to say,
that it was horrour; and I am much afraid that
this is so.
Thy parricide late on thy only son,
After his mother, to make empty way
For thy last wicked nuptials, worse than they
That blaze that act of thy incestuous life,
Which gain'd thee at once a daughter and a wife.
' Here we have another proof of our author's not
having sufficiently studied the language of his prede-
cessors. He who is perfectly conversant with the writers
contemporary with Shakspeare, will not, I believe, ac-
knowledge that there is a single passage in this noble
tragedy not to be understood.
DEFENCE OF THE EPILOGUE.
237
The sense is here extremely perplexed; and I
doubt the word they is false grammar.
And be free
Not heaven itself from thy impiety.
A synchysis, or ill placing of words, of which Tully
so much complains in oratory.
The waves, and dens of beasts, could not receive
The bodies that those souls were frighted from.
The preposition in the end of the sentence; a
common fault with him, and which I have but
lately observed in my own writings."
What all the several ills that visit earth,
Plague, famine, fire, could not reach unto,
The sword, nor surfeits; let thy fury do.
Here are both the former faults: for, besides that
the preposition unto is placed last in the verse, and
at the half period, and is redundant, there is the
former synchysis in the words-the sword, nor
surfeits," which, in construction, ought to have
been placed before the other.
• He accordingly, on a revision, corrected this inac-
curacy in every sentence of his ESSAY ON DRamatick
POESY, in which it occurred.
7 This ill placing of words, as our author calls it,
was so much the language of that day, that it must be
considered as the common phraseology, and cannot be
imputed as a blemish either to Jonson or Shakspeare; in
whose writings, as well as in all the productions of his
contemporaries and predecessors, it is frequently found.
Reach would here perhaps. be more elegant than reach
238
DEFENCE OF THE EPILOGUE.
Catiline says of Cethegus, that for his sake he
would
To
Go on upon the gods, kiss lightning, wrest
The engine from the Cyclops, and give fire
At face of a full cloud, and stand his ire.
go on upon, is only to go on twice. To " give
fire at face of a full cloud," was not understood in
his own time" and stand his ire;" besides the
antiquated word ire, there is the article his, which
makes false construction: and giving fire at the
face of a cloud, is a perfect image of shooting,
however it came to be known in those days to
Catiline.
others there are,
Whom envy to the state draws and pulls on,
For contumelies received; and such are sure ones.
Ones, in the plural number: but that is frequent
with him; for he says, not long after,
Cæsar and Crassus, if they be ill men,
Are mighty ones.
Such men, they do not succour more the cause, &c.
They redundant.
unto; but this redundancy was also authorized by the
common usage of the time. In the next quotation,
our author's objection to the personal pronoun his being
used instead of the neutral its, furnishes another proof
how little he was at this time acquainted with ancient
phraseology. It was the ordinary language of every
writer and speaker of those days, in prose and verse. The
same may be said of" mighty ones," and "Such men, they
do not swear," &c. which are afterwards objected to.
DEFENCE OF THE EPILOGUE.
239
Tho' heaven should speak with all his wrath at once,
We should stand upright and unfear'd.&
His is ill syntax with heaven; and by unfear'd he
means-unafraid : words of a quite contrary signi-
fication.
The ports are open. He perpetually uses ports
for
gates; which is an affected errour in him, to
introduce Latin by the loss of the English idiom;
as in the translation of Tully's speeches he usually
does.
Well-placing of words for the sweetness of pro-
nunciation was not known till Mr. Waller intro-
duced it; and therefore it is not to be wondered
if Ben Jonson has many such lines as these:
But being bred up in his father's needy fortunes,
brought up in's sister's prostitution, &c.
But meanness of expression one would think not
to be his errour in a tragedy, which ought to be more
high and sounding than any other kind of poetry;
8 The common use of the personal for the neutral
pronoun has been already noticed. As for unfear'd, if our
author had carefully studied our ancient language, he
would have found that to fear, as often meant to terrify as
to be intimidated; and that therefore there was no impro-
priety in using the word unfear'd with the sense of un-
afraid. Nor is such a usage peculiar to the English
language; as may be proved by the double signification of
the word occido in Latin, and many other verbs.-Ports
for gates, which is next objected to, is found in many of
our ancient writers, and is yet the common language of
Scotland,
240
DEFENCE OF THE EPILOGUE.
and yet amongst many others in CATILINE I find
these four lines together:
So Asia, thou art cruelly even
With us, for all the blows thee given:
When we, whose virtues conquer'd thee,
Thus by thy vices ruin'd be.
9
Be there is false English, for are, though the rhyme
hides it.
But I am willing to close the book, partly out
of veneration to the author, partly out of weariness
to pursue an argument which is so fruitful in so
small a compass. And what correctness, after
this, can be expected from Shakspeare or from
Fletcher, who wanted that learning and care which
Jonson had?
had? I will therefore spare my own
trouble of enquiring into their faults; who, had
they lived now, had doubtless written more cor-
rectly. I suppose it will be enough for me to
affirm, (as I think I safely may,) that these and the
like errours which I taxed in the most correct of
the last age, are such, into which we do not ordi-
narily fall. I think few of our present writers
would have left behind them such a line as this:
Contain your spirit in more stricter bounds.
But that gross way of two comparatives was
9 Be for are, though now become somewhat antiquated,
is frequently used in the translation of the Bible, and was
the common language of the reign of James the First.
DEFENCE OF THE EPILOGUE.
241
then ordinary; and therefore more pardonable in
Jonson.
As for the other part of refining, which consists
in receiving new words and phrases, I shall not
insist much on it. It is obvious that we have
admitted many, some of which we wanted, and
therefore our language is the richer for them, as
it would be by importation of bullion others are
rather ornamental than necessary; yet by their
admission, the language is become more courtly,
and our thoughts are better dressed. These are to
be found scattered in the writers of our age; and it
is not my business to collect them. They who
have lately written with most care, have, I believe,
taken Horace for their guide; that is, not to be
too hasty in receiving of words, but rather to stay
till custom has made them familiar to us:
Quem penes arbitrium est, et jus, et norma loquendi.
For I cannot approve of their way of refining, who
corrupt our English idiom by mixing it too much
with French: that is a sophistication of language,
not an improvement of it; a turning English into
French, rather than a refining of English by
French. We meet daily with those fops, who
value themselves on their travelling, and pretend
¹ The same observation may be applied to almost all
the other instances here produced. Our author, however,
it appears from this remark, did not know that the pre-
ceding phraseology was as much sanctioned by the ordinary
usage of the time, as the double comparative.
VOL. I.
R
1
242
DEFENCE OF THE EPILOGUE.
they cannot express their meaning in English,
because they would put off to us some French
phrase of the last edition; without considering
that, for aught they know, we have a better of our
own. But these are not the men who are to refine
us; their talent is to prescribe fashions, not words:
at best they are only serviceable to a writer, so as
Ennius was to Virgil. He may aurum ex stercore
colligere; for it is hard if, amongst many insig-
nificant phrases, there happen not something worth
preserving; though they themselves, like Indians,
know not the value of their own commodity.
There is yet another way of improving lan-
guage, which poets especially have practised in all
ages; that is, by applying received words to a
new signification; and this, I believe, is meant by
Horace, in that precept which is so variously
construed by expositors:
Dixeris egregie, notum si callida verbum
Reddiderit junctura novum.
And, in this way, he himself had a particular
happiness; using all the tropes, and particular
metaphors, with that grace which is observable in
his Odes; where the beauty of expression is often
greater than that of thought; as in that one
example, amongst an infinite number of others, et
vultus nimium lubricus aspici.
And therefore, though he innovated little, he
may justly be called a great refiner of the Roman
tongue. This choice of words, and heightening of
DEFENCE OF THE EPILOGUE.
243
their natural signification, was observed in him by
the writers of the following ages; for Petronius
says of him-et Horatii curiosa felicitas. By this
graffing, as I may call it, on old words, has our
tongue been beautified by the three fore-men-
tioned poets, Shakspeare, Fletcher, and Jonson,
whose excellencies I can never enough admire;
and in this they have been followed, especially by
Sir John Suckling and Mr. Waller, who refined
upon them.
Neither have they who succeed
them, been wanting in their endeavours to adorn
our mother tongue; but it is not so lawful for
me to praise my living contemporaries, as to
admire my dead predecessors.
I should now speak of the refinement of Wit:
but I have been so large on the former subject,
that I am forced to contract myself in this. I
will therefore only observe to you, that the wit of
the last age was yet more incorrect than their
language. Shakspeare, who many times has
written better than any poet in any language, is
yet so far from writing wit always, or expressing
that wit according to the dignity of the subject,
that he writes in many places below the dullest
writers of ours or of any precedent age. Never
did any author precipitate himself from such
heights of thought to so low expressions, as he
often does. He is the very Janus of poets; he
wears almost every where two faces; and you
have scarce begun to admire the one, ere you
244
DEFENCE OF THE EPILOGUE.
despise the other. Neither is the luxuriance of
Fletcher, which his friends have taxed in him, a
less fault than the carelessness of Shakspeare. He
does not well always; and, when he does, he is a
true Englishman, he knows not when to give
If he wakes in one scene, he commonly
slumbers in another; and if he pleases you in the
first three acts, he is frequently so tired with his
labour, that he goes heavily in the fourth, and
sinks under his burthen in the fifth."
over.
The
Very few readers, I believe, will agree with our
author in this unfounded depreciation of our great dra-
matick poet.
He has undoubtedly often written wit, at
least, what in his own time was considered wit.
prevalent opinions of the age should always, in such cases,
be kept in view. Sir John Harrington was by the
unanimous consent of his own age, considered as a man
of extraordinary wit; yet his writings would not at this
day gain him so high a reputation. They prove, how-
ever, decisively, that what Dryden would call clenches.
was then considered as sterling wit.
not to be defended on this ground alone; for he has given
us many dialogues which even the more scrupulous and
refined taste of the present age must acknowledge to be
witty. By wit, it should be remembered, our author means
sharpness of conceit; as he afterwards expressly tells us.
But Shakspeare is
In these critical Essays, he is not always consistent with
himself; for in the Preface to THE MOCK Astrologer,
he charges Shakspeare with a superfluity and waste of
wit.
3 Langbaine ("Account of the English Dramatick
Poets," 1690, p. 144,) tells us, that he had either read, or
DEFENCE OF THE EPILOGUE.
245
For Ben Jonson, the most judicious of poets,
he always writ properly, and as the character
required; and I will not contest farther with my
friends who call that wit: it being very certain,
that even folly itself, well represented, is wit in a
larger signification; and that there is fancy, as well
as judgment in it, though not so much, or noble :
because all poetry being imitation, that of folly is
a lower exercise of fancy, though perhaps as dif-
ficult as the other; for it is a kind of looking
downward in the poet, and representing that part
of mankind which is below him.
In these low characters of vice and folly, lay the
excellency of that inimitable writer; who, when at
any time he aimed at wit in a stricter sense, that
is, sharpness of conceit, was forced either to borrow
from the ancients, as to my knowledge he did very
much from Plautus; or, when he trusted himself
alone, often fell into meanness of expression.-
Nay, he was not free from the lowest and most
groveling kind of wit, which we call clenches; of
which EVERY MAN IN HIS HUMOUR is infinitely
full, and, which is worse, the wittiest persons in
been informed," that it was generally Fletcher's practice,
after he had finished three acts of a play, to shew them
to the actors; and when they had agreed on terms, he
huddled up the two last, without that care that behoved
him." His information on this subject appears to have
been perfectly correct; for I find, from several manuscript
letters of the dramatick poets of that time, that to sell an
unfinished play was a common practice.
246
DEFENCE OF THE EPILOGUE.
the drama speak them. His other comedies are
not exempted from them. Will you give me
leave to name some few? Asper, in which cha-
racter he personates himself, (and he neither was,
nor thought himself a fool,) exclaiming against the
ignorant judges of the age, speaks thus:
How monstrous and detested is't, to see
A fellow, that has neither art nor brain,
Sit like an Aristarchus, or stark ass,
Taking men's lines, with a tobacco-face,
In snuff, &c,
And presently after,
I marvel whose wit 'twas to put a prologue in yond
Sackbut's mouth. They might well think he would be
out of tune, and yet you'd play upon him too.-
Will you have another of the same stamp
O, I cannot abide these limbs of sattin, or rather Satan.
But it may be you will object that this was
Asper, Macilente, or Carlo Buffone: you shall,
therefore, hear him speak in his own person, and
that, in the two last lines or sting of an epigram:
it is inscribed to Fine Grand, who, he says, was
indebted to him for many things, which he reckons
there; and concludes thus:
Forty things more, dear Grand, which you know true,
For which, or pay me quickly, or I'll pay you.+
This was then the mode of wit, the vice of the
+ I doubt whether our author was aware, that to pay
signified to beat, as well as to discharge a debt. If he
DEFENCE OF THE EPILOGUE.
247
}
age, and not Ben Jonson's; for you see, a little
before him, that admirable wit, Sir Philip Sidney,
perpetually playing with his words. In his time,
I believe, it ascended first into the pulpit, where,
if
you will give me leave to clench too, it yet
finds the benefit of its clergy; for they are com-
monly the first corrupters of eloquence, and the
last reformed from vicious oratory as a famous
Italian has observed before me, in his Treatise of
the Corruption of the Italian Tongue, which
he principally ascribes to priests and preaching
friars.
But, to conclude with what brevity I can, I will
only add this in the defence of our present writers;
that if they reach not some excellencies of Ben
Jonson, (which no age, I am confident, ever shall,)
yet, at least, they are above that meanness of
thought which I have taxed, and which is frequent
in him.
That the wit of this age is much more courtly,
may easily be proved by viewing the characters of
gentlemen which were written in the last. First,
for Jonson :-Truewit, in THE SILENT WOMAN,
was his master-piece, and Truewit was a scholar-
did, he might with equal propriety object to Catullus,
who
says that his villa,
}
non ad austri
Flatus opposita est, nec ad Favoni,
Nec sævi Boreæ, aut Apeliotæ,
Verum ad millia quindecim et ducentos.
O ventum horribilem, atque pestilentem!
248
DEFENCE OF THE EPILOGUE.
like kind of man, a gentleman with an allay of
pedantry; a man who seems mortified to the
world, by much reading. The best of his dis-
course is drawn, not from the knowledge of the
town, but books; and, in short, he would be a
fine gentleman in an University. Shakspeare
shewed the best of his skill in his Mercutio; and
he said himself, that he was forced to kill him in
the third act, to prevent being killed by him.
But for my part, I cannot find he was so dangerous
a person I see nothing in him but what was so
exceeding harmless, that he might have lived to
the end of the play, and died in his bed, without
offence to any man."
5 It is extraordinary that our author should in this place
have taken no notice of one of Shakspeare's most finished
characters, in that style which he is here considering; I
mean Benedick, in whom, as Mr. Steevens has justly
remarked, are combined-" the wit, the humourist, the
gentleman, and the soldier."
On the tradition, that " Shakspeare was obliged to kill
Mercutio in the third act, lest he should have been killed
by him ;" and our author's reflection-" that he thinks him
no such formidable person, but that he might have lived
to the end of the play, and died in his bed without offence
to any man ;” Dr. Johnson has made the following judi-
cious observation: "Dryden well knew, had he been
in quest of truth, that in a pointed sentence, more regard
is commonly had to the words than the thought; and that
it is very seldom to be rigorously understood. Mer-
cutio's wit, gaiety, and courage, will always procure him.
friends that wish him a longer life; but his death is not
precipitated he has lived out the time allotted to him in
DEEENCE OF The epilogue.
249
Fletcher's Don John is our only bugbear; and
yet, I may affirm without suspicion of flattery,
that he now speaks better," and that his character
is maintained with much more vigour in the
fourth and fifth acts, than it was by Fletcher in
the three former. I have always acknowledged
the wit of our predecessors, with all the veneration
which becomes me; but I am sure, their wit was
not that of gentlemen; there was ever somewhat
that was ill-bred and clownish in it, and which
confessed the conversation of the authors.
And this leads me to the last and greatest
advantage of our writing, which proceeds from
conversation. In the age wherein those poets
lived, there was less of gallantry than in ours;
neither did they keep the best company of theirs."
Their fortune has been* much like that of Epicurus,
the construction of the play. Nor do I doubt the ability
of Shakspeare to have continued his existence, though
some of his sallies are perhaps out of the reach of Dryden;
whose genius was not very fertile of merriment, nor
ductile to humour, but acute, argumentative, compre-
hensive, and sublime."
6 In Fletcher's CHANCES, as altered by the Duke of
Buckingham.
7 Though Shakspeare did not keep company with
courtiers, there is abundant evidence that he lived in
familiarity with several respectable gentlemen; and he
appears to have been as well acquainted with the language
of the court, as if he had passed his life there.
* This phraseology, which was perhaps once general, is
now peculiar to Scotland. We should now write-Their
fortune was, &c.
250
DEFENCE OF THE EPILOGUE.
in the retirement of his gardens; to live almost
unknown, and to be celebrated after their decease.
I cannot find that any of them were conversant in
courts, except Ben Jonson: and his genius lay not
so much that way, as to make an improvement by
it. Greatness was not, then, so easy of access,
nor conversation so free as now it is. I cannot
therefore conceive it any insolence to affirm, that
by the knowledge and pattern of their wit, who
writ before us, and by the advantage of our own
conversation, the discourse and raillery of our
comedies excel what has been written by them.
And this will be denied by none, but some few
old fellows, who value themselves on their ac-
quaintance with the Black-Friars who, because
they saw their plays, would pretend a right to
judge ours. The memory of these grave gentle-
men is their only plea for being Wits. They
can tell a story of Ben Jonson, and perhaps have
had fancy enough to give a supper in Apollo, that
they might be called his sons: and because they
were drawn in to be laughed at in those times, they
think themselves now sufficiently intitled to laugh
at ours. Learning I never saw in any of them,
and wit no more than they could remember. In
short, they were unlucky to have been bred in
an unpolished age, and more unlucky to live to a
refined one. They have lasted beyond their own,
and are cast behind ours; and not contented to
have known little at the age of twenty, they boast
of their ignorance at threescore.
DEFENCE OF THE EPILOGUE.
251
Now if any ask me, whence it is that our con-
versation is so much refined, I must freely, and
without flattery, ascribe it to the court; and, in
it, particularly to the king, whose example gives
a law to it. His own misfortunes, and the nation's,
afforded him an opportunity, which is rarely
allowed to sovereign princes; I mean of travelling,
and being conversant in the most polished courts
of Europe and, thereby, of cultivating a spirit,
which was formed by nature to receive the im-
pressions of a gallant and generous education.
At his return, he found a nation lost as much in
barbarism as in rebellion. And as the excellency
of his nature forgave the one, so the excellency of
his manners reformed the other. The desire of
imitating so great a pattern, first awakened the
dull and heavy spirits of the English from their
natural reservedness; loosened them from their
stiff forms of conversation; and made them easy
and pliant to each other in discourse. Thus,
insensibly, our way of living became more free;
and the fire of the English wit, which was before
stifled under a constrained, melancholy way of
breeding, began first to display its force, by mix-
ing the solidity of our nation with the air and
gaiety of our neighbours. This being granted to
be true, it would be a wonder if the poets, whose
work is imitation, should be the only persons
in three kingdoms, who should not receive advan-
tage by it; or, if they should not more easily
252
DEFENCE OF THE EPILOGUE.
imitate the wit and conversation of the present
age, than of the past.
Let us, therefore, admire the beauties and the
heights of Shakspeare, without falling after him into
a carelessness, and (as I may call it) a lethargy of
thought, for whole scenes together.
Let us
imitate, as we are able, the quickness and easiness
of Fletcher, without proposing him as a pattern
to us, either in the redundancy of his matter, or
the incorrectness of his language. Let us admire
his wit and sharpness of conceit; but let us at the
same time acknowledge that it was seldom so fixed,
and made proper to his character, as that the same
things might not be spoken by any person in the
play. Let us applaud his scenes of love; but let us
confess, that he understood not either greatness or
perfect honour in the parts of any of his women. In
fine, let us allow, that he had so much fancy, as
when he pleased he could write wit: but that he
wanted so much judgment, as seldom to have
written humour, or described a pleasant folly. Let
us ascribe to Jonson the height and accuracy of
judgment, in the ordering of his plots, his choice
of characters, and maintaining what he had chosen,
to the end. But let us not think him a perfect
pattern of imitation, except it be in humour; for
love, which is the foundation of all comedies in
other languages, is scarcely mentioned in any of
his plays and for humour itself, the poets of this
age will be more wary than to imitate the mean-
DEFENCE OF THE EPILOGUE,
253
ness of his persons. Gentlemen will now be
entertained with the follies of each other; and
though they allow Cob and Tib to speak properly,
yet they are not much pleased with their tankard,
or with their rags: and, surely their conversation
can be no jest to them on the theatre, when they
would avoid it in the street.
To conclude all; let us render to our prede-
cessors what is their due, without confining our-
selves to a servile imitation of all they writ; and,
without assuming to ourselves the title of better
poets, let us ascribe to the gallantry and civility
of our age the advantage which we have above
them; and to our knowledge of the customs and
manners of it, the happiness we have to please
beyond them.
THE
GROUNDS OF CRITICISM
IN TRAGEDY:
FIRST PRINTED IN QUARTO, IN 1679.
PREFACE
TO
TROILUS AND CRESSIDA:
CONTAINING
THE GROUNDS OF CRITICISM IN TRAGEDY.
THE poct Æschylus was held in the same
:
veneration by the Athenians of afterages as
Shakspeare is by us; and Longinus has judged in
favour of him, that he had a noble boldness of
expression, and that his imaginations were lofty
and heroick but on the other side Quintilian
affirms, that he was daring to extravagance. It is
certain that he affected pompous words, and that
his sense too often was obscured by figures:
notwithstanding these imperfections, the value of
his writings after his decease was such, that his
countrymen ordained an equal reward to those
poets who could alter his plays to be acted on the
theatre, with those whose productions were wholly
new, and of their own. The case is not the same
in England; though the difficulties of altering are
greater, and our reverence for Shakspeare much
more just, than that of the Grecians for Eschylus.
In the age of that poet the Greek tongue was
VOL. I.
S
258
GROUNDS OF CRITICISM
8
arrived to its full perfection; they had then amongst
them an exact standard of writing, and of speak-
ing the English language is not capable of such
a certainty; and we are at present so far from it,
that we are wanting in the very foundation of it,
a perfect grammar. Yet it must be allowed to
the present age, that the tongue in general is so
much refined since Shakspeare's time, that many
of his words, and more of his phrases, are scarce
intelligible and of those which we understand,
some are ungrammatical, others coarse; and his
whole style is so pestered with figurative expres-
sions, that it is as affected as it is obscure. It is
true, that in his latter plays he had worn off
8 It appears from the Dedication which precedes this
Preface, that at this time a scheme was in agitation to
form a Society for refining the English Language, and
fixing its standard, under the patronage of Robert, earl of
Sunderland, then Secretary of State. Lord Roscommon
was the principal promoter of this scheme. See p. 9.
9 It is clear, as I have already observed, not only that
our author did not know, with any kind of accuracy, which
were Shakspeare's earliest or latter productions; but that
he was not even possessed of any such information as might
be made the basis of probable conjecture. KINg Lear,
CYMBELINE, MACBETH, JULIUS CAESAR, ANTONY AND
CLEOPATRA, TIMON OF ATHENS, CORIOLANUS, THE
WINTER'S TALE, and THE TEMPEST, we have very good
grounds for supposing Shakspeare's latest productions ;
and these pieces are certainly not less "pestered with
figurative expressions," than several others which might
be enumerated. I formerly thought that OTHELLO was
IN TRAGEDY.
259
somewhat of the rust; but the tragedy which I
have undertaken to correct, was, in all probability,
one of his first endeavours on the stage.
I
The original story was written by one Lollius,
a Lombard, in Latin verse, and translated by
Chaucer into English ;' intended, I suppose, a
satire on the inconstancy of women. I find
nothing of it among the ancients, not so much as
the name Cressida once mentioned. Shakspeare
one of our great dramatick poet's latest compositions; but
I now know, from indisputable evidence, that was not the
case. So that here also our author appears to have been
but little acquainted with the chronology of Shakspeare's
dramas; for (without entering into the question-how
much or how little of PERICLES was his,) THE PRINCE OF
TYRE was so far from being elder than THE MOOR, as he
has asserted in the Prologue to CIRCE, (1677) that it was
some years younger than that excellent tragedy. As to the
play of TROILUS AND CRESSIDA, which Dryden supposed
to be "
one of his first endeavours on the stage," there
are good grounds for ascribing it to the year 1602; and
we know that he had produced near twenty dramas before
that time.
¹ Mr. TYRWHITT was of opinion, that Chaucer's
TROILUS and CRESEIDE was for the most part a translation
of the FILOSTRATO of Boccace, (a very rare poem, printed
in 4to. 1498,) but with many variations, and such large
additions, that it contains above 2700 lines more than its
original. "This (he adds) is evident, not only from the
fable and characters, which are the same in both poems,
but also from a number of passages in the English, which
are literally translated from the Italian." See Tyrwhitt's
Chaucer, vol. iii. p. 311; and vol. iv. p. 85, n. 62.
+
260
GROUNDS OF CRITICISM
2
(as I hinted) in the apprenticeship of his writing,
modelled it into that play which is now called by
the name of TROILUS AND CRESSIDA: but so
lamely is it left to us, that it is not divided into
acts: which fault I ascribe to the actors who
printed it after Shakspeare's death,' and that too,
so carelessly, that a more uncorrect copy I never
saw. For the play itself, the author seems to
have begun it with some fire; the characters of
Pandarus and Thersites are promising enough;
but, as if he grew weary of his task, after an
entrance or two, he lets them fall: and the latter
part of the tragedy is nothing but a confusion of
2 Shakspeare appears to have derived the principal
materials for this play from the Troye Boke of Lydgate,
printed in 1513. Dekker, however, had before produced
a play on this subject, at first entitled TROILUS AND
CRESSIDA, and afterwards, THE TRAGEDIE OF AGA-
MEMNON, which was acted in June 1599. (See THE
HISTORY OF THE STAGE, Shakspeare's PLAYS AND
POEMS, vol. i. part ii. p. 329). Whether Shakspeare
was at all indebted to this piece, cannot now be ascertained,
Dekker's play being lost.
3 It was originally published in quarto in 1609, seven
years before Shakspeare's death; and not by the actors,
but by two booksellers, without their consent. Dryden,
however, probably knew of no other edition but that of
the folio, 1623, which was printed by Shakspeare's fellow-
comedians, Heminges and Condell, after his death.
I take this opportunity of correcting an errour into which
I and others have fallen, in supposing that there were two
editions of this play in quarto, one with the date already
IN TRAGEDY.
261
drums and trumpets, excursions and alarms. The
chief persons who give name to the tragedy, are
left alive Cressida is false, and is not punished.
Yet after all, because the play was Shakspeare's,
and that there appeared in some places of it the
admirable genius of the author, I undertook to
remove that heap of rubbish under which many
excellent thoughts lay wholly buried. Accord-
ingly, I new-modelled the plot; threw out many
unnecessary persons; improved those characters
which were begun and left unfinished, as Hector,
Troilus, Pandarus, and Thersites; and added that
of Andromache. After this I made, with no small
trouble, an order and connexion of all the scenes,
removing them from the places where they were
'
mentioned, and the other without any date.-Mr. Pope,
in his Table of Editions of Shakspeare's Plays, having
mentioned one of TROILUS AND CRESSIDA in 1609,
subjoined a notice of a second copy-" as acted by the
King's Majesties servants at the Globe;", not thinking it
necessary to repeat the year. But in fact both these copies
are one and the same edition. The truth is, that in that
edition where no mention is made of the theatre in which
the play was represented, we find a preface, in which, to
give an additional value to the piece, the booksellers
assert that it never had been acted. That being found a
notorious falshood, they afterwards suppressed the preface,
and printed a new title-page, in which it is stated to have
been acted at the Globe Theatre by his Majesties Ser-
The date of this, as of the other title-page, is
1609. I carefully examined both these copies, and found
no variation whatsoever between them, except that already
mentioned.
vants.
262
GROUNDS OF CRITICISM
inartificially set; and though it was impossible to
keep them all unbroken, because the scene must
be sometimes in the city, and sometimes in the
camp, yet I have so ordered them, that there is a
coherence of them with one another, and a de-
pendence on the main design: no leaping from
Troy to the Grecian tents, and thence back again
in the same act; but a due proportion of time
allowed for every motion. I need not say that I
have refined his language, which before was obso-
lete; but I am willing to acknowledge, that as I
have often drawn his English nearer to our times,
so I have sometimes conformed my own to his;
and consequently, the language is not altogether
so pure as it is significant. The scenes of Pan-
darus and Cressida, of Troilus and Pandarus, of
Andromache with Hector and the Trojans, in the
second act, are wholly new; together with that of
Nestor and Ulysses with Thersites, and that of
Thersites with Ajax and Achilles. I will not
weary my reader with the scenes which are added
of Pandarus and the lovers, in the third; and
those of Thersites, which are wholly altered: but
I cannot omit the last scene in it, which is almost
half the act, betwixt Troilus and Hector. The
occasion of raising it was hinted to me by Mr.
Betterton; the contrivance and working of it was
my own. They who think to do me an injury by
saying that it is an imitation of the scene betwixt
Brutus and Cassius, do me an honour by sup-
posing I could imitate the incomparable Shakspeare;
IN TRAGEDY.
263
but let me add, that if Shakspeare's scene, or that
faulty copy of it in Amintor and Melantius, had
never been, yet Euripides had furnished me with
an excellent example in his IPHIGENIA, between
Agamemnon and Menelaus; and from thence,
indeed, the last turn of it is borrowed. The
occasion which Shakspeare, Euripides, and Flet-
cher, have all taken, is the same,-grounded
upon friendship; and the quarrel of two virtuous
men, raised by natural degrees to the extremity of
passion, is conducted in all three to the declina-
tion of the same passion; and concludes with a
warm renewing of their friendship. But the
particular ground-work which Shakspeare has
taken, is incomparably the best; because he has
not only chosen two of the greatest heroes of their
age, but has likewise interested the liberty of
Rome, and their own honours who were the
redeemers of it, in this debate. And if he has
made Brutus, who was naturally a patient man, to
fly into excess at first, let it be remembered in
his defence, that just before he has received the
news of Portia's death, whom the poet, on purpose
neglecting a little chronology, supposes to have
died before Brutus,* only to give him an occasion
of being more easily exasperated. Add to this,
that the injury he had received from Cassius had
long been brooding in his mind; and that a
* He had sufficient authority for this supposition. See
SHAKSPEARE'S PLAYS AND POEMS, vol. vii. p. 393.
264
GROUNDS OF CRITICISM
:
melancholy man, upon consideration of an affront,
especially from a friend, would be more eager in
his passion than he who had given it, though
naturally more cholerick. Euripides, whom I
have followed, has raised the quarrel betwixt two
brothers, who were friends. The foundation of the
scene was this: The Grecians were wind-bound at
the port of Aulis, and the Oracle had said, that
they could not sail, unless Agamemnon delivered
up his daughter to be sacrificed he refuses; his
brother, Menelaus, urges the publick safety; the
father defends himself by arguments of natural
affection; and hereupon they quarrel. Agamemnon
is at last convinced, and promises to deliver up
Iphigenia; but so passionately laments his loss,
that Menelaus is grieved to have been the occasion
of it, and by a return of kindness, offers to inter-
cede for him with the Grecians, that his daughter
might not be sacrificed. But my friend, Mr.
Rymer, has so largely, and with so much judgment,
described this scene, in comparing it with that of
Melantius and Amintor, that it is superfluous to
say more of it: I only named the heads of it, that
any reasonable man might judge it was from thence
I modelled my scene betwixt Troilus and Hector.
I will conclude my reflexions on it with a passage
of Longinus, concerning Plato's imitation of
Homer: "We ought not to regard a good imi-
"tation as a theft, but as a beautiful idea of him
"who undertakes to imitate, by forming himself
"on the invention and the work of another man ;
IN TRAGEDY.
265
(6
"for he enters into the lists like a new wrestler
"to dispute the prize with the former champion.
"This sort of emulation, says Hesiod, is honour-
"able, 'Ayan ♪ gis is ẞpoloio, when we com-
"bat for victory with a hero, and are not without
glory even in our overthrow. Those great men
"whom we propose to ourselves as patterns of
"our imitation, serve us as a torch, which is lifted
up before us, to enlighten our passage; and
"often elevate our thoughts as high as the con-
ception we have of our author's genius."
66
66
I have been so tedious in three acts, that I shall
contract myself in the two last. The beginning
scenes of the fourth act are either added, or
changed wholly by me; the middle of it is
Shakspeare altered, and mingled with my own:
three or four of the last scenes are altogether new;
and the whole fifth act, both the plot and the
writing, are my own additions.
But having written so much for imitation of
what is excellent, in that part of the Preface which
related only to myself, methinks it would neither
be unprofitable nor unpleasant to enquire how far
we ought to imitate our own poets, Shakspeare
and Fletcher, in their tragedies; and this will
occasion another enquiry, how those two writers.
differ between themselves. But since neither of
these questions can be solved, unless some measures
be first taken, by which we may be enabled to
judge truly of their writings, I shall endeavour, as
briefly as I can, to discover the grounds and reason
266
GROUNDS OF CRITICISM
of all Criticism, applying them in this place only
to tragedy. Aristotle, with his interpreters, and
Horace, and Longinus, are the authors to whom I
owe my lights; and what part soever of my own
plays, or of this, which no mending could make
regular, shall fall under the condemnation of such
judges, it would be impudence in me to defend.
I think it no shame to retract my errours, and am
well pleased to suffer in the cause, if the art
may be improved at my expence: I therefore
proceed to
THE GROUNDS OF CRITICISM IN TRAGEDY.4
Tragedy is thus defined by Aristotle (omitting
what I thought unnecessary in his definition). It
is an imitation of one entire, great, and probable
action, not told, but represented; which, by
moving in us fear and pity, is conducive to the
purging of those two passions in our minds. More
largely thus: Tragedy describes or paints an action,
which action must have all the proprieties above
named. First, it must be one or single, that is,
it must not be a history of one man's life, suppose
of Alexander the Great, or Julius Cæsar, but one
single action of theirs. This condemns all Shak-
speare's historical plays, which are rather chronicles
represented, than tragedies; and all double action
4 Dr. Johnson was of opinion that Rymer's book,
(on the Tragedies of the last Age) which was published
in 1678, gave occasion to this dissertation.
IN TRAGEDY.
267
of plays. As to avoid a satire upon others, I will
make bold with my own MARRIAGE A-LA-MODE,
where there are manifestly two actions, not de-
pending upon one another: but in OEDIPUS there
cannot properly be said to be two actions, because
the love of Adrastus and Eurydice has a necessary
dependence on the principal design, into which it
is woven. The natural reason of this rule is plain;
for two different independent actions distract the
attention and concernment of the audience, and
consequently destroy the intention of the poet.
If his business be to move terrour and pity, and one
of his actions be comical, the other tragical, the
former will divert the people, and utterly make
void his greater purpose.' Therefore, as in per-
spective, so in tragedy, there must be a point of
sight in which all the lines terminate; otherwise
the eye wanders, and the work is false. This was
the practice of the Grecian stage. But Terence
made an innovation in the Roman: all his plays
have double actions; for it was his custom to
translate two Greek comedies, and to weave them
into one of his, yet so, that both the actions were
5 Our author (as has been already observed) is not
always consistent with himself. In the Dedication of THE
SPANISH FRIAR, written two years after this Essay
appeared, he prophecies that few tragedies, except those in
verse, would succeed, unless they were lightened with a
course of mirth: "A several genius (he adds) is required
to either way; and without both of them, a man, in my
opinion, is but half a writer for the stage.
268
GROUNDS OF CRITICISM
comical; and one was principal, the other but
secondary or subservient. And this has obtained
on the English stage, to give us the pleasure of
variety.
As the action ought to be one, it ought as
such, to have order in it; that is, to have a natural
beginning, a middle, and an end. A natural
beginning, says Aristotle, is that which could not
necessarily have been placed after another thing;
and so of the rest. This consideration will arraign
all plays after the new model of Spanish plots,
where accident is heaped upon accident, and that
which is first might as reasonably be last an
inconvenience not to be remedied, but by making
one accident naturally produce another; other-
wise it is a farce, and not a play. Of this nature
is THE SLIGHTED MAID ; where there is no
scene in the first act, which might not by as good
reason be in the fifth. And if the action ought
to be one, the tragedy ought likewise to conclude
with the action of it. Thus in MUSTAPHA, the
play should naturally have ended with the death
of Zanger, and not have given us the grace-cup
after dinner of Solyman's divorce from Roxolana.
7
The following properties of the action are so
easy, that they need not my explaining. It ought
to be great, and to consist of great persons, to
distinguish it from comedy; where the action is
• A comedy by Sir Robert Stapylton, 4to. 1663.
7 MUSTAPHA is a tragedy in rhyme, written by Roger
Boyle, earl of Orrery, and published in folio, in 1672.
IN TRAGEDY.
269
trivial, and the persons of inferior rank. The last
quality of the action is, that it ought to be pro-
bable, as well as admirable and great. It is not
necessary that there should be historical truth in
it; but always necessary that there should be a
likeness of truth, something that is more than
barely possible, probable being that which succeeds
or happens oftener than it misses. To invent
therefore a probability, and to make it wonderful,
is the most difficult undertaking in the art of
poetry for that which is not wonderful is not
great, and that which is not probable will not
delight a reasonable audience. This action thus
described, must be represented, and not told, to
distinguish dramatick poetry from epick :—but I
hasten to the end, or scope of tragedy; which is
to rectify or purge our passions, fear, and pity.
To instruct delightfully is the general end of
all poetry. Philosophy instructs, but it performs
its work by precept; which is not delightful, or
not so delightful as example. To purge the
passions by example, is therefore the particular
instruction which belongs to tragedy. Rapin, a
judicious critick, has observed from Aristotle, that
pride, and want of commiseration, are the most
predominant vices in mankind; therefore, to cure
us of these two, the inventors of tragedy have
chosen to work upon two other passions, which
are, fear and pity. We are wrought to fear, by
their setting before our eyes some terrible example
of misfortune, which happened to persons of the
270
GROUNDS OF CRITICISM
highest quality; for such an action demonstrates
to us, that no condition is privileged from the
turns of fortune: this must of necessity cause
terrour in us, and consequently abate our pride.
But when we see that the most virtuous, as well
as the greatest, are not exempt from such misfor-
tunes, that consideration moves pity in us, and
insensibly works us to be helpful to, and tender
over, the distressed; which is the noblest and most
godlike of moral virtues. Here it is observable,
that it is absolutely necessary to make a man
virtuous, if we desire he should be pitied. We
lament not, but detest, a wicked man; we are
glad when we behold his crimes are punished, and
that poetical justice is done upon him. Euripides
was censured by the criticks of his time, for making
his chief characters too wicked: for example,
Phædra, though she loved her son-in-law with
reluctancy, and that it was a curse upon her
family for offending Venus, yet was thought too
ill a pattern for the stage. Shall we, therefore,
banish all characters of villany? I confess I am
not of that opinion; but it is necessary that the
hero of the play be not a villain: that is, the
characters which should move our pity ought to
have virtuous inclinations, and degrees of moral
goodness in them. As for a perfect character of
virtue, it never was in nature; and therefore there
can be no imitation of it. But there are allays of
frailty to be allowed for the chief persons; yet so
that the good which is in them shall outweigh
IN TRAGEDY.
271
the bad, and consequently leave room for punish-
ment on the one side, and pity on the other.
After all, if any one will ask me, whether a
tragedy cannot be made upon any other grounds,
than those of exciting pity and terrour in us ;-
Bossu, the best of modern criticks, answers thus in
general that all excellent arts, and particularly
that of poetry, have been invented and brought to
perfection by men of a transcendent genius; and
that therefore, they who practise afterwards the
same arts, are obliged to tread in their footsteps,
and to search in their writings the foundation of
them; for it is not just that new rules should
destroy the authority of the old. But Rapin
writes more particularly thus: that no passions in
a story are so proper to move our concernment as
fear and pity; and that it is from our concernment
we receive our pleasure, is undoubted: when the
soul becomes agitated with fear for one cha-
racter, or hope for another, then it is that we are
pleased in tragedy, by the interest which we take
in their adventures.
Here, therefore, the general answer may be
given to the first question, how far we ought to
imitate Shakspeare and Fletcher in their plots;
namely, that we ought to follow them so far only,
as they have copied the excellencies of those who
invented and brought to perfection dramatick
poetry: those things only excepted, which religion,
customs of countries, idioms of languages, &c.
272
GROUNDS OF CRITICISM
have altered in the superstructures, but not in the
foundation of the design.
How defective Shakspeare and Fletcher have
been in all their plots, Mr. Rymer has discovered
in his Criticisms; neither can we, who follow
them, be excused from the same or greater errours;
which are the more unpardonable in us, because
we want their beauty to countervail our faults.
The best of their designs, the most approaching
to antiquity, and the most conducing to move
pity, is THE KING AND NO KING; which, if the
farce of Bessus were thrown away, is of that infe-
rior sort of tragedies, which end with a prosperous
event. It is probably derived from the story of
Oedipus, with the character of Alexander the
Great, in his extravagancies, given to Arbaces.
The taking of this play amongst many others, I
cannot wholly ascribe to the excellency of the
action; for I find it moving when it is read: it is
true, the faults of the plot are so evidently proved,
that they can no longer be denied. The beauties
of it must therefore lie either in the lively touches
of the passions, or we must conclude, as I think
we may, that even in imperfect plots, there are
less degrees of nature, by which some faint emo-
tions of pity and terrour are raised in us as a less
engine will raise a less proportion of weight, though
not so much as one of Archimedes' making; for
nothing can move our nature, but by some natural
reason which works upon [our] passions; and since
IN TRAGEDY.
273
we acknowledge the effect, there must be some-
thing in the cause.
The difference between Shakspeare and Fletcher
in their plotting, seems to be this; that Shakspeare
generally moves more terrour, and Fletcher more
compassion for the first had a more masculine, a
bolder and more firy genius; the second a more
soft and womanish. In the mechanick beauties of
the plot, which are the observation of the three
unities, time, place, and action, they are both
deficient; but Shakspeare most. Ben Jonson
reformed those crrours in his comedies, yet one of
Shakspeare's was regular before him; which is,
THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR. For what
remains concerning the design, you are to be
referred to our English critick.* That method
which he has prescribed to raise it, from mistake
or ignorance of the crime, is certainly the best,
though it is not the only; for amongst all the
tragedies of Sophocles, there is but one, (OEDIPUS)
which is wholly built after that model.
8
After the plot, which is the foundation of the
play, the next thing to which we ought to apply
our judgment is the manners; for now the poet
comes to work above ground: the ground-work
!
8 THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR was certainly not
produced till after EVERY MAN IN HIS HUMOUR; and
probably not till after EVERY MAN OUT OF HIS HUMOUR
had been acted. The former of these two pieces was
acted in 1598, and the other in 1599.
* Rymer.
VOL. I.
T
274
GROUNDS OF CRITICISM
indeed is that which is most necessary, as that
upon which depends the firmness of the whole
fabrick; yet it strikes not the eye so much, as the
beauties or imperfections of the manners, the
thoughts, and the expressions.
The first rule which Bossu prescribes to the
writer of an heroick poem, and which holds too
by the same reason in all dramatick poetry, is, to
make the moral of the work; that is, to lay down
to yourself what that precept of morality shall be
which you would insinuate into the people; as
namely, Homer's (which I have copied in my
CONQUEST OF GRANADA) was, that union preserves
a commonwealth, and discord destroys it; So-
phocles, in his OEDIPUS, that no man is to be
accounted happy before his death. It is the moral
that directs the whole action of the play to one
centre; and that action or fable is the example
built upon the moral, which confirms the truth of
it to our experience. When the fable is designed,
then, and not before, the persons are to be intro-
luced with their manners, characters, and passions.
The manners, in a poem, are understood to be
those inclinations, whether natural or acquired,
which move and carry us to actions, good, bad, or
indifferent, in a play; or which incline the persons
to such or such actions. I have anticipated part
of this discourse already, in declaring that a poet
ought not to make the manners perfectly good in
his best persons; but neither are they to be more
wicked in any of his characters, than necessity
IN TRAGEDY.
275
requires. To produce a villain without other
reason than a natural inclination to villany, is in
poetry, to produce an effect without a cause; and
to make him more a villain than he has just reason
to be, is to make an effect which is stronger than
the cause.
The manners arise from many causes; and are
either distinguished by complexion, as cholerick
and phlegmatick, or by the differences of age or
sex, of climates, or quality of the persons, or their
present condition. They are likewise to be
gathered from the several virtues, vices, or passions,
and many other common-places which a poet must
be supposed to have learned from natural philo-
sophy, ethicks, and history; of all which whosoever
is ignorant, does not deserve the name of poet.
But as the manners are useful in this art, they
may be all comprised under these general heads:
First, they must be apparent; that is, in every
character of the play some inclinations of the
person must appear; and these are shewn in the
actions and discourse. Secondly, the manners
must be suitable or agreeing to the persons; that
is, to the age, sex, dignity, and the other general
heads of manners: thus, when a poet has given
the dignity of a king to one of his persons, in all
his actions and speeches that person must discover
majesty, magnanimity, and jealousy of power;
because these are suitable to the general manners
of a king. The third property of manners is
resemblance and this is founded
upon the par-
276
GROUNDS OF CRITICISM
ticular characters of men, as we have them delivered
to us by relation or history: that is, when a poet has
the known character of this or that man before.
him, he is bound to represent him such, at least
not contrary to that which fame has reported him
to have been. Thus it is not a poet's choice to
make Ulysses cholerick, or Achilles patient, be--
cause Homer has described them quite otherwise.
Yet this is a rock on which ignorant writers daily
split; and the absurdity is as monstrous, as if a
painter should draw a coward running from a
battle, and tell us it was the picture of Alexander
the Great.-The last property of manners is, that
they be constant and equal, that is, maintained
the same through the whole design: thus, when
Virgil had once given the name of picus to Æneas,
he was bound to shew him such, in all his words
and actions throughout the whole poem.
these properties Horace has hinted to a judicious
observer: 1. Notandi sunt tibi mores; 2. Aut
famam sequere, 3. aut sibi convenientia finge; 4.
Servetur ad imum, qualis ab incepto processerit, et
sibi constet.
All
From the manners the characters of persons
are derived; for indeed, the characters are no
other than the inclinations as they appear in
the several persons of the poem: a character
being thus defined, that which distinguishes one
man from another. Not to repeat the same
things over again, which have been said of the
manners, I will only add what is necessary here.
IN TRAGEDY.
277
A character, or that which distinguishes one man
from all others, cannot be supposed to consist of
one particular virtue, or vice, or passion only; but
it is a composition of qualities which are not
contrary to one another in the same person: thus
the same man may be liberal and valiant, but not
liberal and covetous; so in a comical character,
or humour, (which is an inclination to this or that
particular folly,) Falstaff is a liar, and a coward, a
glutton, and a buffoon, because all these qualities
may agree in the same man. Yet it is still to be
observed, that one virtue, vice, and passion, ought
to be shewn in every man, as predominant over
all the rest; as covetousness in Crassus, love of
his country in Brutus; and the same in characters
which are feigned.
The chief character or hero in a tragedy, as I
have already shewn, ought in prudence to be such
a man, who has so much more in him of virtue
than of vice, that he may be left amiable to the
audience, which otherwise cannot have any con-
cernment for his sufferings; and it is on this one
character that the pity and terrour must be princi-
pally, if not wholly, founded: a rule which is
extremely necessary, and which none of the criticks
that I know, have fully enough discovered to us.
For terrour and compassion work but weakly,
when they are divided into many persons. If
Creon had been the chief character in OEDipus,
there had neither been terrour nor compassion
moved; but only detestation of the man, and joy
!
¿
278
GROUNDS OF CRITICISM
for his punishment; if Adrastus and Eurydice had
been made more appearing characters, then the
pity had been divided, and lessened on the part of
Oedipus; but making Oedipus the best and bravest
person, and even Jocasta but an under-part to
him, his virtues and the punishment of his fatal
crime, drew both the pity and the terrour to
himself.
By what had been said of the manners it will
be easy for a reasonable man to judge, whether
the characters be truly or falsely drawn in a
tragedy; for if there be no manners appearing in
the characters, no concernment for the persons
can be raised; no pity or horrour can be moved,
but by vice or virtue; therefore, without them no
person can have business in the play. If the
inclinations be obscure, it is a sign the poet is
in the dark, and knows not what manner of man
he presents to you; and consequently you can
have no idea, or very imperfect, of that man;
nor can judge what resolutions he ought to take,
or what words or actions are proper for him.
Most comedies made up of accidents, or adven-
tures, are liable to fall into this errour; and trage-
dies, with many turns, are subject to it for the
manners never can be evident, where the sur-
prises of fortune take up all the business of the
stage, and where the poet is more in pain to tell
you what happened to such a man, than what he
was. It is one of the excellencies of Shakspeare,
that the manners of his persons are generally
IN TRAGEDY.
279-
apparent, and
you see their bent and inclinations.
Fletcher comes far short of him in this, as indeed
he does almost in every thing; there are but
glimmerings of manners in most of his comedies,
which run upon adventures; and in his tragedies,
Rollo, Otto, the King-and-No-King, Melantius,"
and many others of his best, are but pictures
shewn you in the twilight; you know not whether.
they resemble vice or virtue; and they are either
good, bad, or indifferent, as the present scene
requires it.
But of all poets, this commenda-
tion is to be given to Ben Jonson, that the
manners, even of the most inconsiderable persons
in his plays, are every where apparent.
By considering the second quality of manners,
which is that they be suitable to the age, quality,
country, dignity, &c. of the character, we may
likewise judge whether a poet has followed nature.
In this kind Sophocles and Euripides have more
excelled among the Greeks, than Æschylus; and
Terence more than Plautus among the Romans:
thus Sophocles gives to Oedipus the true qualities
of a king, in both those plays which bear his
name; but in the latter, which is the OEDIPUS
COLONCUS, he lets fall on purpose his tragick style;
his hero speaks not in the arbitrary tone, but
remembers, in the softness of his complaints, that
9 Melantius is a character in THE MAID'S TRAGEDY ;
Otto, in ROLLO, or, as it was sometimes entitled-THE
BLOODY BRother.
280
GROUNDS OF CRITICISM
he is an unfortunate old man ; that he is banished
from his country, and persecuted by his next
relations. The present French poets are generally
accused, that wheresoever they lay the scene, or
in whatsoever age, the manners of their heroes are
wholly French Racine's Bajazet is bred at Con-
stantinople, but his civilities are conveyed to him
by some secret passage from Versailles into the
Seraglio. But our Shakspeare, having ascribed to
Henry the Fourth the character of a king, and of
a father, gives him the perfect manners of each
relation, when either he transacts with his son, or
with his subjects. Fletcher, on the other side,
gives neither to Arbaces, nor to his king in THE
MAID'S TRAGEDY, the qualities which are suitable
to a monarch; though he may be excused a little
in the latter, for the king there is not uppermost
in the character; it is the lover of Evadne, who is
king only in a second consideration; and though
he be unjust, and has other faults which shall be
nameless, yet he is not the hero of the play. It is
true, we find him a lawful prince, (though I never
heard of any king that was in Rhodes,) and there-
fore Mr. Rymer's criticism stands good,—that he
should not be shewn in so vicious a character.
Sophocles has been more judicious in his ANTI-
GONA; for though he represent in Creon a bloody
prince, yet he makes him not a lawful king, but
an usurper; and Antigona herself is the heroine
of the tragedy: but when Philaster wounds Are-
thusa and the boy, and Perigot his mistress in
IN TRAGEDY.
281
THE FAITHFUL SHEPHERDESS, both these are
contrary to the character of manhood: nor is
Valentinian managed much better; for though
Fletcher has taken his picture truly, and shewn
him as he was, an effeminate voluptuous man, yet
he has forgotten that he was an emperor, and has.
given him none of those royal marks which ought
to appear in a lawful successor of the throne. If
it be enquired, what Fletcher should have done
on this occasion; ought he not to have repre-
sented Valentinian as he was ;-Bossu shall answer
this question for me, by an instance of the like
nature: Mauritius, the Greek emperor, was a
prince far surpassing Valentinian, for he was
endued with many kingly virtues; he was religious,
merciful, and valiant, but withal he was noted of
extreme covetousness, a vice which is contrary to
the character of a hero, or a prince; therefore,
says the critick, that emperor was no fit person to
be represented in a tragedy, unless his good
qualities were only to be shewn, and his covetous-
ness, which sullied them all, were slurred over
by the artifice of the poet.-To return once more
to Shakspeare; no man ever drew so many cha-
racters, or generally distinguished them better
from one another,' excepting only Jonson. I will
Here our author has made some amends for his
unjust censure of Shakspeare in this respect, in a former
Essay. See p. 195. "His CHARACTERS (Mr. Pope truly
observes), are so much Nature herself, that it is a sort of
282
GROUNDS OF CRITICISM
instance but in one, to shew the copiousness of
his invention; it is that of Caliban, or the Mon-
ster, in THE TEMPEST. He seems there to have
created a person which was not in nature, a
boldness which at first sight would appear intole-
rable; for he makes him a species of himself,
injury to call them by so distant a name as copies of her.
Those of other poets have a constant resemblance, which
shews that they received them from one another, and were
but multipliers of the same image: each picture, like a
mock-rainbow, is but the reflexion of a reflexion. But
every single character in Shakspeare is as much an indi-
vidual as those in life itself: it is impossible to find any
two alike; and such as from their relation or affinity in
any respect appear most to be twins, will, upon com-
parison, be found remarkably distinct. To this life and
variety of character, we must add the wonderful pre-
servation of it; which is such throughout his plays, that,
had all the speeches been printed without the very names
of the persons, I believe one might have applied them
with certainty to every speaker."
*
If this last observation should be thought exaggerated
praise, enough will yet remain in the passage here quoted,
to shew that our author's amended opinion is perfectly
just, and his former, censure altogether groundless.——
"I will not" (says Dr. Johnson)" say with Pope, that
every speech may be assigned to the proper speaker,
because many speeches there are, which have nothing
characteristical; but, perhaps, though some may be equally
adapted to every person, it will be difficult to find any
that can be properly transferred from the present possessor
to another claimant. The choice is right, when there is
reason for choice."
IN TRAGEDY.
283
2
begotten by an incubus on a witch; but this, as I
have elsewhere proved, is not wholly beyond the
bounds of credibility, at least the vulgar still
believe it. We have the separated notions of a
spirit, and of a witch; (and spirits, according to
Plato, are vested with a subtile body; according to
some of his followers, have different sexes ;) there-
fore, as from the distinct apprehensions of a horse
and of a man, imagination has formed a centaur,
so from those of an incubus and a sorceress,
Shakspeare has produced his monster. Whether
or no his generation can be defended, I leave to
philosophy; but of this I am certain,-that the
poet has most judiciously furnished him with a
person, a language, and a character, which will
suit him, both by father's and mother's side: he
has all the discontents and malice of a witch, and
of a devil, besides a convenient proportion of the
deadly sins; gluttony, sloth, and lust, are manifest:
the dejectedness of a slave is likewise given him,
and the ignorance of one bred up in a desert
island. His person is monstrous, as he is the
product of unnatural lust; and his language is as
hobgoblin as his person: in all things he is distin-
guished from other mortals.-The characters of
Fletcher are poor and narrow, in comparison of
Shakspeare's; I remember not one which is not
borrowed from him, unless you will except that
strange mixture of a man in THE KING AND NO
See the Essay on Heroick Plays, p. 216.
284
GROUNDS OF CRITICISM
KING: So that in this part Shakspeare is generally
worth our imitation; and to imitate Fletcher is
but to copy after him who was a copier.
Under this general head of manners the pas-
sions are naturally included, as belonging to the
characters. I speak not of pity and of terrour,
which are to be moved in the audience by the
plot; but of anger, hatred, love, ambition, jealousy,
revenge, &c. as they are shewn in this or that
person of the play. To describe these naturally,
and to move them artfully, is one of the greatest
commendations which can be given to a poet: to
write pathetically, says Longinus, cannot proceed
but from a lofty genius. A poet must be born with
this quality; yet, unless he help himself by an
acquired knowledge of the passions, what they are
in their own nature, and by what springs they are
to be moved, he will be subject either to raise them
where they ought not be raised, or not to raise
them by the just degrees of nature, or to amplify
them beyond the natural bounds, or not to observe
the crisis and turns of them in their cooling and
decay; all which errours proceed from want of
judgment in the poet, and from being unskilled in
the principles of moral philosophy. Nothing is
more frequent in a fanciful writer, than to foil
himself by not managing his strength: therefore,
as in a wrestler, there is first required some mea-
sure of force, a well-knit body, and active limbs,
without which all instruction would be vain, yet,
these being granted, if he want the skill which is
14.
IN TRAGEDY.
285
necessary to a wrestler, he shall make but small
advantage of his natural robustuousness; so, in a
poet, his inborn vehemence and force of spirit will
only run him out of breath the sooner, if it be
not supported by the help of art. The roar of
passion, indeed, may please an audience, three
parts of which are ignorant enough to think all
is moving which is noise, and it may stretch the
lungs of an ambitious actor, who will die upon the
spot for a thundering clap; but it will move no
other passion than indignation and contempt from
judicious men. Longinus, whom I have hitherto
followed, continues thus: if the passions be art-
fully employed, the discourse becomes vehement
and lofty; if otherwise, there is nothing more
ridiculous than a great passion out of season.
And to this purpose he animadverts severely upon
Æschylus, who writ nothing in cold blood, but
was always in a rapture, and in fury with his
audience; the inspiration was still upon him, he
was ever tearing it upon the tripos; or, (to run
off as madly as he does, from one similitude to
another,) he was always at high flood of passion,
even in the dead ebb and lowest water-mark of
the scene. He who would raise the passion of
a judicious audience, says a learned critick, must
be sure to take his hearers along with him; if they
be in a calm, it is in vain for him to be in a huff:
he must move them by degrees, and kindle with
them, otherwise he will be in danger of setting
his own heap of stubble on a fire, and of burning
286
GROUNDS OF CRITICISM
기
​out by himself without warming the company that
stand about him. They who would justify the
madness of poetry from the authority of Aristotle,
have mistaken the text, and consequently the
interpretation: I imagine it to be false read, where
he says of poetry, that it is uus pax, that it
had always somewhat in it either of a genius, or
of a madman. It is more probable that the
original ran thus, that poetry was Quan,
that it belongs to a witty man, but not to a mad-
man.*
Thus then the passions, as they are con-
sidered simply and in themselves, suffer violence
when they are perpetually maintained at the same
height; for what melody can be made on that
instrument, all whose strings are screwed up at
first to their utmost stretch, and to the same
sound? But this is not the worst; for the cha-
racters likewise bear a part in the general calamity,
if you consider the passions as embodied in them:
for it follows of necessity, that no man can be
distinguished from another by his discourse, when
every man is ranting, swaggering, and exclaiming
with the same excess, as if it were the only
business of all the characters to contend with each
other for the prize at Billingsgate, or that the
scene of the tragedy lay in Bedlam. Suppose the
* Mr. Tyrwhitt (Aristot. de Poeticâ, p. 184, Oxon.
1794) thinks the original the true reading; and that
here means rather than. His interpretation is-" poetica
ingeniosi est hominis opus magis quam insani (ellipsi scilicet
TË MAAAON Atticis scriptoribus satis usitata.)"
IN TRAGEDY.
287
poet should intend this man to be cholerick, and
that man to be patient; yet when they are con-
founded in the writing, you cannot distinguish
them from one another: for the man who was
called patient and tame, is only so before he
speaks; but let his clack be set a-going, and he
shall tongue it as impetuously, and as loudly, as
the arrantest hero of the play. By this means the
characters are only distinct in name; but in
reality all the men and women in the play are
the same person. No man should pretend to
write, who cannot temper his fancy with his judg-
ment; nothing is more dangerous to a raw horse
man than a hot-mouthed jade without a curb.
It is necessary therefore for a poet, who would
concern an audience by describing of a passion,
first to prepare it, and not to rush upon it all at
once. Ovid has judiciously shewn the difference
of these two ways in the speeches of Ajax and
Ulysses. Ajax from the very beginning breaks
out into his exclamations, and is swearing by his
maker ;—Agimus, proh Jupiter, inquit. Ulysses, on
the contrary, prepares his audience with all the
submissiveness he can practise, and all the calm-
ness of a reasonable man; he found his judges in
a tranquillity of spirit, and therefore set out
leisurely and softly with them, till he had warmed
them by degrees, and then he began to mend his
pace, and to draw them along with his own
impetuousness; yet so managing his breath, that
it might not fail him at his need, and reserving
his utmost proofs of ability even to the last. The
288
GROUNDS OF CRITICISM
success, you see, was answerable; for the croud
only applauded the speech of Ajax,—vulgique secu-
tum ultima murmur erat; but the judges awarded
the prize for which they contended, to Ulysses:
Mota manus procerum est; et quid facundia posset,
Tum patuit, fortisque viri tulit arma disertus.
The next necessary rule is, to put nothing into
the discourse, which may hinder your moving of
the passions. Too many accidents, as I have said,
incumber the poet as much as the arms of Saul
did David; for the variety of passions which they
produce are ever crossing and justling each other
out of the way. He who treats of joy and grief
together, is in a fair way of causing neither of those
effects. There is yet another obstacle to be removed,
which is pointed wit, and sentences affected out
of season; these are nothing of kin to the violence
of passion: no man is at leisure to make sentences
and similes, when his soul is in an agony. I the
rather name this fault, that it may serve to mind
me of my former errours; neither will I spare
myself, but give an example of this kind from my
INDIAN EMPEROR. Montezuma, pursued by his
enemies, and secking sanctuary, stands parlying
without the fort, and describing his danger to
Cydaria, in a simile of six lines:
As on the sands the frighted traveller
Sees the high seas come rolling from afar, &c.
My Indian potentate was well skilled in the sea
for an inland prince, and well improved since the
first act, when he sent his son to discover it.
IN TRAGEDY.
289
The image had not been amiss from another man
at another time; sed nunc non erat his locus: he
destroyed the concernment which the audience
might otherwise have had for him; for they could
not think the danger near, when he had the leisure
to invent a simile.
If Shakspeare be allowed, as I think he must, to
have made his characters distinct, it will easily be
inferred that he understood the nature of the
passions; because it has been proved already, that
confused passions make undistinguishable charac-
ters. Yet I cannot deny that he has his failings;
but they are not so much in the passions them-
selves, as in his manner of expression: he often
obscures his meaning by his words, and sometimes
makes it unintelligible. I will not say of so great
a poet, that he distinguished not the blown puffy
style, from true sublimity; but I may venture to
maintain, that the fury of his fancy often trans-
ported him beyond the bounds of judgment, either
in coining of new words and phrases, or racking
words which were in use into the violence of a
catachresis. It is not that I would explode the
use of metaphors from passion, for Longinus
thinks them necessary to raise it; but to use them
at every word, to say nothing without a metaphor,
a simile, an image, or description, is, I doubt,
to smell a little too strongly of the buskin. I
must be forced to give an example of expressing
passion figuratively; but that I may do it with
respect to Shakspeare, it shall not be taken from
VOL. I.
Ü
!
290
GROUNDS OF CRITICISM
any thing of his: it is an exclamation against
Fortune, quoted in his HAMLET, but written by
some other poet :³
3
"Out, out, thou strumpet, Fortune! All you gods
"In general synod, take away her power;
"Break all the spokes and fellies from her wheel,
"And bowl the round nave down the hill of heaven,
"As low as to the fiends."
3 I once thought, with our author, (as I have elsewhere
observed,) that these lines were extracted from some more
ancient play, of which it appeared to me probable that
Christopher Marlowe was the writer; but whatever may
have been Shakspeare's view in introducing them in
HAMLET, I am now decidedly of opinion that they were
written by himself, not in any former unsuccessful piece,
but expressly for that tragedy.
Dr. Warburton had a fancy, that the commendation
bestowed on the play from which these lines are supposed
to be taken, was given in order "to upbraid the false
taste of the audience at that time, which could not suffer
them to do justice to the simplicity and sublime of this
production." And his notion was, that the play in ques-
tion" was Shakspeare's own, and this was the occasion.
of writing it. He was desirous, as soon as he had found
his strength, of restoring the chastness and regularity of
the ancient stage, and therefore composed this tragedy on
the model of the Greek drama, as may be seen by his
throwing so much into action. But his attempt proved
fruitless; and the raw unnatural taste, then prevalent,
forced him back again into his old Gothick manner. For
which, he took this revenge upon his audience."-This
fancy Dr. Warburton has endeavoured to support in a
dissertation, so little satisfactory, that I doubt whether in
IN TRAGEDY.
291
And immediately after, speaking of Hecuba, when
Priam was killed before her eyes:
But who, ah woe! had seen the mabled queen
"Run bare-foot up and down, threat'ning the flame
"With bisson rheum; a clout about that head,
''
To
fifty years it ever made one convert to his opinion.
prove that Shakspeare himself considered the first of the
passages quoted by Dryden, as bombast, he maintains,
that Shakspeare has used the very same thought
clothed in the same expression, in one of his best plays,
and given it to a principal character, where he aims at the
sublime." Thus the Egyptian Queen, in ANTONY AND
CLEOPATRA, (according to him,) rails at Fortune in the
same manner :
No, let me speak, and let me rail so high,
"That the false housewife, Fortune, break her wheel,
Provoked at my offence."
But Mr. Steevens has observed, that it is by no means
proved in this dissertation," that Shakspeare has employed
the same thoughts clothed in the same expressions in his best
plays. If he bids the false housewife, Fortune, break her
wheel, he does not desire her to break all its spokes, nay
even its periphery; and make use of the nave afterwards for
such an immeasurable cast! Though, if what Dr. War-
burton has said should be found in any instance to be
exactly true, what can we infer from thence, but that
Shakspeare was sometimes wrong in spite of conviction ;
and in the hurry of writing committed those very faults
which his judgment could correct in others ?"
The poet, in the speeches spoken by the Player in
HAMLET, (act ii. sc. 2.) Mr. Steevens thinks "might
have meant to exhibit a just resemblance of some of the
plays of his own age, in which the faults were too glaring
to permit a few splendid passages to atone for them."
292
GROUNDS OF CRITICISM
"Where late the diadem stood; and, for a robe,
"About her lank and all o'er-teemed loins,
"A blanket, in the alarm of fear caught up;
"Who this had seen, with tongue in venom steep'd
"'Gainst Fortune's state would treason have pronounc'd;
"But if the gods themselves did see her then,
"When she saw Pyrrhus make malicious sport
"In mincing with his sword her husband's limbs;
"The instant burst of clamour that she made
(Unless things mortal move them not at all)
“Would have made milch the burning eyes of heaven,
"And passion in the gods."
What a pudder is here kept in raising the ex-
pression of trifling thoughts! Would not a man
have thought that the poet had been bound
'prentice to a wheel-wright for his first rant? and
had followed a ragman, for the clout and blanket,
in the second? Fortune is painted on a wheel,
and therefore the writer, in a rage, will have
poetical justice done upon every member of that
engine; after this execution, he bowls the nave
downhill, from heaven to the fiends; (an unrea-
sonable long mark a man would think;) it is well
there are no solid orbs to stop it in the way, or no
element of fire to consume it; but when it came
to the earth, it must be monstrous heavy, to break
ground as low as to the centre. His making milch
the burning eyes of heaven was a pretty tolerable
flight too, and I think no man ever drew milk out
of eyes before him; yet to make the wonder
greater, these eyes were burning. Such a sight,
indeed, were enough to have raised passion in the
IN TRAGEDY.
293
gods; but to excuse the effects of it, he tells you,
perhaps they did not see it. Wise men would be
glad to find a little sense couched under all those
pompous words, for bombast is commonly the
delight of that audience which loves poetry, but
understands it not; and as commonly has been
the practice of those writers, who, not being able
to infuse a natural passion into the mind, have
made it their business to ply the ears, and to stun
their judges by the noise. But Shakspeare does
not often thus; for the passions in his scene
between Brutus and Cassius are extremely natural,
the thoughts are such as arise from the matter,
and the expression of them not viciously figura-
tive. I cannot leave this subject before I do
justice to that divine poet, by giving you one of
his passionate descriptions; it is of Richard the
Second, when he was deposed, and led in triumph
through the streets of London by Henry of Bo-
lingbroke the painting of it is so lively, and the
words so moving, that I have scarce read any thing
comparable to it in any other language. Suppose
you have seen already the fortunate usurper pass-
ing through the crowd, and followed by the shouts
and acclamations of the people; and now behold
King Richard entering upon the scene: consider
the wretchedness of his condition, and his carriage
in it, and refrain from pity, if you can
46
As in a theatre, the eyes of men,
After a well-graced actor leaves the stage,
Are idly bent on him that enters next,
294
GROUNDS OF CRITICISM
Thinking his prattle to be tedious,———
"Even so, or with much more contempt, men's eyes
"Did scowl on Richard: no man cry'd-God save him;
"No joyful tongue gave him his welcome home;
"But dust was thrown upon his sacred head,
"Which with such gentle sorrow he shook off,
"His face still combating with tears and smiles,
"The badges of his grief and patience,—
“That had not God, for some strong purpose, steel'd
"The hearts of men, they must perforce have melted,
"And barbarism itself have pitied him."
To speak justly of this whole matter,—it is
neither height of thought that is discommended,
nor pathetick vehemence, nor any nobleness of
expression in its proper place; but it is a false
measure of all these, something which is like them
and is not them: it is the Bristol stone, which
appears like a diamond; it is an extravagant
thought, instead of a sublime one; it is roaring
madness, instead of vehemence; and a sound of
words, instead of sense. If Shakspeare were
stripped of all the bombast in his passions, and
4
4 Pope had a singular notion on this subject, which
Mr. Spence has preserved in his ANECDOTES:
66
Shakspeare generally used to stiffen his style with
high words and metaphors, for the speeches of kings and
great men he mistook it for a mark of greatness. This
is strongest in his early plays; but in his very last,
OTHELLO, what a forced language has he put into the
mouth of the Duke of Venice! This was the way of
Chapman, Massinger, and all the tragick writers of those
days."
IN TRAGEDY.
295
dressed in the most vulgar words, we should find
the beauties of his thoughts remaining; if his
embroideries were burnt down, there would still
be silver at the bottom of the melting-pot: but I
fear (at least, let me fear it for myself), that we
who ape his sounding words have nothing of his
thought, but are all outside; there is not so much
as a dwarf within our giant's clothes. Therefore,
let not Shakspeare suffer for our sakes; it is our
Shakspeare may perhaps have thought that a certain
stateliness of expression was suited to royalty; yet Mr.
Pope's notion does not appear to me to be altogether just.
The language of King John, Richard the Second, Richard
the Third, Henry the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth, and Henry
the Eighth, is not more metaphorical than that of the other
considerable personages introduced in the various plays.
in which they appear. Which were Shakspeare's early and
which his late productions, Pope undoubtedly did not
know; for he believed TROILUS AND CRESSIDA, which
appeared in 1602, or before, to be one of his latest dramas;
and in the passage just quoted he decisively pronounces
OTHELLO to have been his last play; whereas in truth
it was written (as I shall hereafter prove) in 1604, twelve
years before his death.-In the period between the years
1604 and 1607, this great poet seems to have attained
"the full meridian of his glory." In this short interval,
he appears to have produced his three most splendid trage-
dies, OTHELLO, MACBETH, and KING LEAR.
Mr. Pope's notion, that Shakspeare stiffened his style
for kings and great men, I suspect was derived from the
play of TROILUS AND CRESSIDA, where, in the speeches
of Agamemnon, Nestor, Ulysses, &c. a good deal of this
stiffened language may certainly be found.
296
GROUNDS OF CRITICISM
fault, who succeed him in an age which is more
refined, if we imitate him so ill, that we copy his
failings only, and make a virtue of that in our
writings, which in his was an imperfection.
For what remains, the excellency of that poet
was, as I have said, in the more manly passions,
Fletcher's in the softer: Shakspeare writ better
betwixt man and man, Fletcher betwixt man and
woman; consequently, the one described friend-
ship better, the other love; yet Shakspeare taught
Fletcher to write love; and Juliet and Desdemona
are originals. It is true, the scholar had the softer
soul; but the master had the kinder. Friendship
is both a virtue and a passion essentially; love is a
passion only in its nature, and is not a virtue but
by accident: good nature makes friendship, but
effeminacy love. Shakspeare had an universal
mind, which comprehended all characters and
passions; Fletcher a more confined and limited;
for though he treated love in perfection, yet
honour, ambition, revenge, and generally all the
stronger passions, he either touched not, or not
masterly. To conclude all, he was a limb of
Shakspeare.
I had intended to have proceeded to the last
property of manners, which is, that they must be
constant, and the characters maintained the same
from the beginning to the end; and from thence
to have proceeded to the thoughts and expressions
suitable to a tragedy; but I will first see how this
will relish with the age. It is, I confess, but
IN TRAGEDY.
297
cursorily written; yet the judgment which is
given here, is generally founded upon experience.
But because many men are shocked at the name
of rules, as if they were a kind of magisterial
prescription upon poets, I will conclude with the
words of Rapin, in his reflections on Aristotle's
work of poetry: "If the rules be well considered,
we shall find them to be made only to reduce
nature into method, to trace her step by step, and
not to suffer the least mark of her to escape us.
It is only by these that probability in fiction is
maintained, which is the soul of poetry. They are
founded upon good sense and sound reason, rather
than on authority; for though Aristotle and
Horace are produced, yet no man must argue
that what they write is true, because they writ it;
but it is evident, by the ridiculous mistakes and
gross absurdities which have been made by those
poets who have taken their fancy only for their
guide, that if this fancy be not regulated, it is a
mere caprice, and utterly incapable to produce a
reasonable and judicious poem.
* In this Essay our author has asserted, that Shakspeare
has often obscured his meaning, and sometimes rendered
it unintelligible, by his expressions; and that his fancy
out-ran his judgment, "either in coining of new words
and phrases, or racking words which were in use, into
the violence of a catachresis." In vindication of our
great dramatick poet, it may be observed, without any
disrespect to this ingenious and acute critick, that clear-
ness and obscurity are relative terms, and that what he
298
grounds of cRITICISM, &c.
has censured as unintelligible, might perhaps have appeared
to him perfectly clear, if he had been more conversant
with the language, customs, and manners of Shakspeare's
age, and of a preceding period. I much doubt, whether
in all his plays, twenty words of his own coinage can be
found; and whether the words and phrases which our
author would have objected to, were new or old, he
appears to have had no means of ascertaining, for the
reason already assigned.
HEADS
OF
AN ANSWER TO RYMER:
FIRST PRINTED IN OCTAVO, IN 1711.
&
Thomas Rymer, in 1678, published a tract, entitled
"The Tragedies of the last Age considered and examined
by the Practice of the Ancients, and the Common Sense of
all Ages." To this Essay, the chief object of which was
to expose the faults of three of Beaumont's and Fletcher's
plays, ROLLO, (if that play be their joint production, which
may be doubted,) THE MAID'S TRAGEDY, and KING AND
No KING, Dryden appears to have intended to write an
Answer; for a copy of Rymer's book having been pre-
sented to him by the author, he wrote on the blank leaves
at the beginning and end of the volume, the following
Observations, which it is to be regretted he did not after-
wards enlarge and methodize. This volume, after his
death, falling into the hands of the publisher of the works
of Beaumont and Fletcher in 1711, he prefixed these
remarks to that edition; and they were again published
by Dr. Johnson, in the LIFE OF DRYDEN, from the
original copy, which had fallen into the hands of Mr.
Garrick.
There is a considerable variation between the two
editions, in the arrangement of the paragraphs; but not
having seen the original, I am unable to ascertain which
arrangement is most conformable to the writer's intention.
The variation was probably occasioned by these remarks
being found at the beginning and end of Rymer's book ;
and perhaps those which were found in the beginning,
were written last.-I have followed Dr. Johnson's arrange-
ment, though I have some doubt whether it be correct.
HEADS
OF
AN ANSWER TO RYMER'S REMARKS
ON
THE TRAGEDIES OF THE LAST AGE.
S
THAT we may the less wonder why pity
and terrour are not now the only springs on which
our tragedies move, and that Shakspeare may be
more excused, Rapin confesses that the French
tragedies now all run on the tendre; and gives
the reason, because love is the passion which most
predominates in our souls; and that therefore the
passions represented become insipid, unless they
are conformable to the thoughts of the audience.
5 Mr. Spence, addressing Pope, observed, that Rymer
was a learned and strict critick. Ay," replied Pope,
that's exactly his character. He is generally right,
though rather too severe in his opinion of the particular
plays he speaks of; and is, on the whole, one of the best
"criticks we ever had." Spence's ANECDOTES.
δύ
In citing the dictum of this great poet, that Rymer is
generally right, I by no means wish it should be under-
stood that I subscribe to his opinion.
302
HEADS OF AN ANSWER
But it is to be concluded, that this passion works
not now amongst the French so strongly, as the
other two did amongst the ancients. Amongst
us, who have a stronger genius for writing, the
operations from the writing are much stronger;
for the raising of Shakspeare's passions is more
from the excellency of the words and thoughts,
than the justness of the occasion; and if he has
been able to pick single occasions, he has never
founded the whole reasonably; yet, by the genius
of poetry in writing, he has succeeded.
6
Rapin attributes more to the dictio, that is, to
the words and discourse of a tragedy, than Aris-
totle has done, who places them in the last rank
of beauties; perhaps, only last in order, because
they are the last product of the design, of the
disposition or connection of its parts, of the cha-
racters, of the manners of those characters, and
of the thoughts proceeding from those manners.
Rapin's words are remarkable:-It is not the
admirable intrigue, the surprising events, and
extraordinary incidents, that make the beauty of
a tragedy; it is the discourses, when they are
natural and passionate.-So are Shakspeare's.
The parts of a poem, tragick or heroick, are,
1. The fable itself.
2. The order or manner of its contrivance, in
relation of the parts to the whole.
6 With what truth can this be said of ROMEO AND
JULIET, MACBETH, KING LEAR, and OTHELLO?
TO RYMER.
303
3. The manners, or decency of the characters,
in speaking or acting what is proper for them,
and proper to be shewn by the poet.
4. The thoughts, which express the manners.
5. The words, which express those thoughts.
In the last of these, Homer excels Virgil;
Virgil all other ancient poets; and Shakspeare all
modern poets."
For the second of these, the order: the mean-
ing is, that a fable ought to have a beginning,
middle, and an end, all just and natural; so that
that part, e. g. which is the middle, could not
naturally be the beginning or end, and so of the
rest all depend on one another, like the links of
a curious chain. If terrour and pity are only to
be raised, certainly this author follows Aristotle's
rules, and Sophocles' and Euripides's example;
but joy may be raised too, and that doubly,
either by seeing a wicked man punished, or a
good man at last fortunate; or perhaps indigna-
tion, to see wickedness prosperous, and goodness
depressed both these may be profitable to the
end of tragedy, reformation of manners; but the
last improperly, only as it begets pity in the
audience; though Aristotle, I confess, places
tragedies of this kind in the second form.
He who undertakes to answer this excellent
critique of Mr. Rymer, in behalf of our English
7 If our author had said-" In the last three of these
Shakspeare excels all modern poets," he would, I con-
ceive, have been nearer to the truth.
304
HEADS OF AN ANSWER
:
poets against the Greek, ought to do it in this
manner either by yielding to him the greatest
part of what he contends for, which consists in
this, that the μúbos, i. e. the design and conduct
of it, is more conducing in the Greeks to those
ends of tragedy, which Aristotle and he propose,
namely, to cause terrour and pity; yet the grant-
ing this does not set the Greeks above the English
poets.
But the answerer ought to prove two things;
first, that the fable is not the greatest master-
piece of a tragedy, though it be the foundation
of it.
Secondly, that other ends, as suitable to the
nature of tragedy may be found in the English,
which were not in the Greek.
Aristotle places the fable first; not quoad digni-
tatem, sed quoad fundamentum: for a fable, never
so movingly contrived to those ends of his, pity
and terrour, will operate nothing on our affections,
except the characters, manners, thoughts, and
words, are suitable.
So that it remains for Mr. Rymer to prove,
that in all those, or the greatest part of them, we
are inferior to Sophocles and Euripides; and this
he has offered at, in some measure; but, I think,
a little partially to the ancients.
For the fable itself: it is in the English more
adorned with episodes, and larger than in the
Greek poets; consequently more diverting. For
if the action be but one, and that plain, without
TO RYMER.
305
any counter-turn of design or episode, i. e. under-
plot, how can it be so pleasing as the English,
which have both under-plot and a turned design,
which keeps the audience in expectation of the
catastrophe ? whereas in the Greek poets we see
through the whole design at first.
For the characters, they are neither so many
nor so various in Sophocles and Euripides, as in
Shakspeare and Fletcher; only they are more
adapted to those ends of tragedy which Aristotle
commends to us, pity and terrour.
The manners flow from the characters, and
consequently must partake of their advantages and
disadvantages.
The thoughts and words, which are the fourth
and fifth beauties of tragedy, are certainly more
noble and more poetical in the English than in
the Greek, which must be proved by comparing
them somewhat more equitably than Mr. Rymer
has done.
After all, we need not yield that the English
way is less conducing to move pity and terrour,
because they often shew virtue oppressed and vice
punished; where they do not both, or either, they
are not to be defended.
And if we should grant that the Greeks per-
formed this better, perhaps it may admit of dispute,
whether pity and terrour are either the prime, or
at least the only ends of tragedy.
It is not enough that Aristotle has said so, for
Aristotle drew his models of tragedy from Sopho-
VOL. I.
X
306
HEADS OF AN ANSWER
cles and Euripides; and if he had seen ours,
might have changed his mind. And chiefly we
have to say, (what I hinted on pity and terrour, in
the last paragraph save one,) that the punishment
of vice and reward of virtue are the most adequate
ends of tragedy, because most conducing to good
example of life. Now pity is not so easily raised
for a criminal, (and the ancient tragedy always
represents its chief person such,) as it is for an
innocent man; and the suffering of innocence
and punishment of the offender is of the nature
of English tragedy: contrarily, in the Greek,
innocence is unhappy often, and the offender
escapes. Then we are not touched with the
sufferings of any sort of men so much as of lovers,
and this was almost unknown to the ancients: so
that they neither administered poetical justice, of
which Mr. Rymer boasts, so well as we; neither
knew they the best common-place of pity, which
is love.
He therefore unjustly blames us for not building
on what the ancients left us; for it seems, upon
consideration of the premises, that we have wholly
finished what they began.
My judgment on this piece is this; that it is
extremely learned, but that the author of it is
better read in the Greek than in the English
poets; that all writers ought to study this cri-
tique, as the best account I have ever seen of
the ancients; that the model of tragedy he has
here given is excellent, and extreme correct; but
TO RYMER.
307
that it is not the only model of all tragedy,
because it is too much circumscribed in plot,
characters, &c. and lastly, that we may be taught
here justly to admire and imitate the ancients,
without giving them the preference, with this
author, in prejudice to our own country.
Want of method in this excellent treatise,
makes the thoughts of the author sometimes
obscure.
His meaning, that pity and terrour are to be
moved, is, that they are to be moved as the means
conducing to the ends of tragedy, which are
pleasure and instruction.
And these two ends may be thus distinguished.
The chief end of the poet is to please; for his
immediate reputation depends on it.
The great end of the poem is to instruct, which
is performed by making pleasure the vehicle of
that instruction; for poesy is an art, and all arts
are made to profit. Rapin.
The pity which the poet is to labour for, is for
the criminal, not for those or him whom he has
murdered, or who have been the occasion of the
tragedy. The terrour is likewise in the punish-
ment of the same criminal, who, if he be repre-
sented too great an offender, will not be pitied;
if altogether innocent, his punishment will be
unjust.
Another obscurity is, where he says, Sophocles
perfected tragedy by introducing the third actor;
that is, he meant, three kinds of action; one
308
HEADS OF AN ANSWER
company singing, or speaking; another playing
on the musick; a third dancing.
To make a true judgment in this competition
betwixt the Greek poets and the English, in
tragedy:
Consider, first, how Aristotle has defined a
tragedy. Secondly, what he assigns the end of it
to be. Thirdly, what he thinks the beauties of
it. Fourthly, the means to attain the end pro-
posed.
Compare the Greek and English tragick poets
justly, and without partiality, according to those
rules.
Then secondly, consider whether Aristotle has
made a just definition of tragedy; of its parts, of
its ends, and of its beauties; and whether he,
having not seen any others but those of Sophocles,
Euripides, &c. had, or truly could determine what
all the excellencies of tragedy are, and wherein
they consist.
Next shew in what ancient tragedy was de-
ficient; for example, in the narrowness of its
plots, and fewness of persons; and try whether
that be not a fault in the Greek poets, and
whether their excellency was so great, when the
variety was visibly so little; or whether what they
did was not very easy to do.
Then make a judgment on what the English
have added to their beauties; as, for example, not
only more plot, but also new passions, as, namely,
that of love, scarce touched on by the ancients,
TO RYMER.
309
except in this one example of Phædra, cited by
Mr. Rymer; and in that how short they were of
Fletcher.
Prove also that love, being an heroick passion,
is fit for tragedy, which cannot be denied, because
of the example alledged of Phædra; and how
far Shakspeare has outdone them in friendship, &c.
To return to the beginning of this enquiry;
consider, if pity and terrour be enough for tragedy
to move; and I believe, upon a true definition of
tragedy, it will be found that its work extends
farther, and that it is to reform manners, by a
delightful representation of human life in great
persons, by way of dialogue. If this be true, then
not only pity and terrour are to be moved, as the
only means to bring us to virtue, but generally
love to virtue, and hatred to vice, by shewing the
rewards of one, and punishments of the other; at
least, by rendering virtue always amiable, though
it be shewn unfortunate, and vice detestable,
though it be shewn triumphant.
If then, the encouragement of virtue, and dis-
couragement of vice, be the proper ends of poetry
in tragedy, pity and terrour, though good means,
are not the only. For all the passions, in their
turns, are to be set in a ferment; as joy, anger,
love, fear, are to be used as the poet's common-
places, and a general concernment for the prin-
cipal actors is to be raised, by making them
appear such in their characters, their words, and
310
HEADS OF AN ANSWER
actions, as will interest the audience in their
fortunes.
And if, after all, in a larger sense, pity com-
prehends this concernment for the good, and
terrour includes detestation for the bad, then let
us consider whether the English have not an-
swered this end of tragedy, as well as the ancients,
or perhaps better.
And here Mr. Rymer's objections against these
plays are to be impartially weighed, that we may
see whether they are of weight enough to turn
the balance against our countrymen.
It is evident, those plays which he arraigns,
have moved both those passions in a high degree
upon the stage.
To give the glory of this away from the poet,
and to place it upon the actors, seems unjust.
8
One reason is, because whatever actors they
have found, the event has been the same, that is,
the same passions have been always moved; which
8" We may remember, (says Rymer,) however we find
this scene of Melantius and Amintor written in the book,
that at the theatre we have a good scene acted. There is
work cut out, and both our Æsopus and Roscius are on
the stage together: whatever defect may be in Amintor
and Melantius, Mr. Hart and Mr. Mohun are wanting in
nothing. To these we owe for what is pleasing in the
scene; and to this scene we may impute the success of
THE MAID'S TRAGEDY." Again: "These say, for
instance, a KING AND NO KING pleases; I say, the
TO RYMER.
311
shews, that there is something of force and merit
in the plays themselves, conducing to the design
of raising these two passions: and suppose them
ever to have been excellently acted, yet action
only adds grace, vigour, and more life, upon the
stage, but cannot give it wholly where it is not
first. But secondly, I dare appeal to those who
have never seen them acted, if they have not
found these two passions moved within them; and
if the general voice will carry it, Mr. Rymer's
prejudice will take off his single testimony.
This, being matter of fact, is reasonably to be
established by this appeal; as if one man says it
is night, when the rest of the world conclude it to
be day,* there needs no farther argument against
him, that it is so.
If he urge, that the general taste is depraved,
his arguments to prove this can at best but evince
that our poets took not the best way to raise those
passions; but experience proves against him, that
comical part pleases. I say that Mr. Hart pleases; most
of the business falls to his share, and what he delivers
every one takes upon content; their eyes are prepossessed
and charmed by his action, before aught of the poet's
can approach their ears; and to the most wretched of
characters he gives a lustre and brillant, which dazzles
the sight, that the deformities in the poetry cannot be
perceived."
* The word when, which is omitted in the transcript
used by Dr. Johnson, I have supplied from the first
edition. So, in a preceding passage, p. 308, l. 1. the
word speaking has been restored from the same copy.
312
HEADS OF AN ANSWER
I
those means which they have used have been
successful, and have produced them.
And one reason of that success is, in my opinion,
this, that Shakspeare and Fletcher have written to
the genius of the age and nation in which they
lived; for though nature, as he objects, is the
same in all places, and reason too the same, yet
the climate, the age, the disposition of the people,
to whom a poet writes, may be so different, that
what pleased the Greeks would not satisfy an
English audience.
And if they proceeded upon a foundation of
truer reason to please the Athenians, than Shak-
speare and Fletcher to please the English, it only
shews that the Athenians were a more judicious
people; but the poet's business is certainly to
please the audience.
Whether our English audience have been
pleased hitherto with acorns, as he calls it, or with
bread, is the next question; that is, whether the
means which Shakspeare and Fletcher have used
in their plays to raise those passions before named,
be better applied to the ends by the Greek poets
than by them. And perhaps we shall not grant
him this wholly let it be yielded that a writer
is not to run down with the stream, or to please
the people by their own usual methods, but rather
to reform their judgments,-it still remains to prove
that our theatre needs this total reformation.
:
The faults which he has found in their designs,
are rather wittily aggravated in many places, than
TO RYMER.
313
reasonably urged; and as much may be returned
on the Greeks by one who were as witty as
himself.
2. They destroy not, if they are granted, the
foundation of the fabrick, only take away from
the beauty of the symmetry: for example, the
faults in the character of the King and No King
are not as he makes them, such as render him
detestable, but only imperfections which accom-
pany human nature, and are for the most part
excused by the violence of his love; so that they
destroy not our pity or concernment for him. This
answer may be applied to most of his objections
of that kind.
And Rollo committing many murders, when he
is answerable but for one, is too severely arraigned
by him, for it adds to our horrour and detesta-
tion of the criminal; and poetick justice is not
neglected neither, for we stab him in our minds
for every offence which he commits; and the
point which the poet is to gain on the audience
is not so much in the death of an offender, as the
raising an horrour of his crimes.
That the criminal should neither be wholly
guilty, nor wholly innocent, but so participating
of both as to move both pity and terrour, is
certainly a good rule, but not perpetually to be
observed; for that were to make all tragedies
too much alike; which objection he foresaw, but
has not fully answered.
314
HEADS OF AN ANSWER, &c.
#
1
To conclude, therefore; if the plays of the
ancients are more correctly plotted, ours are more
beautifully written. And if we can raise passions
as high on worse foundations, it shews our genius
in tragedy is greater; for, in all other parts of it,
the English have manifestly excelled them.
1
PREFACE
TO
say
THE WILD GALLANT."
Ir would be a great impudence in me to
much of a comedy which has had but indif-
ferent success in the action. I made the town
my judges, and the greater part condemned it;
after which I do not think it my concernment to
defend it with the ordinary zeal of a poet for his
decried poem. Though Corneille is more resolute
in his Preface before his PERTHARITE, which was
condemned more universally than this; for he
avows boldly, that, in spite of censure, his play
was well and regularly written, which is more
than I dare say for mine. Yet it was received at
court, and was more than once the divertisement
of his Majesty, by his own command; but I have
9 This comedy, though not published till 1669, must
have been acted in 1663, or before, being our author's
first play, and consequently prior to THE RIVAL Ladies,
which was printed in 1664.-From the Prologue to the
original edition, which was omitted in the subsequent
copies, it appears that THE WILD GALLANT was first
represented on the 5th of February, probably February
5, 1662-3.-To this play no Dedication was prefixed.
f
316
PREFACE TO THE WILD GALLANT.
more modesty than to ascribe that to my merit,
which was his particular act of grace. It was the
first attempt I made in Dramatick Poetry; and I
find since, a very bold one, to begin with Comedy,
which is the most difficult part of it. The plot
was not originally my own; but so altered by
me, (whether for the better or worse, I know not,)
that whoever the author was, he could not have
challenged a scene of it. I doubt not but you
will see in it the uncorrectness of a young writer,
which is yet but a small excuse for him who is so
little amended since. The best apology I can
make for it, and the truest, is only this; that you
have since that time received with applause as
bad and as uncorrect plays from other men.
DEDICATION
OF
THE INDIAN EMPEROR.
TO THE MOST EXCELLENT AND MOST ILLUSTRIOUS
PRINCESS,
ANNE,'
DUCHESS OF MONMOUTH AND BUCCLEUGH,
WIFE TO THE MOST ILLUSTRIOUS AND HIGH-BORN
PRINCE, JAMES, DUKE OF MONMOUTH.
MAY IT PLEASE YOUR GRACE,
THE favour which Heroick Plays have lately
found upon our theatres, has been wholly derived
to them from the countenance and approbation
they have received at court; the most eminent
persons for wit and honour in the royal circle
having so far owned them, that they have judged
Anne, daughter of Walter Scot, earl of Buccleughi,
who on the death of her father, and elder sister, became
countess of Buccleugh. In 1665 she married James
Fitzroy, duke of Monmouth, (natural son of King Charles
the Second,) who afterwards, according to the usage of
Scotland in such cases, bore the name of Scot. In
about three years after his execution, she married (in
May, 1688,) Charles, lord Cornwallis.
To this lady, who in her youth was celebrated for her
beauty, and irreproachable conduct in a very trying situation,
318
DEDICATION OF
no way so fit as verse to entertain a noble audience,
or to express a noble passion; and amongst the
rest which have been written in this kind, they
have been so indulgent to this poem, as to allow
it no inconsiderable place. Since, therefore, to
the court I owe its fortune on the stage, so being
now more publickly exposed in print, I humbly
recommend it to your grace's protection, who by
all knowing persons are esteemed a principal
ornament of the court. But though the rank
which you hold in the royal family might direct
the eyes of a poet to you, yet your beauty and
goodness detain and fix them. High objects, it
is true, attract the sight; but it looks up with
pain on craggy rocks and barren mountains, and
continues not intent on any object which is want-
ing in shades and greens to entertain it. Beauty,
in courts, is so necessary to the young, that those
who are without it seem to be there to no other
purpose than to wait on the triumphs of the fair;
to attend their motions in obscurity, as the moon
and stars do the sun by day; or, at best, to be
the refuge of those hearts which others have
despised; and, by the unworthiness of both, to
give and take a miserable comfort. But as needful
and in a licentious court, and who at a subsequent period
is characterized by Dr. Johnson, as "remarkable for
inflexible perseverance in her demand to be treated as a
princess," Gay, the poet, was for some time secretary,
or rather domestick steward. She died in 1732, above.
eighty years old, leaving issue by both her husbands.
THE INDIAN EMPEROR.
319
as beauty is, virtue and honour are yet more. The
reign of it without their support is unsafe and
short, like that of tyrants. Every sun which
looks on beauty, wastes it; and, when it once is
decaying, the repairs of art are of as short con-
tinuance, as the afterspring, when the sun is
going further off. This, madam, is its ordinary
fate; but your's, which is accompanied by virtue,
is not subject to that common destiny. Your
grace has not only a long time of youth in which
to flourish, but you have likewise found the way,
by an untainted preservation of your honour, to
make that perishable good more lasting. And if
beauty, like wines, could be preserved by being
mixed and embodied with others of their own
natures, then your grace's would be immortal;
since no part of Europe can afford a parallel to
your noble lord in masculine beauty, and in
goodliness of shape. To receive the blessings and
prayers of mankind, you need only to be seen
together: we are ready to conclude that you are
a pair of angels, sent below to make virtue amiable
in
your persons, or to sit to poets, when they would
pleasantly instruct the age, by drawing goodness
in the most perfect and alluring shape of nature.
But though beauty be the theme on which poets
love to dwell, I must be forced to quit it as a
private praise, since you have deserved those which
are more publick; for goodness and humanity,
which shine in you, are virtues which concern
mankind; and by a certain kind of interest, all
*
$ }
320
DEDICATION OF
people agree in their commendation, because the
profit of them may extend to many. It is so
much your inclination to do good, that you stay
not to be asked; which is an approach so nigh
to the Deity, that human nature is not capable of
a nearer. It is my happiness that I can testify
this virtue of your grace's by my own experience;
since I have so great an aversion from soliciting
court-favours, that I am ready to look on those as
very bold, who dare grow rich there without desert.
But I beg your grace's pardon for assuming this
virtue of modesty to myself, which the sequel of
this discourse will no way justify; for in this
address I have already quitted the character of a
modest man, by presenting you this poem as an
acknowledgment, which stands in need of your
protection; and which ought no more to be
esteemed a present, than it is accounted bounty
in the poor, when they bestow a child on some
wealthy friend who will better breed it up. Off-
springs of this nature are like to be so numerous
with me, that I must be forced to send some of
them abroad; only this is like to be more fortunate
than his brothers, because I have landed him on
a hospitable shore. Under your patronage Mon-
tezuma hopes he is more safe, than in his native
Indies, and therefore comes to throw himself at
your grace's feet; paying that homage to your
beauty, which he refused to the violence of his
conquerors. He begs only, that when he shall
relate his sufferings, you will consider him as an
THE INDIAN EMPEROR.
321
Indian prince, and not expect any other eloquence
from his simplicity than what his griefs have
furnished him withal. His story is, perhaps, the
greatest which was ever represented in a poem of
this nature, the action of it including the discovery
and conquest of a new world. In it I have neither
wholly followed the truth of the history, nor
altogether left it; but have taken all the liberty of
a poct to add, alter, or diminish, as I thought
might best conduce to the beautifying of my
work it being not the business of a poet to
represent historical truth, but probability. But I
am not to make the justification of this poem,
which I wholly leave to your grace's mercy. It is
an irregular piece, if compared with many of
Corneille's; and, if I may make a judgment of it,
written with more flame than art; in which it
represents the mind and intentions of the author,
who is with much more zeal and integrity, than
design and artifice,
MADAM,
Your Grace's most obedient,
and most obliged servant,
October 12, 1667.
Co
JOHN DRYDEN.*
2 "Almost every piece," [of Dryden's,] says Dr. John-
son, had a dedication, written with such elegance and
luxuriance of praise, as neither haughtiness nor avarice
could be imagined able to resist. But he seems to have
made flattery too cheap. That praise is worth nothing of
which the price is known.
VOL. I.
Y
322
DEDICATION OF
"Of dramatick immorality he did not want examples
among his predecessors, or companions among his con-
temporaries; but in the meanness and servility of hyper-
bolical adulation, I know not whether, since the days in
which the Roman emperors were deified, he has been ever
equalled, except by Afra 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 expences, how-
ever lavish. He had all the forms of excellence, intel-
lectual 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 nccessity: he considers the great as entitled
to encomiastick 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 occa-
sions 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."
In a conversation which I had a few years ago with the
late Mr. Burke, talking of Dryden's Dedications, he
observed, that the extravagant panegyricks which they
contain, were the vice of the time, not of the man; that
the Dedications of almost every other writer of that
period were equally loaded with flattery; and that no
disgrace was annexed to such an exercise of men's talents,
THE INDIAN EMPEROR.
323
the contest being who should go furthest in the most
graceful way, and with the best turns of expression. He
added, that Butler had well illustrated the principle on
which they went, where he compares their endeavours to
those of the archer, who draws his arrow to the head,
whether his object be a swan or a goose.-The plays,
poems, and other productions which were issued from the
press from the time of the Restoration to the reign of
Queen Anne, fully confirm this remark.
The lines of HUDIBRAS alluded to by Mr. Burke, are
these (P. II. c. i.):
C
"This has been done by some, who those
They ador'd in rhyme, would kick in prose ; - - -
"That have the hard fate to write best
"Of those still that deserve it least :
"It matters not how false or forc`d,
"So the best things be said o' the worst ;
"It goes for nothing when 'tis said,
Only the arrow's drawn to th' head,
"Whether it be a swan or goose
<<
They level at so shepherds use
"To set the same mark on the hip
"Both of their sound and rotten sheep.'
Dr. Johnson, in the passage above quoted, has mentioned
Afra Behn's Address to Nell Gwyn [prefixed to THE
FEIGN'd CURTIZANS, 1679,] as the highest flight of
hyperbolical adulation. Perhaps the force of flattery could
no further go. That panegyrick, however, though not
surpassed, has been equalled in an Address to the same
lady, prefixed to a scarce little volume, entitled, "JANUA
DIVORUM, or, the Lives and Histories of the Heathen
Gods," &c. By Robert Whitcombe. 8vo. 1678.
On the exaggerated praises of Dedications written in
what has been called the celestial style, Pope has an excel-
lent paper in THE GUARDIAN, No. 4, March 16, 1713,
at which time he was in his twenty-sixth year.
PREFACE
ΤΟ
SECRET LOVE,
OR, THE MAIDEN QUEEN."
Ir has been the ordinary practice of the
French poets, to dedicate their works of this
nature to their king, especially when they have
had the least encouragement to it by his appro-
bation of them on the stage. But I confess I
want the confidence to follow their example,
though perhaps I have as specious pretences to it
for this piece as any they can boast of; it having
been owned in so particular a manner by his
majesty, that he has graced it with the title of
HIS play, and thereby rescued it from the severity
(that I may not say malice) of its enemies. But,
though a character so high and undeserved has not
raised in me the presumption to offer such a trifle
to his more serious view, yet I will own the vanity to
say, that after this glory which it has received from a
4
3 This play was acted at the King's Theatre, and first
printed in quarto, in 1668. It has no Dedication.
+ See p. 202, n. 7.
}
326
PREFACE TO THE
sovereign prince, I could not send it to seek pro-
tection from any subject. Be this poem then
sacred to him without the tedious form of a
dedication, and without presuming to interrupt
those hours which he is daily giving to the peace
and settlement of his people."
For what else concerns this play, I would tell the
reader that it is regular, according to the strictest
of dramatick laws, but that it is a commendation
which many of our poets now despise, and a beauty
which our common audiences do not easily dis-
cern. Neither, indeed, do I value myself upon
it, because with all that symmetry of
of parts,
it may
want an air and spirit, which consists in the writing,
to set it off. It is a question variously disputed,
whether an author may be allowed as a competent
judge of his own works. As to the fabrick and
contrivance of them certainly he may, for that is
properly the employment of the judgment, which,
as a master-builder, may determine, and that with-
out deception, whether the work be according
to the exactness of the model; still granting him
to have a perfect idea of that pattern by which he
works, and that he keeps himself always constant
to the discourse of his judgment, without admit-
ting self-love, which is the false surveyor of his
fancy, to intermeddle in it. These qualifications
5 The author probably alludes to the frequent councils
held at this time, (1668,) relative to the settlement of
Ireland, at which the king was generally present.
MAIDEN QUEEN.
327
h
granted, (being such as all sound poets are pre-
supposed to have within them,) I think all writers,
of what kind soever, may infallibly judge of the
frame and contexture of their works; but for the
ornament of writing, (which is greater, more various
and bizarre in poesy than in any other kind,) as it
is properly the child of fancy, so it can receive no
measure, or at least but a very imperfect one, of
its own excellencies or failures, from the judgment.
Self-love, which enters but rarely into the offices
of the judgment, here predominates; and fancy,
if I may so speak, judging of itself, can be no
more certain or demonstrative of its own effects,
than two crooked lines can be the adequate mea-
sure of each other."
What I have said on this subject may perhaps
give me some credit with my readers, in my
opinion of this play, which I have ever valued
above the rest of my follies of this kind; yet not
thereby in the least dissenting from their judgment
who have concluded the writing of this to be
"In the Preface," [to THE MAIDEN QUEEN,] says Dr.
Johnson, "Dryden discusses a curious question,-whether
a poet can judge well of his own productions; and deter-
mines very justly, that, of the play and disposition, and
all that can be reduced to principles of science, the author
may depend upon his own opinion; but that, in those
parts where fancy predominates, self-love may easily
deceive. He might have observed, that what is good
only because it pleases, cannot be pronounced good till
it has been found to please."—Life of DRYDEN.
328
PREFACE TO THE
may
much inferior to my INDIAN EMPEROR. But the
argument of that was much more noble, not
having the allay of comedy to depress it; yet if
this be more perfect, either in its kind, or in the
general notion of a play, it is as much as I desire
to have granted for the vindication of my opinion,
and, what as nearly touches me, the sentence of a
royal judge. Many have imagined the character
of Philocles to be faulty; some for not discovering
the Queen's love, others for his joining in her
restraint; but though I am not of their number,
who obstinately defend what they have once said,
I with modesty take up those answers which
have been made for me by my friends; namely,
that Philocles, who was but a gentleman of ordi-
nary birth, had no reason to guess so soon at the
queen's passion, she being a person so much above
him, and by the suffrages of all her people already
destined to Lysimantes: besides, that he was pre-
possessed (as the Queen somewhere hints it to
him,) with another inclination, which rendered
him less clear-sighted in it, since no man at the
same time can distinctly view two different objects.
And if this with any shew of reason may be
defended, I leave my masters, the criticks, to
determine, whether it be not much more conducing
to the beauty of my plot, that Philocles should be
long kept ignorant of the Queen's love, than that
with one leap he should have entered into the
knowledge of it, and thereby freed himself, to
the disgust of the audience, from that pleasing
MAIDEN QUEEN.
329
labyrinth of errours which was prepared for him.
As for that other objection of his joining in the
Queen's imprisonment, it is indisputably that which
every man, if he examines himself, would have
done on the like occasion. If they answer, that
it takes from the height of his character to do it,
I would enquire of my over-wise censors, who
told them I intended him a perfect character? or
indeed, what necessity was there he should be so,
the variety of images being one great beauty of a
play? It was as much as I designed, to shew one
great and absolute pattern of honour in my poem,
which I did in the person of the Queen; all the
defects of the other parts being set to shew, the
more to recommend that one character of virtue
to the audience. But neither was the fault of
Philocles so great, if the circumstances be con-
sidered, which, as moral philosophy assures us,
make the essential differences of good and bad;
he himself best explaining his own intentions in
his last act, which was the restoration of his
Queen; and even before that, in the honesty of
his expressions when he was unavoidably led
by the impulsions of his love to do it. That
which with more reason was objected as an inde-
corum, is the management of the last scene of the
play, where Celadon and Florimel are treating too
lightly of their marriage in the presence of the
Queen, who likewise seems to stand idle while
the great action of the drama is still depending.
This I cannot otherwise defend, than by telling
330
PREFACE, &c.
I
you-I so designed it on purpose to make my
play go off more smartly; that scene being in
the opinion of the best judges the most diver-
tising of the whole comedy. But though the
artifice succeeded, I am willing to acknowledge it
as a fault, since it pleased his Majesty, the best
judge, to think it so.
I have only to add, that the play is founded on
a story in the CYRUS, which he calls the Queen
of Corinth; in whose character, as it has been
affirmed to me, he represents that of the famous
Christina, Queen of Sweden.-This is what I
thought convenient to write by way of Preface to
THE MAIDEN QUEEN, in the reading of which,
I fear you will not meet with that satisfaction
which you have had in seeing it on the stage
the chief parts of it, both serious and comick,
being performed to that height of excellence,
that nothing but a command which I could not
handsomely disobey, could have given me the
courage to have made it publick.
PREFACE
то
THE TEMPEST,
OR, THE ENCHANTED ISLAND."
THE writing of Prefaces to Plays was
probably invented by some very ambitious poet,
who never thought he had done enough,-perhaps
by some ape of the French eloquence, which uses
to make a business of a letter of gallantry, an
examen of a farce, and, in short, a great pomp
and ostentation of words on every trifle. This is
certainly the talent of that nation, and ought not
to be invaded by any other. They do that out of
gaiety, which would be an imposition upon us.
8
We may satisfy ourselves with surmounting
them in the scene, and safely leave them those
trappings of writing, and flourishes of the pen,
with which they adorn the borders of their plays,
and which are indeed no more than good land-
7 This play, which has no Dedication, was not printed
till 1670, but was acted at the Duke's Theatre in Portugal-
Row, Lincoln's-Inn-Fields, in 1668, or 1669.
8 Imposition is here" used in its academical sense;—a
task prescribed.
332
PREFACE TO
scapes to a very indifferent picture. I must pro-
ceed no farther in this argument, lest I run myself
beyond my excuse for writing this; give me leave
therefore to tell you, reader, that I do it not to
set a value on any thing I have written in this
play, but out of gratitude to the memory of Sir
William D'Avenant, who did me the honour to
join me with him in the alteration of it.
It was originally Shakspeare's; a poet for whom
he had particularly a high veneration, and whom
he first taught me to admire. The play itself had
formerly been acted with success in the Black-
Fryers; and our excellent Fletcher had so great a
value for it, that he thought fit to make use of
the same design, not much varied, a second time.
Those who have seen his SEA-VOYAGE, may easily
discern that it was a copy of Shakspeare's TEM-
PEST the Storm, the Desart Island, and the
woman who had never seen a man, are all
sufficient testimonies of it. But Fletcher was
not the only poet who made use of Shakspeare's
plot; Sir John Suckling, a professed admirer of
our author, has followed his footsteps in his
GOBLINS his Reginella being an open imitation
of Shakspeare's Miranda; and his spirits, though
counterfeit, yet are copied from Ariel. But Sir
William D'Avenant, as he was a man of quick
and piercing imagination, soon found that some-
what might be added to the design of Shakspeare,
of which neither Fletcher nor Suckling had ever
thought; and therefore to put the last hand to
:
THE TEMPEST.
333
it, he designed the counterpart to Shakspeare's
plot, namely, that of a man who had never seen
a woman; that by this means those two characters
of innocence and love might the more illustrate
and commend each other. This excellent con-
trivance he was pleased to communicate to me,
and to desire my assistance in it. I confess, that
from the very first moment it so pleased me, that
I never writ any thing with more delight. I
must likewise do him that justice to acknowledge,
that my writing received daily his amendments;
and that is the reason why it is not so faulty as the
rest which I have done, without the help or cor-
rection of so judicious a friend. The comical
parts of the sailors were also of his invention, and
for the most part his writing, as you will easily
discover by the style. In the time I writ with
him, I had the opportunity to observe somewhat
more nearly of him than I had formerly done,
when I had only a bare acquaintance with him ;
I found him then of so quick a fancy, that
nothing was proposed to him, on which he could
not suddenly produce a thought extremely pleasant
and surprising; and those first thoughts of his,
contrary to the old Latin proverb, were not always
the least happy; and as his fancy was quick, so
likewise were the products of it remote and new.
He borrowed not of any other; and his imagina-
tions were such as could not easily enter into any
other man.
His corrections were sober and
judicious; and he corrected his own writings much
334
PREFACE, &c.
more severely than those of another man, bestow-
ing twice the time and labour in polishing which
he used in invention.
It had perhaps been easy enough for me to have
arrogated more to myself than was my due, in the
writing of this play, and to have passed by his
name with silence in the publication of it with
the same ingratitude which others have used to
him, whose writings he hath not only corrected,
as he hath done this, but has had a greater inspec-
tion over them, and sometimes added whole scenes
together, which may as easily be distinguished
from the rest as true gold from counterfeit by the
weight. But besides the unworthiness of the
action, which deterred me from it, (there being
nothing so base as to rob the dead of his reputa-
tion,) I am satisfied I could never have received
so much honour in being thought the author of
any poem, how excellent soever, as I shall from
the joining my imperfections with the merit and
name of Shakspeare and Sir William D'Avenant.
JOHN DRYDEN.
December 1,
1669.
DEDICATION
OF
AN EVENING's LOVE,
OR, THE MOCK ASTROloger.
TO HIS GRACE,
WILLIAM, DUKE OF NEWCASTLE,
ONE OF HIS MAJESTY'S MOST HONOURABLE PRIVY
COUNCIL, AND OF THE MOST HONOURABLE ORDER
OF THE GARTER, &c.
AMONGST
MONGst those few persons of wit and honour
whose favourable opinion I have desired, your own
virtue, and my great obligations to your grace,
have justly given you the precedence; for what
could be more glorious to me, than to have
acquired some part of your esteem, who are
admired and honoured by all good men ; who have
9 A very highly-finished character of this nobleman,
who was born in 1594, and died December 25, 1676,
may be found in Clarendon's History of the Rebellion,
vol. ii. p. 507. He was author of a celebrated book on
Horsemanship, and of four plays; and was successively
the patron of Ben Jonson, D'Avenant, Dryden, Flecknoe,
and Shadwell, all of whom, except D'Avenant, have testified
336
DEDICATION OF
I
been, for so many years together, the pattern and
standard of honour to the nation; and whose
whole life has been so great an example of heroick
virtue, that we might wonder how it happened
into an age so corrupt as ours, if it had not likewise
been a part of the former. As you came into
the world with all the advantages of a noble birth
and education, so you have rendered both yet
more conspicuous by your virtue. Fortune, in-
deed, has perpetually crowned your undertakings
with success, but she has only waited on your
valour, not conducted it. She has ministered to
your glory like a slave, and has been led in
triumph by it; or at most, while honour led you
by the hand to greatness, fortune only followed to
keep you from sliding back in the ascent. That
which Plutarch accounted her favour to Cimon
and Lucullus, was but her justice to your
Grace;
and never to have been overcome where you led in
person, as it was more than Hannibal could boast,
"He was,
say's
their gratitude by ample encomiuns.
Shadwell, "the greatest master of wit, the most exact
observer of mankind, and the most accurate judge of
humour I ever knew."
The Dedication before us was addressed to him in
1671.
His father was Sir Charles Cavendish; his mother a
daughter of Cuthbert, Lord Ogle. Their son was created
by James the First, Viscount Mansfield and Baron Ogle,
June 3, 1620; 7th March, 1627-8, he was created Earl,
27th October, 1643, Marquis, and 16th March, 1664-5,
Duke, of Newcastle.
THE MOCK ASTROLOGER.
337
so it was all that Providence could do for that
party which it had resolved to ruin. Thus, my
Lord, the last smiles of Victory were on your arms;*
and every where else declaring for the rebels,
she seemed to suspend herself, and to doubt,
before she took her flight, whether she were able
wholly to abandon that cause for which you
fought.
But the greatest trials of your courage and
constancy were yet to come; many had ventured
their fortunes, and exposed their lives to the
utmost dangers for their king and country, who
ended their loyalty with the war; and submitting
to the iniquity of the times, chose rather to redeem
their former plenty by acknowledging an Usurper,
than to suffer with an unprofitable fidelity, as those
meaner spirits called it, for their lawful sovereign.
But as I dare not accuse so many of our nobility,
who were content to accept their patrimonies from
the clemency of the conqueror, and to retain
only a secret veneration for their Prince, amidst
the open worship which they were forced to pay
to the Usurper who had dethroned him, so I
hope I may have leave to extol that virtue which
acted more generously; and which was not satis-
fied with an inward devotion to monarchy, but
produced itself to view, and asserted the cause by
open martyrdom. Of these rare patterns of
loyalty your Grace was chief; those examples you
2 In an engagement near York, in June, 1643.
VOL. I.
Z
338
DEDICATION OF
3
could not find, you made. Some few Catoes there
were with
you, whose invincible resolution could
not be conquered by that usurping Cæsar; your
virtue opposed itself to his fortune, and overcame
it, by not submitting to it. The last and most
difficult enterprize he had to effect, when he had
conquered three nations, was to subdue your
spirits; and he died weary of that war, and unable
to finish it.
In the mean time, you lived more happily in
your exile, than the other on his throne. Your
loyalty made you friends and servants amongst
foreigners; and you lived plentifully without a
fortune,―for you lived on your own desert and
reputation. The glorious name of the valiant and
faithful NEWCASTLE, was a patrimony which
could never be exhausted.
life was
Thus, my Lord, the morning of your
clear and calm; and though it was afterwards.
overcast, yet, in that general storm, you were
never without a shelter. And now you are hap-
pily arrived to the evening of a day as serene as
the dawn of it was glorious; but such an evening,
as, I hope, and almost prophecy, is far from night;
it is the evening of a summer's sun, which keeps
the daylight long within the skies. The health
of your body is maintained by the vigour of your
mind; neither does the one shrink from the
3 The Duchess of Newcastle, in the Life of the Duke,
p. 100, says, that the losses which he sustained in the
Civil Wars, amounted to £.733,579.
THE MOCK ASTROLOGER.
339
fatigue of exercise, nor the other bend under the
pains of study. Methinks I behold in you another
Caius Marius, who, in the extremity of his age,
exercised himself almost every morning in the
Campus Martius, amongst the youthful nobility
of Rome; and afterwards, in your retirements,
when you do honour to Poetry, by employing
part of your leisure in it, I regard you as another
Silius Italicus, who, having passed over his Consul-
ship with applause, dismissed himself from business,
and from the gown, and employed his age amongst
the shades, in the reading and imitation of
Virgil.
In which, lest any thing should be wanting to
your happiness, you have, by a rare effect of
fortune, found in the person of your excellent
lady, not only a lover, but a partner of your
studies; a lady whom our age may justly equal
with the Sappho of the Greeks, or the Sulpitia of
the Romans; who, by being taken into your
bosom, seems to be inspired with your genius, and
by writing the history of your life in so masculine
a style, has already placed you in the number of
the heroes. She has anticipated that great portion
of fame which envy often hinders a living virtue
from possessing; which would, indeed, have been
4
4 The Life of William, Duke of Newcastle, by his
Duchess, was published in folio, in 1667, and again
in the following year. A third edition appeared in 4to.
in 1675.
340
DEDICATION OF
A
given to your ashes, but with a latter payment;
and of which you could have no present use,
except it were by a secret presage of that which
was to come, when you were no longer in a pos-
sibility of knowing it. So that if that were a
praise or satisfaction to the greatest of Emperors,
which the most judicious of poets gives him-
Præsenti tibi maturos largimur honores, &c.
that the adoration which was not allowed to Her-
cules and Romulus till after death, was given to
Augustus living, then certainly it cannot be de-
nied but that your Grace has received a double
satisfaction; the one, to see yourself consecrated
to immortality while you are yet alive, the other,
to have your praises celebrated by so dear, so
just, and so pious an historian.
It is the consideration of this that stops my pen;
though I am loth to leave so fair a subject, which
gives me as much field as poetry could wish, and
yet no more than truth can justify. But to attempt
any thing of a panegyrick, were to enterprize on
your lady's right; and to seem to affect those
praises which none but the Duchess of Newcastle
can deserve, when she writes the actions of her
Lord. I shall therefore leave that wider space,
and contract myself to those narrow bounds which
best become my fortune and employment.
I am obliged, my Lord, to return you not only
my own acknowledgments, but to thank you in
THE MOCK ASTROLOGER.
- 341
the name of former poets. The manes of Jonson'
and D'Avenant seem to require it from me, that
those favours which you placed on them, and
which they wanted opportunity to own in publick,
yet might not be lost to the knowledge of posterity,
with a forgetfulness unbecoming of the Muses,
who are the daughters of memory.
And give
me leave, my Lord, to avow so much of vanity, as
to say, I am proud to be their remembrancer; for
by relating how gracious you have been to them,
and are to me, I in some measure join my name
with theirs; and the continued descent of your
favours to me is the best title which I can plead
for my succession. I only wish that I had as great
reason to be satisfied with myself, in the return of
our common acknowledgments, as your Grace
may justly take in the conferring them; for I
cannot but be very sensible that the present of an
ill comedy, which I here make you, is a very
unsuitable way of giving thanks for them, who
themselves have written so many better. This
pretends to nothing more than to be a foil to those
scenes, which are composed by the most noble
poet of our age and nation; and to be set as a
water-mark of the lowest ebb, to which the wit of
my predecessor has sunk and run down in me.
6
5 In No. 4955 of the Harleian MSS. are some letters
of Ben Jonson's, addressed to this Nobleman.
"Here we have another proof of the bad taste of the
period at which Dryden wrote.
Had not this extravagant
342
DEDICATION, &c.
But though all of them have surpassed me in the
scene, there is one part of glory in which I will
not yield to any of them; I mean, my Lord, that
honour and veneration which they had for you in
their lives, and which I preserve after them more
holily than the vestal fires were maintained from
age to age; but with a greater degree of heat,
and of devotion, than theirs, as being with more
respect and passion than they ever were,
Your GRACE'S
Most obliged,
most humble,
and most obedient servant,
JOHN DRYDEN.*
and unjust preference of Jonson to Shakspeare been
agreeable to the general opinion of that age, our author
could scarcely have hazarded this eulogium, which I
have too good an opinion of his judgment and taste, to
believe the expression of his genuine sentiments.
* I take this opportunity of correcting an errour into
which I have fallen, respecting the date of the play to
which this Dedication was prefixed, which I supposed to
have been first printed in 1671, (see pp. 183 and 384);
but the first edition was, I find, in 1668. This Dedication,
however, is here properly placed, (conformably to the
author's own arrangement,) before that prefixed to TY-
RANNICK LOVE, which was first printed in 1670.
DEDICATION
OF
TYRANNICK LOVE,
OR, THE ROYAL MARTYR."
TO THE MOST ILLUSTRIOUS PRINCE,
JAMES, DUKE OF MONMOUTH AND BUCCLEUGH,
ONE OF HIS MAJESTY'S MOST
HONOURABLE PRIVY
COUNCIL, AND KNIGHT OF THE MOST NOBLE ORDER
OF THE GARTER, &c.
SIR,
THE favourable reception which your excel-
lent lady afforded to one of my former plays, has
encouraged me to double my presumption, in
addressing this to your Grace's patronage. So
dangerous a thing it is to admit a poet into your
family, that you can never afterwards be free from
the chiming of ill verses, perpetually sounding in
your ears, and more troublesome than the neigh-
bourhood of steeples. I have been favourable to
myself in this expression; a zealous fanatick would
7 TYRANNICK LOVE was first printed in 1670; the
second edition, reviewed by the author, in 1672.
344
DEDICATION OF
have gone farther, and have called me the serpent,
who first presented the fruit of my poetry to the
wife, and so gained the opportunity to seduce the
husband. Yet I am ready to avow a crime so
advantageous to me; but the world, which will
condemn my boldness, I am sure will justify and
applaud my choice. All men will join with mc
in the adoration which I pay you; they would
wish only I had brought you a more noble
sacrifice. Instead of an heroick play, you might
justly expect an heroick poem, filled with the
past glories of your ancestors, and the future cer-
tainties of your own. Heaven has already taken
care to form you for an hero. You have all the
advantages of mind and body, and an illustrious
birth, conspiring to render you an extraordinary
person. The Achilles and the Rinaldo are present
in you, even above their originals; you only want
a Homer, or a Tasso, to make you equal to them.
Youth, beauty, and courage, all which you pos-
sess in the height of their perfection, are the most
desirable gifts of heaven; and heaven is never
prodigal of such treasures, but to some uncommon
purpose so goodly a fabrick was never framed by
an Almighty Architect for a vulgar guest. He
shewed the value which he set upon your mind,
when he took care to have it so nobly and so beau-
9
9 James, Duke of Monmouth, son of Charles the
Second, by Lucy Waters, otherwise Barlow, was born
the year 1649, and consequently was now in his twenty-
first year.
TYRANNICK LOVE.
345
tifully lodged. To a graceful fashion and deport-
ment of body, you have joined a winning con-
versation, and an easy greatness, derived to you
from the best, and best beloved of Princes; and
with a great power of obliging, the world has
observed in you a desire to oblige, even beyond
your power. This, and all that I can say on so
excellent and large a subject, is only history, in
which fiction has no part; I can employ nothing
of poetry in it, any more than I do in that humble
protestation which I make, to continue ever
Your GRACE's most obedient
and most devoted servant,
JOHN DRYDEN.
毙
​1
PREFACE
то
TYRANNICK LOVE,
OR, THE ROYAL MARTYR.
I was moved to write this play by many
reasons; amongst others, the commands of some
persons of honour, for whom I have a most par-
ticular respect, were daily sounding in my ears,
that it would be of good example to undertake
a poem of this nature. Neither were my own
inclinations wanting to second their desires. I
considered that pleasure was not the only end of
poesy; and that even the instructions of morality
were not so wholly the business of a poet, as that
the precepts and examples of piety were to be
omitted. For to leave that employment altogether
to the clergy, were to forget that religion was first
taught in verse, which the laziness or dulness
of succeeding priesthood turned afterwards into
prose; and it were also to grant, (which I never
shall,) that representations of this kind may not as
well be conducing to holiness as to good manners.
Yet far be it from me to compare the use of
dramatick poesy with that of Divinity; I only
* "Thus foolishly, (says Dr. Johnson, observing on
this passage,) could Dryden write, rather than not shew
his malice to the parsons."
348
PREFACE TO
A
maintain, against the enemies of the stage, that
patterns of piety, decently represented, and equally
removed from the extremes of superstition and
prophaneness, may be of excellent use to second
the precepts of our religion. By the harmony of
words we elevate the mind to a sense of devotion,
as our solemn musick, which is inarticulate poesy,
does in churches; and by the lively images of
piety, adorned by action, through the senses
allure the soul; which, while it is charmed in a
silent joy of what it sees and hears, is struck at the
same time with a secret veneration of things ce-
lestial, and is wound up insensibly into the practice
of that which it admires. Now if, instead of this,
we sometimes see on our theatres the examples of
vice rewarded, or at least unpunished, yet it
ought not to be an argument against the art, any
more than the extravagancics and impieties of the
pulpit in the late times of rebellion can be against
the office and dignity of the clergy.
But many times it happens that poets are wrong-
fully accused, as it is my own case in this very
play, where I am charged by some ignorant or
malicious persons with no less crimes than pro-
phaneness and irreligion.
The part of Maximin, against which these holy
criticks so much declaim, was designed by me to
set off the character of St. Catharine; and those
who have read the Roman history may easily
remember, that Maximin was not only a bloody
tyrant, vastus corpore, animo ferus, as Herodian
TYRANNICK LOVE.
349
SO
describes him, but also a persecutor of the church,
against which he raised the Sixth Persecution
that whatsoever he speaks or acts in this tragedy,
is no more than a record of his life and manners;
a picture, as near as I could take it, from the
original. If with much pains and some success, I
have drawn a deformed piece, there is as much of
art, and as near an imitation of nature, in a lazar,
as in a Venus. Maximin was an heathen, and
what he speaks against religion, is in contempt of
that which he professed. He defies the gods of
Rome, which is no more than St. Catharine might
with decency have done. If it be urged, that a
person of such principles, who scoffs at any religion,
ought not to be presented on the stage, why then
are the lives and sayings of so many wicked and
profane persons recorded in the Holy Scriptures?
I know it will be answered,-that a due use may
be made of them; that they are remembered with
a brand of infamy fixed upon them; and set as
sea-marks for those who behold them to avoid.
And what other use have I made of Maximin ?
have I proposed him as a pattern to be imitated,
whom, even for his impiety to his false gods, I
have so severely punished? Nay, as if I had fore-
seen this objection, I purposely removed the scene
of the play, which ought to have been at Alexan-
dria in Egypt, where St. Catharine suffered, and
laid it under the walls of Aquileia in Italy, where
Maximin was slain; that the punishment of his
crime might immediately succeed its execution.
350
PREFACE TO
1
This, Reader, is what I owed to my just defence,
and the due reverence of that religion which I
profess; to which all men, who desire to be
esteemed good or honest, are obliged. I have
neither leisure nor occasion to write more largely
on this subject, because I am already justified by
the sentence of the best and most discerning
Prince in the world, by the suffrage of all unbiassed
judges, and above all, by the witness of my own
conscience, which abhors the thought of such a
crime; to which I ask leave to add my outward
conversation, which shall never be justly taxed
with the note of atheism or prophaneness.
In what else concerns the play, I shall be brief.
For the faults of the writing and contrivance, I
leave them to the mercy of the reader; for I am
as little apt to defend my own errours, as to find
those of other poets. Only I observe, that the
great censors of wit and poetry either produce
nothing of their own, or what is more ridiculous
than any thing they reprehend. Much of ill
nature, and a very little judgment, go far in finding
the mistakes of writers.
I pretend not that any thing of mine can be
correct; this poem especially, which was contrived
and written in seven weeks, though afterwards
hindered by many accidents from a speedy re-
presentation, which would have been its just
excuse.
Yet the scenes are every where unbroken, and
the unities of place and time more exactly kept
TYRANNICK LOVE.
351
than perhaps is requisite in a tragedy; or at least
than I have since preserved them in THE CON-
QUEST OF GRANADA.
I have not every where observed the equality of
numbers in my verse; partly by reason of my
haste, but more especially because I would not
have my sense a slave to syllables.
in
It is easy to discover that I have been very bold
my alteration of the story, which of itself was
too barren for a play; and that I have taken from
the church two martyrs, in the persons of Porphy-
rius and the Empress, who suffered for the Christian
faith, under the tyranny of Maximin.
I have seen a French play, called THE MAR-
TYRDOM OF ST. CATHARINE; but those who have
read it will soon clear me from stealing out of so
dull an author. I have only borrowed a mistake
from him, of one Maximin for another; for finding
him in the French poet, called the son of a
Thracian herdsman, and an Alane woman, I too
easily believed him to have been the same Maxi-
min mentioned in Herodian; till afterwards, con-
sulting Eusebius and Metaphrastes, I found the
Frenchman had betrayed me into an errour, (when
it was too late to alter it,) by mistaking that first
Maximin for a second, the contemporary of Con-
stantine the Great, and one of the usurpers of the
Eastern empire.
But neither was the other name of my play
more fortunate; for as some who had heard of a
tragedy of ST. CATHARINE, imagined I had taken
352
PREFACE TO
:
my plot from thence, so others, who had heard of
another play, called L'AMOUR TYRANNIQUE, with
the same ignorance accused me to have borrowed
my design from it, because I have accidentally
given my play the same title; not having to this
day seen it, and knowing only by report that such
a comedy is extant in French, under the name of
Monsieur Scudery.
As for what I have said of astral or aërial spirits,
it is no invention of mine, but taken from those
who have written on that subject. Whether there
are such beings or not, it concerns not me; it is
sufficient for my purpose, that many have believed
the affirmative; and that these heroick represen-
tations, which are of the same nature with the
epick, are not limited, but with the extremest
bounds of what is credible.
For the little criticks who pleased themselves
with thinking they have found a flaw in that line
of the Prologue,
"And he who servilely creeps after sense,
"Is safe," &c.
as if I patronized my own nonsense, I may rea-
sonably suppose they have never read Horace.
Serpit humi tutus, &c. are his words: he who
creeps after plain, dull, common sense, is safe from
committing absurdities, but can never reach any
height, or excellence of wit; and sure I could
not mean that any excellence were to be found in
8
See pp. 216, and 233.
1
TYRANNICK LOVE.
353
nonsense.* With the same ignorance, or malice,
they would accuse me for using-empty arms, when
I writ of a ghost or shadow, which has only the
appearance of a body or limbs, and is empty or
void of flesh and blood; and vacuis amplectitur
ulnis, was an expression of Ovid's on the same
subject. Some fool before them had charged me
in THE INDIAN EMPEROR with nonsense, in these
words:
"And follow Fate, which does too fast pursue;"
which was borrowed from Virgil in the eleventh
of his Æneids:
Eludit gyro interior, sequiturque sequentem.
I quote not these to prove that I never writ
nonsense, but only to shew that they are so unfor-
tunate as not to have found it.
VALE.
* Our author alludes to the following spirited lines of
the Prologue to TYRANNICK LOVE:
"Poets, like lovers, should be bold and dare;
They spoil their business with an over-care;
And he who servilely creeps after sense,
"Is safe, but ne'er will reach to excellence.
"Hence 'tis, our poet in his conjuring
"Allow'd his fancy the full force and swing;
"But when a tyrant for his theme he had,
"He loos'd the reins, and bid his muse run mad :
"And though he stumbles in a full career,
"Yet rashness is a better fault than fear.
VOL. I.
A A
354
PREFACE, &c.
"He saw his way; but, in so swift a pace,
To choose the ground might be to lose the race.
They then, who of each trip the advantage take,
Find but those faults, which they want wit to make."
In the fifth line the author alludes to his alteration of
THE TEMPEST, which being placed before THE MOCK
ASTROLOGER, in his own list of his plays arranged in
the order in which they were written, was probably first
represented, as I have already suggested, in the winter of
1668, or early in 1669. From a passage in the Preface,
it appears not to have been produced till after the death
of D'Avenant. He died April 7, 1668.
2
DEDICATION
OF THE FIRST PART OF
THE CONQUEST OF GRANADA.
SIR,
TO HIS
ROYAL HIGHNESS, THE DUKE."
HEROICK
EROICK Poesy has always been sacred to
Princes and to Heroes. Thus Virgil inscribed his
Eneids to Augustus Cæsar; and of latter ages,
Tasso and Ariosto dedicated their poems to the
house of Este. It is indeed but justice, that the
most excellent and most profitable kind of writing,
should be addressed by poets to such persons
whose characters have, for the most part, been the
guides and patterns of their imitation; and poets,
while they imitate, instruct. The feigned hero
inflames the true; and the dead virtue animates
the living. Since, therefore, the world is governed
by precept and example, and both these can only
7 James, Duke of York, afterwards King James II.
This Dedication was addressed to the Duke in 1672, when
THE CONQUEST OF GRANADA was first published.
{
356
DEDICATION OF THE FIRST PART
have influence from those persons who are above
us, that kind of poesy which excites to virtue the
greatest men, is of greatest use to human kind.
It is from this consideration that I have pre-
sumed to dedicate to your Royal Highness these
faint representations of your own worth and valour
in heroick poetry; or to speak more properly,
not to dedicate, but to restore to you those ideas
which, in the more perfect part of my characters,
I have taken from you. Heroes may lawfully be
delighted with their own praises, both as they are
farther incitements to their virtue, and as they are
the highest returns which mankind can make them
for it.
And certainly, if ever nation were obliged
either by the conduct, the personal valour, or the
good fortune of a leader, the English are acknow-
ledging, in all of them, to your Royal Highness.
Your whole life has been a continued series of
heroick actions, which you began so early, that
you were no sooner named in the world, but it
was with praise and admiration. Even the first
blossoms of your youth paid us all that could be
expected from a ripening manhood. While you
practised but the rudiments of war, you out-
went all other captains; and have since found
none to surpass but yourself alone. The opening
of your glory was like that of light; you shone
to us from afar, and disclosed your first beams on
distant nations; yet so, that the lustre of them
was spread abroad, and reflected brightly on your
OF THE CONQUEST OF GRANADA.
357
native country. You were then an honour to it,
when it was a reproach to itself; and when the
fortunate Usurper sent his arms to Flanders, many
of the adverse party were vanquished by your
fame, ere they tried your valour. The report of
it drew over to your ensigns whole troops and
companies of converted rebels; and made them
forsake successful wickedness, to follow an op-
pressed and exiled virtue. Your reputation waged
war with the enemies of your royal family, even
within their trenches; and the more obstinate or
more guilty of them were forced to be spies over
those whom they commanded, lest the name of
YORK should disband that army in whose fate it
was to defeat the Spaniards, and force Dunkirk to
surrender. Yet those victorious forces of the
rebels were not able to sustain your arms; where
you charged in person you were a conqueror.
is true, they afterwards recovered courage, and
wrested that victory from others which they had
lost to you; and it was a greater action for them
to rally than it was to overcome. Thus, by the
presence of your Royal Highness, the English on
both sides remained victorious; and that army
which was broken by your valour, became a ter-
rour to those for whom they conquered. Then it
was, that at the cost of other nations.
you informed
8
It
and cultivated that valour which was to defend
7 In 1657.
June 17, 1658.
358
DEDICATION OF THE FIRST PART
your native country, and to vindicate its honour
from the insolence of our encroaching neighbours.
When the Hollanders, not contented to withdraw
themselves from the obedience which they owed
their lawful sovereign, affronted those by whose
charity they were first protected; and, being
swelled up to a pre-eminence of trade, by a supine
negligence on our side, and a sordid parsimony on
their own, dared to dispute the sovereignty of
the seas, the eyes of three nations were then cast
on you; and by the joint suffrage of King and
people, you were chosen to revenge their common
injuries; to which though you had an undoubted
title by your birth, you had yet a greater by your
courage. Neither did the success deceive our
hopes and expectations; the most glorious victory
which was gained by our navy in that war, was in
that first engagement; wherein, even by the con-
fession of our enemies, who ever palliate their
own losses, and diminish our advantages, your
absolute triumph was acknowledged: you con-
quered at the Hague as entirely as at London;
and the return of a shattered fleet, without an
admiral, left not the most impudent among them
the least pretence for a false bonfire, or a dis-
sembled day of publick thanksgiving. All our
atchievements against them afterwards, though we
sometimes conquered, and were never overcome,
were but a copy of that victory; and they still
2 June 3, 1665. See p. 34.
OF THE CONQUEST OF GRANADA.
359
fell short of their original: somewhat of fortune
was ever wanting, to fill up the title of so absolute
a defeat; or perhaps the guardian angel of our
nation was not enough concerned, when you were
absent, and would not employ his utmost vigour
for a less important stake than the life and honour
of a Royal Admiral.
And if since that memorable day you have had
leisure to enjoy in peace the fruits of so glorious a
reputation, it was occasion only has been wanting
to your courage; for that can never be wanting
to occasion. The same ardour still incites you
to heroick actions; and the same concernment.
for all the interests of your King and brother
continue to give you restless nights, and a generous
emulation for your own glory. You are still
meditating on new labours for yourself, and new
triumphs for the nation; and when our former
enemies again provoke us, you will again solicit
fate to provide you another navy to overcome, and
another admiral to be slain. You will then lead
forth a nation eager to revenge their past injuries,
and, like the Romans, inexorable to peace till they
have fully vanquished. Let our enemies make
their boast of a surprise,* as the Samnites did of a
successful stratagem; but the Furce Caudine will
never be forgiven till they are revenged. I have
* The author probably alludes to the naval engagement
with the Dutch, near Solebay, May 18th, 1672, in which
Lord Sandwich was killed.
}
360
DEDICATION OF THE FIRST PART
always observed in your Royal Highness an ex-
treme concernment for the honour of your country;
it is a passion common to you with a brother,
the most excellent of Kings; and in your two
persons are eminent the characters which Homer
has given us of heroick virtue, the commanding
part in Agamemnon, and the executive in Achilles.
And I doubt not, from both your actions, but to
have abundant matter to fill the annals of a glorious
reign; and to perform the part of a just historian
to my Royal Master, without intermixing with it
any thing of the poet.
In the mean time, while your Royal Highness
is preparing fresh employments for our pens, I
have been examining my own forces, and making
trial of myself how I shall be able to transmit you
to posterity. I have formed a hero, I confess, not
absolutely perfect, but of an excessive and over-
boiling courage; but Homer and Tasso are my
precedents. Both the Greek and the Italian poet
had well considered, that a tame hero who never
transgresses the bounds of moral virtue, would shine
but dimly in an epick poem; the strictness of
those rules might well give precepts to the reader,
but would administer little of occasion to the
writer; but a character of an eccentrick virtue is
the more exact image of human life, because he
is not wholly exempted from its frailties: such a
person is Almanzor, whom I present, with all
humility, to the patronage of your Royal Highness.
I designed in him a roughness of character, impa-
OF THE CONQUEST OF GRANADA.
361
tient of injuries, and a confidence of himself
almost approaching to an arrogance. But these
errours are incident only to great spirits; they are
moles and dimples, which hinder not a face from
being beautiful, though that beauty be not regular;
they are of the number of those amiable imper-
fections which we sce in mistresses, and which we
pass over without a strict examination, when they
are accompanied with greater graces. And such
in Almanzor are a frank and noble openness of na-
ture; an easiness to forgive his conquered enemies,
and to protect them in distress; and above all, an
inviolable faith in his affection. This, Sir, I have
briefly shadowed to your Royal Highness, that
you may not be ashamed of that hero whose
protection you undertake. Neither would I dedi-
cate him to so illustrious a name, if I were conscious
to myself that he did or said any thing which was
wholly unworthy of it. However, since it is not
just that your Royal Highness should defend or
own what possibly may be my errour, I bring
before you this accused Almanzor in the nature
of a suspected criminal. By the suffrage of the
most and best he already is acquitted; and by the
sentence of some, condemned; but as I have no
reason to stand to the award of my enemies, so
neither dare I trust the partiality of my friends.
I make my last appeal to your Royal Highness, as
to a sovereign tribunal. Heroes should only be
judged by heroes, because they only are capable of
measuring great and heroick actions by the rule
362
DEDICATION, &c.
and standard of their own. If Almanzor has failed
in any point of honour, I must therein acknowledge
that he deviates from your Royal Highness, who
are the pattern of it; but if at any time he fulfils
the parts of personal valour and of conduct, of
a soldier or a general; or if I could yet give him
a character more advantageous than what he has,
of the most unshaken friend, the greatest of
subjects, and the best of masters, I should then
draw to all the world a true resemblance of your
worth and virtues; at least as far as they are
capable of being copied by the mean abilities of,
SIR,
Your Royal Highness's
Most humble and
Most obedient servant,
J. DRYDEN.
DEDICATION
OF
MARRIAGE A-LA-MODE.
TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE
THE EARL OF ROCHESTER. 2
MY LORD,
I HUM
HUMBLY dedicate to your Lordship that
poem, of which you were pleased to appear an
early patron, before it was acted on the stage. I
may yet go farther, with your permission, and say,
that it received amendment from your noble hands,
ere it was fit to be presented. You may please
¹ This comedy was printed in the year 1673, when
probably it first was represented on the stage. The
Theatre-Royal in Drury-Lane having been burnt down
in January, 1671-2, the King's Company of Comedians,
till it was re-built, were obliged to occupy another theatre;
but to what theatre they removed, has not been ascertained
by the stage-historians of that period. It appears, how-
ever, from a manuscript in the British Museum (MSS.
Sloan. 4455, art. 6) that in this distress they took possession
of the old theatre in Portugal-Row, Lincoln's-Inn-Fields,
which their competitors, the Duke's Company, had re-
cently left, removing to a new play-house in Dorset-
364
DEDICATION OF
J
likewise to remember with how much favour to
the author, and indulgence to the play, you com-
mended it to his Majesty, then at Windsor, and
by his approbation of it in writing, made way for
its kind reception on the theatre. In this Dedi-
cation, therefore, I may seem to imitate a custom
of the ancients, who offered to their gods the
firstlings of the flock, which I think they call Ver
Sacrum, because they helped them to increase.
am sure if there be any thing in this play wherein
I
Gardens. In our author's Miscellanies we find a " Pro-
logue spoken the first day of the King's House acting
after the fire;" but the copy among the Sloanian MSS.
ascertains not only the play represented on that occasion,
but the theatre where it was acted: "A Prologue of a
play, entitled WIT WITHOUT MONEY, spoken at the
Duke's old Theatre, (after the King's was burnt,) by the
King's Players, Feb. 26, 1671." [i. e. 1671-2.] At
this theatre, therefore, MARRIAGE A-LA-MODE must have
been represented; for the new house, built by the King's
Company, was not opened till March 26, 1674, on which
occasion also our author contributed a Prologue.
2
John Wilmot, the celebrated Earl of Rochester, who
at this time was in the twenty-sixth year of his age, and
with whom our author was now on good terms. A few
years afterwards, in consequence of the publication of
the ESSAY ON SATIRE, which was attributed to Dryden,
(and probably was the joint production of him and the
Earl of Mulgrave,) Lord Rochester, who together with the
Duchess of Portsmouth was severely treated in that poem,
is supposed to have hired ruffians to beat our author, which
they did in Rose-Alley, (Dec. 18, 1679,) as he was rc-
turning from a coffee-house to his lodgings.
MARRIAGE A-LA-MODE.
365
I have raised myself beyond the ordinary lowness
of my comedies, I ought wholly to acknowledge
it to the favour of being admitted into your
Lordship's conversation. And not only I, who
pretend not to this way, but the best comick
writers of our age, will join with me to acknow-
ledge, that they have copied the gallantries of
courts, the delicacy of expression, and the decen-
cies of behaviour,' from your Lordship, with more
success than if they had taken their models from
the court of France. But this, my Lord, will be
no wonder to the world, which knows the excel-
lency of your natural parts, and those you have
acquired in a noble education. That which with
more reason I admire is, that being so abso-
lute a courtier, you have not forgot either the
ties of friendship or the practice of generosity. In
little experience of a court, (which I confess
I desire not to improve,) I have found in it much
of interest, and more of detraction; few men
there have that assurance of a friend, as not to
be made ridiculous by him when they are absent.
There are a middling sort of courtiers, who become
happy by their want of wit; but they supply that
want by an excess of malice to those who have
it. And there is no such persecution as that of
fools; they can never be considerable enough to
my
3 To commend this dissolute nobleman for the decencies
of behaviour, may seem a very uncommon stretch of
flattery; yet probably, in the ordinary intercourse of life
he was perfectly well-bred and polite.
!
366
DEDICATION OF
be talked of themselves, so that they are safe only
in their obscurity, and grow mischievous to witty
men by the great diligence of their envy, and by
being always present to represent and aggravate
their faults. In the mean time they are forced,
when they endeavour to be pleasant, to live on the
offals of their wit whom they decry; and either
to quote it, which they do unwillingly, or to pass
it upon others for their own. These are the men
who make it their business to chace wit from the
knowledge of princes, lest it should disgrace their
ignorance; and this kind of malice your Lordship
has not so much avoided as surmounted. But if
by the excellent temper of a Royal Master, always
more ready to hear good than ill; if by his incli-
nation to love you, if by your own merit and
address, if by the charms of your conversation,
the grace of your behaviour, your knowledge of
greatness and habitude in courts, you have been
able to preserve yourself with honour in the midst
of so dangerous a course; yet at least the remem-
brance of those hazards has inspired you with
pity for other men, who being of an inferior wit
and quality to you, are yet persecuted for being
that in little which your Lordship is in great. For
the quarrel of those people extends itself to any
thing of sense; and if I may be so vain to own it
amongst the rest of the poets, has sometimes
reached to the very borders of it, even to me:
so that if our general good fortune had not raised
MARRIAGE A-LA-MODE.
367
up your Lordship to defend us, I know not whether
any thing had been more ridiculous in court than
writers. It is to your Lordship's favour we gene-
rally owe our protection and patronage; and to
the nobleness of your nature, which will not suffer
the least shadow of your wit to be contemned in
other men. You have been often pleased not
only to excuse my imperfections, but to vindicate
what was tolerable in my writings from their cen-
sures; and, what I never can forget, you have
not only been careful of my reputation, but of my
fortune; you have been solicitous to supply my
neglect of myself, and to overcome the fatal
modesty of poets, which submits them to perpetual
wants, rather than to become importunate with
those people who have the liberality of Kings in
their disposing; and who, dishonouring the bounty
of their master, suffer such to be in necessity, who
endeavour at least to please him; and for whose
entertainment he has generously provided, if the
fruits of his royal favour were not often stopped
in other hands. But your Lordship has given mẹ
occasion not to complain of courts, whilst you are
there. I have found the effects of your mediation
in all my concernments; and they were so much
the more noble in you, because they were wholly
voluntary. I became your Lordship's, if I may
venture on the similitude, as the world was made,
without knowing him who made it; and brought
only a passive obedience to be your creature.
me
368
DEDICATION OF
This nobleness of your's I think myself the rather
obliged to own, because otherwise it must have
been lost to all remembrance; for you are endued
with that excellent quality of a frank nature, to
forget the good which you have done.
But, my Lord, I ought to have considered, that
you are as great a judge as you are a patron ; and
that in praising you ill, I shall incur a higher note
of ingratitude than that I thought to have avoided.
I stand in need of all your accustomed goodness
for the Dedication of this play; which, though
perhaps it be the best of my comedies, is
yet so
faulty, that I should have feared you for my
critick, if I had not with some policy given you
the trouble of being my protector. Wit seems to
have lodged itself more nobly in this age, than in
any of the former; and people of my mean con-
dition are only writers, because some of the nobility,
and your Lordship in the first place, are above
the narrow praises which poesy could give you.
But let those who love to see themselves exceeded,
encourage your Lordship in so dangerous a qua-
lity; for my own part, I must confess that I have
so much of self-interest, as to be content with
reading some papers of your verses, without de-
siring you should proceed to a scene or play; with
the common prudence of those who are worsted
in a duel, and declare they are satisfied when they
are first wounded. Your Lordship has but another
step to make, and from the patron of wit you may
MARRIAGE A-LA-Mode.
369
become its tyrant, and oppress our little reputations
with more ease than you now protect them. But
these, my Lord, are designs which I am sure you
harbour not, any more than the French King is
contriving the conquest of the Swissers. It is a
barren triumph, which is not worth your pains,
and would only rank him amongst your slaves,
who is already,
MY LORD,
Your Lordship's
Most obedient,
and most faithful servant,
JOHN DRYDEN.
VOL. I.
B B
"
DEDICATION
O F
THE ASSIGNATION,
OR, LOVE IN A NUNNERY.4
TO MY MOST HONOURED FRIEND,
SIR CHARLES SEDLEY, BARONET.S
SIR,
THE design of dedicating plays is as common
and unjust, as that of desiring seconds in a duel.
It is engaging our friends (it may be) in a sense-
less quarrel, where they have much to venture,
without any concernment of their own. I have
declared thus much beforehand, to prevent you
from suspicion that I intend to interest either your
judgment or your kindness in defending the errours
4 The ASSIGNATION was acted at the Theatre Royal,
and first printed in 1673.
5 Sir Charles Sedley, whose poetry and plays were
formerly much admired, but are now little read, was born
about the year 1639, and bred at Wadham College, Oxford,
where probably his intimacy with Lord Rochester com-
menced. In 1678, and several subsequent parliaments,
he was Member for New-Romney in Kent, which he
represented in the year 1700, when he died. Jacob, and
other biographers, have erroneously asserted that he lived
to ninety years of age.
1
372
DEDICATION OF
of this comedy. It succeeded ill in the represen-
tation, against the opinion of many the best judges
of our age, to whom you know I read it ere it
was presented publickly. Whether the fault was
in the play itself, or in the lameness of the action,
or in the number of its enemies, who came re-
solved to damn it for the title, I will not now
dispute; that would be too like the little satisfac-
tion which an unlucky gamester finds in the relation
of
every cast by which he came to lose his money.
I have had formerly so much success, that the
miscarriage of this play was only my giving For-
tune her revenge; I owed it her; and she was
indulgent, that she exacted not the payment long
before. I will therefore deal more reasonably with
you, than any poet has ever done with any patron;
I do not so much as oblige you, for my sake, to
pass two ill hours in reading of my play. Think,
if
you please, that this Dedication is only an
occasion I have taken to do myself the greatest
honour imaginable with posterity; that is, to be
recorded in the number of those men whom you
have favoured with your friendship and esteem;
for I am well assured, that besides the present
satisfaction I have, it will gain me the greatest
part of my reputation with afterages, when they
shall find me valuing myself on your kindness to
me. I may have reason to suspect my own credit.
with them, but I have none to doubt of your's ;
and they who perhaps would forget me in my
poems, would remember me in this epistle.
This was the course which has formerly been
THE ASSIGNATION.
373
6
practised by the poets of that nation who were
masters of the universe. Horace and Ovid, who
had little reason to distrust their immortality, yet
took occasion to speak with honour of Virgil,
Varius, Tibullus, and Propertius, their contempo-
raries; as if they sought, in the testimony of their
friendship, a farther evidence of their fame. For
my own part, I who am the least amongst the
poets, have yet the fortune to be honoured with
the best patron, and the best friend; for, (to omit
some great persons of our court, to whom I am
many ways obliged, and who have taken care of
me, even amidst the exigencies of a war,) I can
make my boast to have found a better Mæcenas
in the person of my Lord Treasurer Clifford, and
a more elegant Tibullus in that of Sir Charles
Sedley. I have chosen that poet to whom I would
resemble you, not only because I think him at
least equal, if not superior to Ovid in his elegies;
nor because of his quality, for he was, you know,
a Roman knight, as well as Ovid; but for his
candour, his wealth, his way of living, and par-
ticularly because of this testimony which is given
him by Horace, which I have a thousand times in
my mind applied to you :
Non tu corpus eras sine pectore: Dii tibi formam,
Dii tibi divitias dederant, artemq; fruendi.
Quid voveat dulci nutricula majus alumno
Quam sapere, et fari possit quæ sentiat, et cui
Gratia, forma, valetudo contingat abunde ;
Et mundus victus, non deficiente crumena ?
6
• The second Dutch war.
374
DEDICATION OF
Certainly the poets of that age enjoyed much
happiness in the conversation and friendship of
one another. They imitated the best way of
living, which was to pursue innocent and inoffen-
sive pleasure; that which one of the ancients
called—eruditam voluptatem. We have, like them,
our genial nights, where our discourse is neither
too serious nor too light, but always pleasant, and
for the most part instructive; the raillery neither
too sharp upon the present, nor too censorious on
the absent, and the cups only such as will raise
the conversation of the night, without disturbing
the business of the morrow. And thus far not
only the philosophers, but the fathers of the church
have gone, without lessening their reputation of
good manners or of piety. For this reason I have
often laughed at the ignorant and ridiculous de-
scriptions which some pedants have given of the
Wits, as they are pleased to call them; which are
a generation of men as unknown to them as the
people of Tartary or the Terra Australis are to us.
And therefore, as we draw giants and Anthropo-
phagi in those vacancies of our maps, where we
have not travelled to discover better, so those
wretches paint lewdness, atheism, folly, ill-reason-
ing, and all manner of extravagancies amongst us,
for want of understanding what we are. Often-
times it so falls out, that they have a particular
picque to some one amongst us, and then they
immediately interest heaven in their quarrel; as
it is an usual trick in courts, when one designs the
ruin of his enemy, to disguise his malice with
THE ASSIGNATION.
375
some concernment of the King's, and to revenge
his own cause with pretence of vindicating the
honour of his master. Such Wits as they describe
I have never been so unfortunate to meet in your
company; but have often heard much better
reasoning at your table, than I have encountered
in their books. The Wits they describe are the
fops we banish; for blasphemy and atheism, if
they were neither sin nor ill manners, are subjects
so very common, and worn so threadbare, that
people who have sense avoid them, for fear of
being suspected to have none. It calls the good
name of their wit in question, as it does the credit
of a citizen, when his shop is filled with trumperies
and painted titles, instead of wares; we conclude
them bankrupt to all manner of understanding,
and that to use blasphemy is a kind of applying
pigeons to the soles of the feet; it proclaims their
fancy as well as judgment to be in a desperate
condition. I am sure, for your own particular, if
any of these judges had once the happiness to
converse with you,—to hear the candour of your
opinions, how freely you commend that wit in
others, of which you have so large a portion your-
self,-how unapt you are to be censorious,—with
how much easiness you speak so many things, and
those so pointed, that no other man is able to
excel, or perhaps to reach by study,—they would,
instead of your accusers, become your proselytes.
They would reverence so much good sense and
so much good nature in the same person; and
376
DEDICATION OF
come, like the satyr, to warm themselves at that
fire, of which they were ignorantly afraid, when
they stood at distance. But you have too great a
reputation to be wholly free from censure: it is a
fine which Fortune sets upon all extraordinary
persons, and from which you should not wish to
be delivered till you are dead. I have been used
by my criticks much more severely, and have
more reason to complain, because I am deeper
taxed for less estate. I am ridiculously enough
accused to be a contemner of Universities, that is,
in other words, an enemy of learning, without the
foundation of which I am sure no man can pretend
to be a poet; and if this be not enough, I am
made a detractor from my predecessors,' whom I
confess to have been my masters in the art; but
this latter was the accusation of the best judge,
and almost the best poet in the Latin tongue.
You find Horace complaining, that for taxing
some verses in Lucilius, he himself was blamed by
others, though his design was no other than mine
now,—to improve the knowledge of poetry; and
it was no defence to him, amongst his enemies,
any more than it is for me, that he praised Lucilius
where he deserved it; paginâ laudatur eâdem. It
is for this reason I will be no more mistaken for
my good meaning: I know I honour Ben Jonson
more than my little criticks, because without vanity
In the Epilogue to the Second Part of THE CON-
QUEST OF GRANADA.
THE ASSIGNATION.
377
I
may own, I understand him better.
As for the
errours they pretend to find in me, I could easily
shew them that the greatest part of them are
beauties; and for the rest, I could recriminate
upon the best poets of our nation, if I could
resolve to accuse another of little faults, whom at
the same time I admire for greater excellencies.
But I have neither concernment enough upon me
to write any thing in my own defence, neither
will I gratify the ambition of two wretched scrib-
blers, who desire nothing more than to be an-
swered. I have not wanted friends, even amongst
strangers, who have defended me more strongly
than my contemptible pedant could attack me;
for the other, he is only like Fungoso in the play,
who follows the fashion at a distance, and adores
the Fastidious Brisk of Oxford. You can bear
1.
In the year 1673, three satirical pamphlets appeared
against our author, under the following titles:-
THE CENSURE OF THE ROTA on Mr. Dryden's
CONQUEST OF GRANADA." Printed at Oxford. 2. A
Description of the Academy of the Athenian Virtuosi;
with a Discourse held there in Vindication of Mr.
Dryden's CONQUEST OF GRANADA, against the author of
THE CENSURE OF THE ROTA." 3. "A Friendly Vin-
dication of Mr. Dryden from the Author of THE Censure
OF THE ROTA." Printed at Cambridge. This pamphlet
(and probably the other two also) was published after the
representation, but before the publication, of LOVE IN A
NUNNERY.-Dryden probably here alludes to the sup-
posed authors of these pieces. The contemptible pedant, I
suspect, was Martin Clifford, Master of the Charter-
મ
378
DEDICATION, &C.
me witness, that I have not consideration enough
for either of them to be angry: let Mævius and
Bavius admire each other; I wish to be hated by
them and their fellows, by the same reason for
which I desire to be loved by you. And I leave
it to the world, whether their judgment of my
poetry ought to be preferred to your's; though
they are as much prejudiced by their malice as I
desire you should be led by your kindness, to be
partial to,
SIR,
Your most humble
And most faithful servant,
JOHN DRYDEN.
House, who was perhaps author of one of these pam-
phlets, and who had assisted the Duke of Bucking-
ham in writing THE REHEARSAL. The author of THE
CENSURE OF THE ROTA was, according to Wood, Richard
Leigh, who had been bred at Queen's College, Oxford,
and was at this time a player in the Duke of York's
Company; but whether he was one of the wretched
scribblers here alluded to, I am unable to ascertain; nor
do I know who was meant by the Fastidius Brisk of
Oxford.-Leigh's character seems to have nothing in
common with Fungoso in EVERY MAN OUT OF HIS
HUMOUR, except his being bred a student.
DEDICATION
OF
AM BOY NA.'
TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE
THE LORD CLIFFORD OF CHUDLEIGH:"
MY LORD,
AFTER SO many favours, and those so great,
conferred on me by your Lordship these many
years, which I may call more properly one con-
tinued act of your generosity and goodness, I know
not whether I should appear more ungrateful in
my silence, or more extravagantly vain in my
endeavours to acknowledge them; for since all
acknowledgments bear a face of payment, it may
be thought that I have flattered myself into an
opinion of being able to return some part of my
obligements to you; the just despair of which
This tragedy, which was acted at the Theatre Royal,
was first printed in 1673, and must have been published
between the 19th of June in that year, when Lord Clifford
resigned the office of Lord High Treasurer, and the fol-
lowing September, when he died.
1 Thomas Lord Clifford, who together with Ashley,
Buckingham, Arlington, and Lauderdale, formed the
well-known junto denominated the CABAL, was a Roman
Catholick, and about one year elder than our author,
380
DEDICATION OF AMBOYNA.
attempt, and the due veneration I have for his
person to whom I must address, have almost driven
me to receive only with a profound submission the
effects of that virtue which is never to be compre-
hended but by admiration; and the greatest note
of admiration is silence. It is that noble passion
to which poets raise their audience in highest
subjects, and they have then gained over them
the greatest victory, when they are ravished into
a pleasure which is not to be expressed by words.
To this pitch, my Lord, the sense of my gratitude
had almost raised me ;-to receive your favours, as
the Jews of old received their law, with a mute
wonder,-to think, that the loudness of acclama-
tion was only the praise of men to men, and that
the secret homage of the soul was a greater mark
of reverence than an outward ceremonious joy,
which might be counterfeit, and must be irreverent
in its tumult. Neither, my Lord, have I a par-
ticular right to pay you my acknowledgments; you
have been a good so universal, that almost every
man in three nations may think me injurious to
his propriety, that I invade your praises in under-
taking to celebrate them alone; and that have
assumed to myself a patron, who was no more to
having been born August 1, 1630. On the 20th of
April, 1672, he was created a peer, and on the 28th of
November following, was appointed Lord Treasurer of
England; which office he held only seven months. His
character is given by Hume, in his History, vol. vii.
p. 470, and more fully by Macpherson, vol. i. p. 123.
DEDICATION OF AMBOYNA.
381
be circumscribed than the sun and elements, which
are of publick benefit to human kind.
As it was much in your power to oblige all
who could pretend to merit from the publick, so
it was more in your nature and inclination. If
any went ill-satisfied from the Treasury, while it
was in your Lordship's management, it proclaimed
the want of desert, and not of friends. You
distributed your Master's favour with so equal
hands, that Justice herself could not have held
the scales more even; but with that natural pro-
pensity to do good, that had that treasure been
your own, your inclination to bounty must have
ruined you no man attended to be denied; no
man bribed for expedition; want and desert were
pleas sufficient. By your own integrity, and
prudent choice of those whom you employed, the
King gave all that he intended, and gratuities to
his officers made not vain his bounty. This, my
Lord, were you in your publick capacity of High
Treasurer, to which you ascended by such degrees,*
that your Royal Master saw your virtues still
growing to his favours faster than they could rise
to you. Both at home and abroad, with your
sword* and with your counsel, you have served
your
2 Lord Clifford, previous to his promotion to the office
of Lord High Treasurer, had been Comptroller and
Treasurer of the Houshold, and one of the Lords Com-
missioners of the Treasury.
* In various sca-engagements with the Dutch, in 1665
and 1666.
382
DEDICATION OF AMBOYNA.
him with unbiassed honour, and with unshaken
resolution; making his greatness, and the true
interest of your country, the standard and measure
of your actions. Fortune may desert the wise and
brave, but true virtue never will forsake itself. It
is the interest of the world that virtuous men
should attain to greatness, because it gives them
the power of doing good; but when, by the
iniquity of the times, they are brought to that
extremity that they must either quit their virtue
or their fortune, they owe themselves so much as
to retire to the private exercise of their honour;
to be great within, and by the constancy of their
resolutions to teach the inferiour world how they
ought to judge of such principles, which are asserted
with so generous and so unconstrained a trial.
But this voluntary neglect of honours has been
of rare example in the world. Few men have
frowned first upon Fortune, and precipitated them-
selves from the top of her wheel, before they felt
at least the declination of it. We read not of
many emperors like Diocletian and Charles the
Fifth, who have preferred a garden and a cloister
before a crowd of followers, and the troublesome
glory of an active life, (which robs the possessor
of his rest and quiet,) to secure the safety and
happiness of others. Seneca, with the help of his
philosophy, could never attain to that pitch of
virtue he only endeavoured to prevent his fall,
by descending first; and offered to resign that
wealth which he knew he could no longer hold.
DEDICATION OF AMBOYNA.
383
He would only have made a present to his master
of what he foresaw would become his prey. He
strove to avoid the jealousy of a tyrant; you dis-
missed yourself from the attendance and privacy
of a gracious King. Our age has afforded us
many examples of a contrary nature; but your
Lordship is the only one of this. It is easy to
discover in all governments those who wait so
close on Fortune, that they are never to be shaken
off at any turn; such who seem to have taken up
a resolution of being great,-to continue their
stations on the theatre of business,-to change
with the scene, and shift the vizard for another
part. These men condemn, in their discourses,
that virtue which they dare not practise; but the
sober part of this present age, and impartial poste-
rity, will do right both to your Lordship and to
them; and when they read on what accounts,
and with how much magnanimity you quitted
those honours, to which the highest ambition of an
English subject could aspire, will apply to you
with much more reason, what the historian said of
a Roman Emperor,-Multi diutius imperium te-
nuerunt; nemo fortius reliquit.
To this retirement of your Lordship, I wish I
could bring a better entertainment than this play;
which, though it succeeded on the stage, will
scarcely bear a serious perusal, it being contrived
and written in a month; * the subject barren, the
* It was a temporary production, written in the time of
the second Dutch war, to inflame the nation against their
384
DEDICATION OF AMBOYNA.
persons low, and the writing not heightened with
many laboured scenes.
laboured scenes. The consideration of these
defects ought to have prescribed more modesty to
the authour, than to have presented it to that
person in the world for whom he has the greatest
honour, and of whose patronage the best of his
endeavours had been unworthy; but I had not
satisfied myself in staying longer, and could never
have paid the debt with a much better play. As
it is, the meanness of it will shew, at least, that I
pretend not by it to make any manner of return
for your favours; and that I only give you a
new occasion of exercising your goodness to me,
in pardoning the failings and imperfections of,
MY LORD,
Your Lordship's most humble,
Most obliged, and
most obedient servant,
JOHN DRYDEN.
enemies, by calling to their memories the inhuman cru-
elties practised by the Dutch on the English factory at
Amboyna, in 1624,-This passage escaped Dr. Johnson,
for he has said erroneously that "the author thought not
fit either ostentatiously or mournfully to tell how little.
labour it cost him, or at how short a warning he produced
it."--But such trifling mistakes are but specks in the
finest body of Criticism extant in any language.
DEDICATION
OF
THE STATE OF INNOCENCE,
AND FALL OF MAN.
TO HER
ROYAL HIGHNESS, THE DUCHESS. ³
MADAM,
AMBITION
MBITION is so far from being a vice in
poets, that it is almost impossible for them to
succeed without it. Imagination must be raised
by a desire of fame, to a desire of pleasing; and
they whom in all ages poets have endeavoured
most to please, have been the beautiful and the
great. Beauty is their deity to which they sacri-
3 Anne, the first Duchess of York, daughter of Lord
Clarendon, died at St. James's, March 31, 1671. On
the 21st of November, 1673, the Duke married Mary
of Este, (daughter of the Duke of Modena,) to whom this
epistle dedicatory is addressed. She was at the time of
her marriage little more than fourteen, and, according to
Macpherson, of exquisite beauty. "Her complexion
was very fair, her hair black, her eyes full of sweetness
and fire. She was tall in her person, and admirably
VOL. I.
CC
386
DEDICATION OF
t
fice, and greatness is their guardian angel which
protects them. Both these are so eminently joined
in the person of your Royal Highness, that it
were not easy for any but a poet to determine
which of them outshines the other. But I confess,
Madam, I am already biassed in my choice. I
can easily resign to others the praise of your
illustrious family, and that glory which you derive
from a long-continued race of Princes, famous for
their actions both in peace and war; I can give
shaped; dignified in her manner, and graceful in her
deportment. During the twelve years she was Duchess
of York, she seemed to have given herself up wholly to
innocent cheerfulness and amusements. The prejudices
of the people were greatly removed by her behaviour;
the uneasiness conceived on account of her religion was
soon forgotten; and she was universally esteemed, and
by many beloved. Her beauty rendered her the favourite
of the populace, when the bigotry of her husband was
most feared," HISTORY OF GREAT BRITAIN, vol. i.
p. 178.
Of all our author's dedications, the present, while it
furnishes abundant proofs of the variety and luxuriance
of his fancy, exhibits the most perfect specimen of the
CELESTIAL style. See p. 323.
"This compostion," says Dr. Johnson, "is addressed
to the Princess of Modena, then Duchess of York, in a
strain of flattery which disgraces genius, and which it is
wonderful that any man that knew the meaning of his
own words could use without self-detestation. It is an
attempt to mingle earth and heaven, by praising human
excellence in the language of religion."Life of
DRYDEN.
THE STATE OF INNOCENCE.
387
up to the historians of your country the names of
so many generals and heroes which croud their
annals; and to our own, the hopes of those which
you are to produce for the British chronicle. I
can yield, without envy, to the nation of poets,
the family of Este, to which Ariosto and Tasso
have owed their patronage, and to which the
world has owed their poems; but I could not,
without extreme reluctance, resign the theme of
your beauty to another hand. Give me leave,
Madam, to acquaint the world, that I am jealous
of this subject; and let it be no dishonour to you,
that after having raised the admiration of man-
kind, you have inspired one man to give it voice.
But with whatsoever vanity this new honour of
being your poet has filled my mind, I confess
myself too weak for the inspiration; the priest was
always unequal to the oracle; the god within him
was too mighty for his breast. He laboured with
the sacred revelation, and there was more of the
mystery left behind, than divinity itself could enable
him to express. I can but discover a part of your
excellencies to the world; and that too according
to the measure of my own weakness. Like those
who have surveyed the moon by glasses, I can
only tell of a new and shining world above us, but
not relate the riches and glories of the place; it
is therefore that I have already waved the subject
of
your greatness, to resign myself to the contem-
plation of what is more peculiarly your's. Great-
ness is indeed communicated to some few of both
388
DEDICATION OF
sexes; but beauty is confined to a more narrow
compass it is only in your sex; it is not shared
by many, and its supreme perfection is in you
alone. And here, Madam, I am proud that I
cannot flatter. You have reconciled the differing
judgments of mankind; for all men are equal in
their judgment of what is eminently best. The
prize of beauty was disputed only till you were
seen; but now all pretenders have withdrawn their
claims; there is no competition but for the second
place; even the fairest of our island, which is
famed for beauties, not daring to commit their
cause against you to the suffrage of those who
most partially adore them. Fortune has, indeed,
but rendered justice to so much excellence, in
setting it so high to publick view; or rather
Providence has done justice to itself, in placing
the most perfect workmanship of heaven where
it may be admired by all beholders. Had the
sun and stars been seated lower, their glory had
not been communicated to all at once; and the
Creator had wanted so much of his praise, as he
had made your condition more obscure; but he
has placed you so near a crown, that you add a
lustre to it by your beauty. You are joined to a
Prince who only could deserve you; whose con-
duct, courage, and success in war, whose fidelity
to his royal brother, whose love for his country,
whose constancy to his friends, whose bounty to
his servants, whose justice to merit, whose inviolable
truth, and whose magnanimity in all his actions,
THE STATE OF INNOCENCE.
389
seem to have been rewarded by heaven by the
gift of you. You are never seen but you are
blest; and I am sure you bless all those who see you.
We think not the day is long enough when we
behold you; and you are so much the business of
our souls, that while you are in sight, we can
neither look nor think on any else. There are
no eyes for other beauties; you only are pre-
sent, and the rest of your sex are but the unre-
garded parts that fill your triumph. Our sight is
so intent on the object of its admiration, that our
tongues have not leisure even to praise you; for
language seems too low a thing to express your
excellence, and our souls are speaking so much
within, that they despise all foreign conversation.
Every man, even the dullest, is thinking more
than the most eloquent can teach him how to
utter. Thus, Madam, in the midst of crowds,
you reign in solitude; and are adored with the
deepest veneration, that of silence. It is true, you
are above all mortal wishes; no man desires im-
possibilities, because they are beyond the reach of
nature. To hope to be a god, is folly exalted into
madness; but by the laws of our creation, we are
obliged to adore him, and are permitted to love
him at human distance. It is the nature of per-
fection to be attractive, but the excellency of the
object refines the nature of the love. It strikes an
impression of awful reverence; it is indeed that
love which is more properly a zeal than passion.
It is the rapture which anchorites find in prayer
390
DEDICATION OF
when a beam of the Divinity shines upon them;
that which makes them despise all worldly objects;
and yet it is all but contemplation. They are
seldom visited from above; but a single vision so
transports them, that it makes up the happiness of
their lives. Mortality cannot bear it often: it
finds them in the eagerness and height of their
devotion; they are speechless for the time that it
continues, and prostrate and dead when it departs.
That ecstacy had needs be strong, which, without
any end but that of admiration, has power enough
to destroy all other passions. You render man-
kind insensible to other beauties, and have de-
stroyed the empire of love in a court which was
the seat of his dominion. You have subverted
(may I dare to accuse you of it?) even our funda-
mental laws, and reign absolute over the hearts of
a stubborn and free-born people, tenacious almost
to madness of their liberty. The brightest and
most victorious of our ladies make daily complaints
of revolted subjects, if they may be said to be
revolted, whose servitude is not accepted; for
your Royal Highness is too great and too just a
monarch either to want or to receive the homage
of rebellious fugitives. Yet, if some few among
the multitude continue steadfast to the first preten-
sions, it is an obedience so lukewarm and languish-
ing, that it merits not the name of passion. Their
addresses are so faint, and their vows so hollow to
their sovereigns, that they seem only to maintain
their faith out of a sense of honour; they are
THE STATE OF INNOCENCE.
391
ashamed to desist, and yet grow careless to obtain;
like despairing combatants, they strive against you,
as if they had beheld unveiled the magical shield
of your Ariosto, which dazzled the beholders with
too much brightness; they can no longer hold
up their arms; they have read their destiny in
your eyes:
Splende lo scudo, a guisa di piropo,
E luce altra non é tanto lucente:
Cader in terra a lo splendor fu d' vopo,
Con gli occhi abbacinati, e senza mente.
4
And yet, Madam, if I could find in myself the
power to leave this argument of your incomparable
beauty, I might turn to one which would equally
oppress me with its greatness; for your conjugal
virtues have deserved to be set as an example to
a less-degenerate, less-tainted age. They ap-
proach so near to singularity in ours, that I can
scarcely make a panegyrick to your Royal High-
ness without a satire on many others; but your
person is a paradise, and your soul a cherubin
within to guard it. If the excellency of the out-
side invite the beholders, the majesty of your
mind deters them from too bold approaches, and
turns their admiration into religion. Moral per-
4 Who would imagine that the conjugal virtues here
praised had only been displayed for twelve months, and
that this wife of approved constancy was scarce fifteen
years old! Such, however, was the fact.
392
DEDICATION OF
fections are raised higher by you in the softer sex ;
as if men were of too coarse a mould for heaven
to work on, and that the image of Divinity could
not be cast to likeness in so harsh a metal. Your
person is so admirable, that it can scarce receive
addition when it shall be glorified; and your soul,
which shines through it finds it of a substance so
near her own, that she will be pleased to pass an
age within it, and to be confined to such a palace.
I know not how I am hurried back to my former
theme. I ought and purposed to have celebrated
those endowments and qualities of your mind
which were sufficient, even without the graces of
the person, to render you, as you are, the orna-
ment of the court, and the object of wonder to
three kingdoms. But all my praises are but as a
bull-rush cast upon a stream; if they sink not, it
is because they are borne up by the strength of
the current, which supports their lightness; but
they are carried round again, and return on the
eddy where they first began. I can proceed no
farther than your beauty; and even on that too I
have said so little, considering the greatness of the
subject, that, like him who would lodge a bowl
upon a precipice, either my praise falls back by
the weakness of the delivery, or stays not on the
top, but rolls over, and is lost on the other side.
I intended this a Dedication; but how can I
consider what belongs to myself, when I have
been so long contemplating on you! Be pleased
THE STATE OF INNOCENCE.
393
then, Madam, to receive this POEM, without inti-
tuling so much excellency as yours, to the faults
and imperfections of so mean a writer; and instead
of being favourable to the piece, which merits
nothing, forgive the presumption of the Author
who is, with all possible veneration,
Your ROYAL HIGHNESS's
Most obedient,
Most humble,
Most devoted servant,
JOHN DRYDEN,
PREFACE
то
THE STATE OF INNOCENCE;'
CONTAINING
THE AUTHOR'S APOLOGY FOR HEROICK POETRY,
AND POETICK LICENCE.
To satisfy the curiosity of those who will
give themselves the trouble of reading the ensuing
Poem, I think myself obliged to render them a
reason why I publish an Opera which was never
acted. In the first place, I shall not be ashamed to
own, that my chiefest motive was the ambition which
I acknowledged in the Epistle. I was desirous to
lay at the feet of so beautiful and excellent a
5 THE STATE OF INNOCENCE, which our author calls
an Opera, was first printed in 1674, and must have been
published late in the year, or more probably early in
1674-5; for Milton, who is spoken of as dead, died on
Sunday, November 8, 1674.-Though termed by Dryden
an Opera, it is rather, as Dr. Johnson has remarked, "a
tragedy in heroick rhyme, but of which the personages
are such as cannot be decently exhibited on the stage."
396
PREFACE TO
6
Princess, a work which, I confess, was unworthy
her; but which I hope she will have the goodness
to forgive. I was also induced to it in my own
defence, many hundred copies of it being dispersed
abroad without my knowledge or consent; so
that every one gathering new faults, it became at
length a libel against me; and I saw, with some
disdain, more nonsense than either I, or as bad a
poet, could have crammed into it at a month's
warning, in which time it was wholly written, and
not since revised. After this I cannot, without
injury to the deceased author of PARADISE LOST,
but acknowledge, that this poem has received its
entire foundation, part of the design, and many of
6"This Preface," says Dr. Johnson," contains an
Apology for Heroick Verse and Poetick Licence; by
which is meant not any liberty taken in contracting or
extending words, but the use of both fictions and ambi-
tious figures.
"The reason which he gives for printing what was
never acted, cannot be overpassed: "I was induced to
it in my own defence, many hundred copies of it being
dispersed abroad without my knowledge or consent; and
every one gathering new faults, it became at length a
libel against me." These copies, as they gathered faults,
were apparently manuscript; and he lived in an age very
unlike ours, if many hundred copies of fourteen hundred
lines were likely to be transcribed. An author has a
right to print his own works, and needs not seek an
apology in falsehood; but he that could bear to write the
Dedication, felt no pain in writing the Preface." Life of
DRYDEN.
THE STATE OF INNOCENCE.
397
the ornaments from him." What I have borrowed
will be so easily discerned from my mean produc-
tions, that I shall not need to point the reader to
the places; and truly I should be sorry, for my own
sake, that any one should take the pains to com-
pare them together, the original being undoubtedly
one of the greatest, most noble, and most sublime
poems, which either this age or nation has pro-
duced. And though I could not refuse the par-
tiality of my friend, who is pleased to commend
7 Mr. Aubrey, who was acquainted with Dryden,
informs us in his Life of Milton, (which, together with
his other curious accounts of English writers, I hope
speedily to give the publick,) that our author, before he
wrote this drama, waited on the blind bard, and asked his
permission to put his great poem into rhyme. "Ay,
(said Milton,) you may tag my verses, if you will."
8 Nat. Lee, who says, in the Verses which he addressed
to our author on this occasion,
“To the dead bard your fame a little owes,
"For Milton did the wealthy mine disclose,
"And rudely cast what you could well dispose
He roughly drew on an old-fashion'd ground
"A chaos; for no perfcct world was found,
Till through the heap your mighty genius shin'd;
"His was the golden ore, which you refin'd.
"He first beheld the beauteous rustick maid,
"And to a place of strength the prize convey'd;
"You took her thence, to court the virgin brought,
"Dress'd her with gems, new-weav'd her hard-spun
thought,
"And softest language, sweetest manners, taught."
}
Rymer went still farther than Lee, in his depreciation
of Milton's great work. Towards the conclusion of his
ま
​398
PREFACE TO
me in his verses, I hope they will rather be
esteemed the effect of his love to me, than of his
deliberate and sober judgment. His genius is able
to make beautiful what he pleases; yet, as he has
been too favourable to me, I doubt not but he
will hear of his kindness from many of our con-
temporaries; for we are fallen into an age of
illiterate, censorious, and detracting people, who,
thus qualified, set up for criticks.
In the first place, I must take leave to tell
them, that they wholly mistake the nature of
criticism, who think its business is principally to
find fault. Criticism, as it was first instituted by
Aristotle, was meant a standard of judging well ;
the chiefest part of which is, to observe those
excellencies which should delight a reasonable
reader. If the design, the conduct, the thoughts,
and the expressions of a poem, be generally such
as proceed from a true genius of poetry, the
critick ought to pass his judgment in favour of
the author. It is malicious and unmanly to snarl
at the little lapses of a pen, from which Virgil
himself stands not exempted. Horace acknow-
ledges that honest Homer nods sometimes; he is
not equally awake in every line; but he leaves it
also as a standing measure for our judgments,
Essay addressed to Fleetwood Shephard, in 1678, he says,
With the remaining tragedies I shall also send you
some reflections on that PARADISE LOST of Milton's,
which some are pleased to call a POEM." This promise,
however, he did not fulfil.
THE STATE OF INNOCENCE.
399
non, ubi plura nitent in carmine, paucis
Offendi maculis, quas aut incuria fudit,
Aut humana parum cavit natura.
And Longinus, who was undoubtedly, after Aris-
totle, the greatest critick among the Greeks, in his
twenty-seventh chapter ПEPI rYorz, has judi-
ciously preferred the sublime genius that sometimes
errs, to the middling or indifferent one, which
makes few faults, but seldom or never rises to any
excellence. He compares the first to a man of large
possessions, who has not leisure to consider of every
slight expence, will not debase himself to the ma-
nagement of every trifle ; particular sums are not
laid out or spared to the greatest advantage in his
economy, but are sometimes suffered to run to
waste, while he is only careful of the main. On the
other side, he likens the mediocrity of wit to one
of a mean fortune, who manages his store with
extreme frugality, or rather parsimony; but who,
with fear of running into profuseness, never arrives
to the magnificence of living. This kind of ge-
nius writes, indeed, correctly: a wary man he is
in grammar; very nice as to solecism or barbarism;
judges to a hair of little decencies; knows better
than any man what is not to be written, and never
hazards himself so far as to fall; but plods on
deliberately, and, as a grave man ought, is sure to
put his staff before him: in short, he sets his
heart upon it, and with wonderful care makes his
business sure; that is, in plain English, neither to
be blamed nor praised.—I could, saith my author,
400
PREFACE TO
find out some blemishes in Homer; and am per-
haps as naturally inclined to be disgusted at a
fault as another man; but after all, to speak
impartially, his failings are such as are only marks
of human frailty; they are little mistakes, or rather
negligences, which have escaped his pen in the
fervour of his writing; the sublimity of his spirit
carries it with me against his carelessness; and
though Apollonius his Argonauts, and Theocritus
his Idyllia, are more free from errours, there is
not any man of so false a judgment who would
choose rather to have been Apollonius or Theocritus
than Homer.
It is worth our consideration a little to examine
how much these hypercriticks of English poetry
differ from the opinion of the Greek and Latin
judges of antiquity, from the Italians and French
who have succeeded them, and indeed from the
general taste and approbation of all ages. Heroick
poetry, which they contemn, has ever been
esteemed, and ever will be, the greatest work of
human nature in that rank has Aristotle placed
it; and Longinus is so full of the like expressions,
that he abundantly confirms the other's testimony.
Horace as plainly delivers his opinion, and particu-
larly praises Homer in these verses:
Trojani belli scriptorem, maxime Lolli,
Dum tu declamas Romæ, Præneste relegi ;
Qui quid sit pulchrum, quid turpe, quid utile, quid non,
Plenius ac melius Chrysippo et Crantore dicit.
And in another place, modestly excluding himself
THE STATE OF INNOCENCE.
401
from the number of poets, because he only writ
odes and satires, he tells you a poet is such an
one,
cui mens divinior, atque os
Magna soniturum.
Quotations are superfluous in an established
truth, otherwise I could reckon up amongst the
moderns, all the Italian commentators on Aristotle's
book of poetry; amongst the French, the greatest
of this age, Boileau and Rapin; the latter of which
is alone sufficient, were all other criticks lost, to
teach anew the rules of writing. Any man who
will seriously consider the nature of an epick
poem, how it agrees with that of poetry in general,
which is to instruct and to delight, what actions
it describes, and what persons they are chiefly
whom it informs, will find it a work which indeed
is full of difficulty in the attempt, but admirable
when it is well performed. I write not this with
the least intention to undervalue the other parts
of poetry; for comedy is both excellently instruc-
tive, and extremely pleasant; satire lashes vice
into reformation, and humour represents folly so
as to render it ridiculous. Many of our present
writers are eminent in both these kinds, and par-
ticularly the author of THE PLAIN DEALER," whom
9 Wycherley.
"The chronology of Wycherley's plays (said Pope to
Mr. Spence,) I am well acquainted with; for he has
told it me over and over again. LOVE IN A WOOD
VOL. I.
D D
402
PREFACE TO
I am proud to call my friend, has obliged all honest
and virtuous men by one of the most bold, most
general, and most useful satires, which has ever
been presented on the English theatre. I do not
dispute the preference of tragedy; let every man
enjoy his taste; but it is unjust, that they who
have not the least notion of heroick writing, should
therefore condemn the pleasure which others re-
ceive from it, because they cannot comprehend it.
Let them please their appetites in eating what
they like; but let them not force their dish on all
the table. They who would combat general au-
thority with particular opinion, must first establish
themselves a reputation of understanding better
than other men. Are all the flights of heroick
poetry to be concluded bombast,' unnatural, and
he wrote when he was but nineteen; THE GENTLEMAN
DANCING-MASTER at twenty-one; THE PLAIN DEALER
at twenty-five; and THE COUNTRY WIFE at one or
two and thirty." Spence's ANECDOTES.
Wycherley was born about the year 1638; according
therefore to this statement, he must have written his
PLAIN DEALER in 1663. As he then lived in an ex-
pensive course of life, it is extraordinary that he should
not have produced his plays on the theatre at an earlier
period. The PLAIN DEALER was first published in 1677,
the imprimatur being dated January 9, 1676-7. How-
ever, it appears from the passage in the text, that it had
been exhibited before 1674.
¹ Our author here probably alludes to THE REHEARSAL,
which had been published in 1672, and had with con-
siderable success turned some of the flights of heroick poetry
into ridicule.
THE STATE OF INNOCEnce.
403
mere madness, because they are not affected with
their excellencies? It is just as reasonable as to
conclude there is no day, because a blind man
cannot distinguish of light and colours. Ought
they not rather in modesty to doubt of their own
judgments, when they think this or that expression
in Homer, Virgil, Tasso, or Milton's PARADISE, to
be too far strained, than positively to conclude that
it is all fustian and mere nonsense? It is true,
there are limits to be set betwixt the boldness and
rashness of a poet; but he must understand those
limits who pretends to judge, as well as he who
undertakes to write; and he who has no liking to
the whole, ought in reason to be excluded from
censuring of the parts. He must be a lawyer,
before he mounts the tribunal; and the judicature
of one court too does not qualify a man to preside
in another. He may be an excellent pleader in
the Chancery, who is not fit to rule the Common
Pleas. But I will presume for once to tell them,
that the boldest strokes of poetry, when they are
managed artfully, are those which most delight
the reader.
Virgil and Horace, the severest writers of the
severest age, have made frequent use of the hardest
metaphors, and of the strongest hyperboles; and
in this case the best authority is the best argument.
For generally to have pleased, through all ages,
must bear the force of universal tradition; and if
you would appeal from thence to right reason, you
will gain no more by it in effect, than first, to seť
404
PREFACE TO
set up your reason against those authors; and
secondly, against all those who have admired them.
You must prove why that ought not to have
pleased, which has pleased the most learned and
the most judicious; and to be thought knowing,
you must first put the fool upon all mankind. If
you can enter more deeply than they have done
into the causes and resorts of that which moves
pleasure in a reader, the field is open, you may be
heard; but those springs of human nature are not
so easily discovered by every superficial judge: it
requires philosophy, as well as poetry, to sound
the depth of all the passions; what they are in
themselves, and how they are to be provoked;
and in this science the best poets have excelled.
Aristotle raised the fabrick of his poetry from
observations of those things in which Euripides,
Sophocles, and Æschylus pleased; he considered
how they raised the passions, and thence has drawn
rules for our imitation; from hence have sprung the
tropes and figures for which they wanted a name
who first practised them, and succeeded in them.
Thus I grant you, that the knowledge of nature was
the original rule, and that all poets ought to study
her, as well as Aristotle and Horace, her interpreters;
but then this also undeniably follows, that those
things which delight all ages must have been
2 This is a gallicism, for which, however, our author
had authority; for Bacon before him had used resort in
the sense of spring.
THE STATE OF INNOCENCE.
405
an imitation of Nature, which is all I contend.
Therefore is rhetorick made an art; therefore the
names of so many tropes and figures were invented;
because it was observed they had such and such
an effect upon the audience. Therefore cata-
chreses and hyperboles have found their place
amongst them; not that they are to be avoided,
but to be used judiciously, and placed in poetry as
heightenings and shadows are in painting, to make
the figure bolder, and cause it to stand off to
sight.--Nec retia cervis ulla dolum meditantur,
says Virgil in his Eclogues: and speaking of
Leander, in his Georgicks,
Nocte natat cæca serus freta, quem super ingens
Porta tonat cæli, et scopulis illisa reclamant
Æquora.
In both of these, you see, he fears not to give
voice and thought to things inanimate.
Will you arraign your master, Horace, for his
hardness of expression, when he describes the
death of Cleopatra, and says she did-asperos
tractare serpentes, ut atrum corpore combiberet ve-
nenum,—because the body in that action performs
what is proper to the mouth?
As for hyperboles, I will neither quote Lucan,
nor Statius, men of an unbounded imagination,
but who often wanted the poize of judgment,
The divine Virgil was not liable to that exception;
and yet he describes Polyphemus thus:
graditurque per æquor
Jam medium, necdum fluctus latera ardua tinxit.
406
PREFACE TO
In imitation of this place, our admirable Cowley
thus paints Goliah;
The valley now this monster seem'd to fill,
And we, methought, look'd up to him from our hill:
where the two words seem'd and methought have
mollified the figure; and yet if they had not been
there, the fright of the Israelites might have ex-
cused their belief of the giant's stature.
In the eighth of the Æneids, Virgil paints the
swiftness of Camilla thus:
Illa vel intacta segetis per summa volaret
Gramina, nec teneras cursu læsisset aristas ;
Vel mare per medium, fluctu suspensa tumenti,
Ferret iter, celeres nec tingeret æquore plantas.
You are not obliged, as in history, to a literal
belief of what the poet says; but you are pleased
with the image, without being cozened by the
fiction.
Yet even in history, Longinus quotes Herodotus
on this occasion of hyperboles. The Lacedemo-
nians, says he, at the Straits of Thermopylæ,
defended themselves to the last extremity; and
when their arms failed them, fought it out with
their nails and teeth; till at length, the Persians
shooting continually upon them, they lay buried
under the arrows of their enemies. It is not
reasonable (continues the critick) to believe that
men could defend themselves with their nails and
teeth from an armed multitude, nor that they lay
buried under a pile of darts and arrows; and yet
THE STATE OF INNOCENCE.
407
there wants not probability for the figure, because
the hyperbole seems not to have been made for
the sake of the description, but rather to have been
produced from the occasion.
It is true, the boldness of the figures are to be
hidden sometimes by the address of the poet, that
they may work their effect upon the mind, without
discovering the art which caused it; and therefore
they are principally to be used in passion, when we
speak more warmly, and with more precipitation
than at other times: for then, si vis me flere,
dolendum est primum ipsi tibi; the poet must put
on the passion he endeavours to represent. A
man in such an occasion is not cool enough either
to reason rightly or to talk calmly. Aggravations
are then in their proper places; interrogations,
exclamations, hyperbata, or a disordered connection
of discourse, are graceful there, because they are
natural. The sum of all depends on what before
I hinted, that this boldness of expression is not to
be blamed, if it be managed by the coolness and
discretion which is necessary to a poet.
Yet before I leave this subject, I cannot but
take notice how disingenuous our adversaries ap-
pear all that is dull, insipid, languishing, and
without sinews in a poem, they call an imitation
of Nature; they only offend our most equitable
judges who think beyond them; and lively images
and elocution are never to be forgiven.
What fustian, as they call it, have I heard these
gentlemen find out in Mr. Cowley's Odes? I
408
PREFACE TO
acknowledge myself unworthy to defend so excel-
lent an author, neither have I room to do it here;
only in general I will say, that nothing can appear
more beautiful to me than the strength of those
images which they condemn.
Imaging is, in itself, the very height and life of
poetry. It is, as Longinus describes it, a discourse,
which by a kind of enthusiasm, or extraordinary
emotion of the soul, makes it seem to us that we
behold those things which the poet paints, so as
to be pleased with them, and to admire them.
If poetry be imitation, that part of it must needs
be best, which describes most lively our actions and
passions, our virtues and our vices, our follies and
our humours; for neither is comedy without its part
of imaging; and they who do it best, are certainly
the most excellent in their kind. This is too plainly
proved to be denied ; but how are poetical fictions,
how are hippocentaurs and chimeras, or how are
angels and immaterial substances to be imaged,
which, some of them, are things quite out of na-
ture; others, such whereof we can have no notion?
This is the last refuge of our adversaries, and more
than any of them have yet had the wit to object
against us. The answer is easy to the first part of
it. The fiction of some beings which are not in
nature, (second notions, as the logicians call them,)
has been founded on the conjunction of two
natures, which have a real separate being. So
hippocentaurs were imaged by joining the natures
of a man and horse together; as Lucretius tells
THE STATE OF INNOCENCE.
409
us, who has used this word of image oftener than
any of the poets:
Nam certè ex vivo centauri non fit imago,
Nulla fuit quoniam talis natura animai :
Verum ubi equi atque hominis, casu, convenit imago,
Hærescit facilè extemplo, &c.
The same reason may also be alledged for chi-
meras and the rest; and poets may be allowed
the like liberty for describing things which really
exist not, if they are founded on popular belief.
Of this nature are fairies, pigmies, and the extra-
ordinary effects of magick; for it is still an imita-
tion, though of other men's fancies; and thus are
Shakspeare's TEMPEST, his MIDSUMMER'S NIGHT'S
DREAM, and Ben Jonson's MASK OF WITCHES,
to be defended. For immaterial substances, we are
authorized by Scripture in their description; and
herein the text accommodates itself to vulgar
apprehension, in giving angels the likeness of
beautiful young men. Thus, after the Pagan
divinity, has Homer drawn his gods with human
faces; and thus we have notions of things above
us, by describing them like other beings more
within our knowledge.
I wish I could produce any one example of
excellent imaging in all this poem. Perhaps I
cannot; but that which comes nearest it is in
these four lines, which have been sufficiently can-
vassed by my well-natured censors :
Seraph and cherub, careless of their charge,
And wanton, in full ease now live at large.
410
PREFACE TO
Unguarded leave the passes of the sky,
And all dissolv'd in hallelujahs lie.
I have heard (says one of them) of anchovies
dissolved in sauce, but never of an angel in
hallelujahs: a mighty witticism! (if you will par-
don a new word,)—but there is some difference
between a laugher and a critick. He might have
burlesqued Virgil too, from whom I took the image:
Invadunt urbem somno vinoque sepultam. A city's
being buried is just as proper an occasion, as an
angel's being dissolved in ease, and songs of tri-
umph. Mr. Cowley lies as open too in many
places:
Where their vast courts the mother-waters keep,' &c.
For if the mass of waters be the mothers, then
their daughters, the little streams, are bound in all
good manners to make court'sy to them, and ask
them blessing. How easy it is to turn into ridi-
cule the best descriptions, when once a man is in
the humour of laughing, till he wheezes at his
own dull jest ; but an image which is strongly and
beautifully set before the eyes of the reader will
still be poetry, when the merry fit is over, and last
when the other is forgotten.
I promised to say somewhat of Poetick Licence,
but have in part anticipated my discourse already.
Poetick Licence I take to be the liberty which
poets have assumed to themselves in all ages, of
speaking things in verse which are beyond the
3 DAVIDEIS. Book I.
THE STATE OF INNOCENCE.
411
severity of prose. It is that particular character
which distinguishes and sets the bounds betwixt
oratio soluta and poetry. This, as to what regards
the thought or imagination of a poet, consists in
fiction: but then those thoughts must be expressed;
and here arise two other branches of it; for if
this licence be included in a single word, it admits
of tropes; if in a sentence or proposition, of
figures; both which are of a much larger extent,
and more forcibly to be used in verse than prose.
This is that birthright which is derived to us from
our great forefathers, even from Homer down to
Ben; and they who would deny it to us, have, in
plain terms, the fox's quarrel to the grapes,-they
cannot reach it.
How far these liberties are to be extended I will
not pretend to determine here, since Horace does
not; but it is certain that they are to be varied
according to the language and age in which an
author writes. That which would be allowed to
a Grecian poet, Martial tells you, would not be
suffered in a Roman; and it is evident that the
English does more nearly follow the strictness of
the latter, than the freedoms of the former. Con-
nection of epithets, or the conjunction of two
words in one, are frequent and elegant in the
Greek, which yet Sir Philip Sydney and the
translator of Du Bartas+ have unluckily attempted
in the English; though this, I confess, is not so
4 Joshua Sylvester.
412
PREFACE TO
proper an instance of poetick licence, as it is of
variety of idiom in languages.
Horace a little explains himself on this subject
of Licentia Poetica in verses :
Pictoribus atque Poetis
Quidlibet audendi semper fuit aqua potestas; - - ·
Sed non ut placidis coeant immitia, non ut
Serpentes avibus geminentur, tigribus hædi.
He would have a poem of a piece; not to begin
one thing, and end with another. He restrains it
so far, that thoughts of an unlike nature ought
not to be joined together. That were indeed to
make a chaos. He taxed not Homer, nor the
divine Virgil, for interessing their gods in the wars
of Troy and Italy; neither, had he now lived,
would he have taxed Milton, as our false criticks.
have presumed to do, for his choice of a super-
natural argument; but he would have blamed my
author, who was a Christian, had he introduced
into his poems heathen deities, as Tasso is con-
demned by Rapin on the like occasion; and as
Camoëns, the author of the Lusiads, ought to be
censured by all his readers, when he brings in
Bacchus and Christ into the same adventure of his
fable.
From that which has been said, it may be col-
lected, that the definition of wit (which has been
so often attempted, and ever unsuccessfully, by
many poets) is only this, that it is a propriety of
thoughts and words; or in other terms, thoughts
and words elegantly adapted to the subject. If
A
THE STATE OF INNOcence.
413
our criticks will join issue on this definition, that
we may convenire in aliquo tertio; if they will take
it as a granted principle, it will be easy to put an
end to the dispute. No man will disagree from
another's judgment, concerning this dignity of
style in Heroick Poetry; but all reasonable men
will conclude it necessary, that sublimest subjects
ought to be adorned with the sublimest, and con-
sequently often, with the most figurative expres-
sions. In the mean time, I will not run into
their fault of imposing my opinions on other men,
any more than I would my writings on their
taste: I have only laid down, and that superficially
enough, my present thoughts; and shall be glad
to be taught better by those who pretend to reform
our poetry.
*
DEDICATION
OF
AURENGZEB E. 5
TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE
JOHN, EARL OF MULGRAVE,
GENTLEMAN OF HIS MAJESTY'S BEDCHAMBER, AND
KNIGHT OF THE MOST NOBLE ORDER OF THE GARTER.5.
MY LORD,
Ir is a severe reflection which Montaigne
has made on Princes, that we ought not, in reason,
to have any expectations from them; and that it
is kindness enough, if they leave us in possession
of our own. The boldness of the censure shews
the free spirit of the author; and the subjects of
England may justly congratulate to themselves,
5 This tragedy, which is written in rhyme, was first
printed in 1676.
6 John Sheffield, Earl of Mulgrave, was born in 1649,
and was son of Edmund, earl of Mulgrave, who died in
1658. His mother was Elizabeth, one of the daughters
of Lionel, earl of Middlesex, by his first wife, Elizabeth,
daughter of Richard Sheppard, a merchant of London.
He was now, therefore, twenty-seven years old.
His character (says Dr. Johnson) is not to be pro-
posed as worthy of imitation. His religion he may be
416
DEDICATION OF
that both the nature of our government, and the
clemency of our King, secure us from any such
complaint. I in particular, who subsist wholly by
his bounty, am obliged to give posterity a far
other account of my Royal Master, than what
Montagne has left of his. Those accusations had
been more reasonable, if they had been placed on
inferior persons; for in all courts there are too
supposed to have learned from Hobbes, and his morality
was such as naturally proceeds from loose opinions. His
sentiments with respect to women he picked up in the
court of Charles, and his principles concerning property
were such as a gaming table supplies. He was censured
as covetous, and has been defended by an instance of
inattention to his affairs; as if a man might not at once
be corrupted by avarice and idleness. He is said, how-
ever, to have had much tenderness, and to have been
very
ready to apologize for his violences of passion. - - -
"In the ESSAY ON SATIRE, he was always supposed
to have the help of Dryden. His ESSAY ON POETRY is
the great work for which he was praised by Roscommon,
Dryden, and Pope, and doubtless by many more whose
eulogies have perished." Life of SHEFFIELD.
Pope observed to Mr. Spence, that " he was superficial
in every thing, even in poetry, which was his forte."
"His famous Essay (said Dr. Lockier, Dean of Peter-
borough, who had personally known Dryden) has cer-
tainly been cried up much more than it deserves, though
corrected a good deal by Dryden. It was this which set
him up for a poet, and he resolved to keep up that charac-
ter, if he could by any means, fair or foul. Could any
thing be more impudent than his publishing that Satire,
for writing which Dryden was beaten in Rose Alley, (and
AURENGZEBE.
417
many who make it their business to ruin wit; and
Montagne, in other places, tells us, what effects
he found of their good natures. He describes
them such, whose ambition, lust, or private interest,
seem to be the only end of their creation. If
good accrue to any from them, it is only in order
to their own designs, conferred most commonly on
the base and infamous; and never given, but only
happening sometimes on well deservers. Dulness
has brought them to what they are, and malice
which was so remarkably known by the name of the
Rose-Alley Satire,) as his own? Indeed, he made a few
alterations in it; but these were only verbal, and gene-
rally for the worse." Spence's ANECDOTES.
The following lines in the STATE POEMS (vol. ii. p.
131) furnish us with a portrait of this nobleman, in which,
however, there is probably somewhat of caricature:
"But let him pass; for here comes stalking on
"The awful majesty of stiff King JOHN ;
"With nose cock'd up, and visage like a fury,
"Or foreman of an Ignoramus jury.
I'll speak not of his slouching looby mien,
Although it be the worst that e'er was seen,
Because of late his whole design and trade is,
With those accomplishments to gain the ladies :
"To whom his laurell'd wit has oped the way;
"Witness the late unparallel'd ESSAY,
"A work which all admire,-and well they may;
"For what insipid sot can e'er write ill,
"When Waller, Lee, and Dryden, take the quill.”
Pope, as well as Dryden, as I learn from Mr. Spence,
made several alterations in the ESSAY ON POETRY.
VOL. I.
EE
418
DEDICATION OF
secures them in their fortunes. But somewhat of
specious they must have, to recommend them-
selves to princes, (for folly will not easily go down
in its own natural form with discerning judges,)
and diligence in waiting is their gilding of the
pill; for that looks like love, though it is only
interest. It is that which gains them their advan-
tage over witty men, whose love of liberty and
ease makes them willing too often to discharge
their burden of attendance on these officious
gentlemen. It is true, that the nauseousness of
such company is enough to disgust a reasonable
man; when he sees he can hardly approach great-
ness but as a moated castle,-he must first pass
through the mud and filth with which it is en-
compassed. These are they, who, wanting wit,
affect gravity, and go by the name of solid men;
and a solid man is, in plain English, a solid,
solemn fool. Another disguise they have, (for
fools as well as knaves take other names, and pass
by an alias,) and that is the title of honest fellows.
But this honesty of theirs ought to have many
grains for its allowance, for certainly they are no
farther honest than they are silly: they are natu-
rally mischievous to their power; and if they speak
not maliciously or sharply of witty men, it is only
because God has not bestowed on them the gift
of utterance. They fawn and crouch to men of
parts, whom they cannot ruin; quote their wit
when they are present, and when they are absent
steal their jest; but to those who are under them,
*
AURENGZEBE.
419
and whom they can crush with ease, they shew
themselves in their natural antipathy: there they
treat wit like the common enemy, and give it no
more quarter than a Dutchman would to an
English vessel in the Indies; they strike sail where
they know they shall be mastered, and murder
where they can with safety."
This, my Lord, is the character of a courtier
without wit; and therefore that which is a satire
to other men must be a panegyrick to your Lord-
ship, who are a master of it. If the least of these
reflections could have reached your person, no
necessity of mine could have made me to have
sought so earnestly and so long to have cultivated
your kindness. As a poet, I cannot but have
made some observations on mankind; the lowness
of my fortune has not yet brought me to flatter
vice, and it is my duty to give testimony to virtue.
It is true your Lordship is not of that nature which
either seeks a commendation, or wants it. Your
mind has always been above the wretched affecta-
tion of popularity. A popular man is, in truth,
no better than a prostitute to common fame and
to the people; he lies down to every one he meets
for the hire of praise, and his humility is only a
disguised ambition. Even Cicero himself, whose
eloquence deserved the admiration of mankind,
yet by his insatiable thirst of fame he has lessened
his character with succeeding ages; his action
7 Our author here alludes to the massacre at Amboyna.
420
DEDICATION OF
г
8
against Catiline may be said to have ruined the
consul, when it saved the city; for it so swelled
his soul, which was not truly great, that ever after-
wards it was apt to be overset with vanity. And
this made his virtue so suspected by his friends,
that Brutus, whom of all men he adored, refused
him a place in his conspiracy. A modern wit has
made this observation on him, that coveting to
recommend himself to posterity, he begged it as
an alms of all his friends, the historians, to re-
member his consulship: and observe, if you please,
the oddness of the event; all their histories are
lost, and the vanity of his request stands yet re-
corded in his own writings.. How much more
great and manly in your Lordship is your contempt
of popular applause, and your retired 'virtue, which
shines only to a few; with whom you live so easily
and freely, that you make it evident you have a
soul which is capable of all the tenderness of
friendship; and that you only retire yourself from
those who are not capable of returning it. Your
kindness, where you have once placed it, is invio-
lable; and it is to that only I attribute my happiness
in your love. This makes me more easily forsake
an argument on which I could otherwise delight to
dwell, I mean your judgment in your choice of
1
}
Our author sometimes alludes to observations made
by his contemporaries, which it is not easy to trace to
their source. I thought it not improbable that this remark
might have been made by Cowley; but his Essays, in
which it might be expected to be found, have it not.
AURENGZEBE.
421
friends; because I have the honour to be one.
After which, I am sure you will more easily permit
me to be silent in the care you have taken of my
fortune, which you have rescued not only from
the power of others, but from my worst of enemies,
my own modesty and laziness; which favour, had
it been employed on a more deserving subject, had
been an effect of justice in your nature; but, as
placed on me, is only charity. Yet withal, it is
conferred on such a man as prefers your kindness
itself before any of its consequences; and who
values, as the greatest of your favours, those of
your love and of
love and of your conversation. From this
constancy to your friends, I might reasonably
assume that your resentments would be as strong
and lasting, if they were not restrained by a nobler
principle of good nature and generosity; for cer-
tainly it is the same composition of mind, the
same resolution and courage, which makes the
greatest friendships and the greatest enmities; and
he who is too lightly reconciled, after high provo-
cations, may recommend himself to the world for
a Christian, but I should hardly trust him for a
friend. The Italians have a proverb to that pur-
pose: To forgive the first time, shews me a good
catholick; the second time, a fool. To this firm-
ness in all your actions, though you are wanting
in no other ornaments of mind and body, yet to
this I principally ascribe the interest your merits
have acquired you in the Royal Family. A Prince
who is constant to himself, and steady in all his
422
DEDICATION OF
undertakings; one with whom that character of
Horace will agree,-
Si fractus illabatur orbis,
Impavidum ferient runiæ ;—
such an one cannot but place an esteem, and
repose a confidence on him, whom no adversity,
no change of courts, no bribery of interests, or
cabals of factions, or advantages of fortune, can
remove from the solid foundations of honour and
fidelity:
Ille meos, primus qui me sibi junxit, amores
Abstulit; ille habeat secum, servetque sepulcro.9
2
How well your Lordship will deserve that praise,
I need no inspiration to foretell. You have already
left no room for prophecy; your early undertakings
have been such in the service of your King and
country, when you offered yourself to the most
dangerous employment, that of the sea; when
you chose to abandon those delights to which your
youth and fortune did invite you, to undergo the
hazards, and which was worse, the company of
common seamen, that it made it evident you will
refuse no opportunity of rendering yourself use-
ful to the nation, when either your courage or
conduct shall be required. The same zeal and
faithfulness continues in your blood, which ani-
9 Virg. Æneid. iv. 28.
2 Lord Mulgrave had greatly distinguished himself in
various naval engagements in both the Dutch wars.
AURENGZEBE.
423
mated one of your noble ancestors? to sacrifice
his life in the quarrels of his Sovereign; though I
hope, both for your sake, and for the publick
tranquillity, the same occasion will never be offered
to your Lordship, and that a better destiny will
attend you. But I make haste to consider you as
abstracted from a court, which, if you will give
me leave to use a term of logick, is only an ad-
junct, not a propriety of happiness. The Acade-
micks, I confess, were willing to admit the goods
of Fortune into their notion of felicity; but I
do not remember that any of the sects of old
philosophers did ever leave a room for greatness.
Neither am I formed to praise a court, who admire
and covet nothing but the easiness and quiet of
retirement. I naturally withdraw my sight from
a precipice; and, admit the prospect be never so
large and goodly, can take no pleasure even in look-
ing on the downfal, though I am secure from the
danger. Methinks there is something of a
malignant joy in that excellent description of
Lucretius:
Suave, mari magno turbantibus æquora ventis,
E terrâ magnum alterius spectare laborem;
Non quia vexari quenquam est jucunda voluptas,
Sed, quibus ipse malis careas, quia cernere suave est.
I am sure his master, Epicurus, and my better
master, Cowley, preferred the solitude of a garden,
3 Edmund, the first Lord Sheffield, who lost his life in
1548, in quelling an insurrection at Norwich, a city for
more than two centuries noted for seditious turbulence.
424
DEDICATION OF
and the conversation of a friend, to any considera-
tion, so much as a regard, of those unhappy people
whom, in our own wrong, we call the great. True
greatness, if it be any where on earth, is in a
private virtue, removed from the notion of pomp
and vanity, confined to a contemplation of itself,
and centering on itself:
Omnis enim per se Divûm natura necesse est
Immortali avo summâ cum pace fruatur;
curâ semota, metuque,
Ipsa suis pollens opibus.4
If this be not the life of a deity, because it cannot
consist with Providence, it is at least a godlike
life. I can be contented (and I am sure I have
your Lordship of my opinion) with an humbler
station in the temple of Virtue, than to be set on
the pinnacle of it:
Despicere unde queas alios, passimque videre
Errare, atque viam palantes quærere vita.
The truth is, the consideration of so vain a
creature as man, is not worth our pains. I have
• Our author has either quoted from memory, or altered
the original to accommodate the passage to his purpose.
The lines of Lucretius (ii. 645) are,
Omnia enim per se Divûm natura necesse est
Immortali avo summâ cum pace fruatur,
Semota à nostris rebus, sejunctaque longe.
Nam privata dolore omni, privata periclis,
Ipsa suis pollens opibus, nihil indiga nostri,
Nec bene promeritis capitur, nec tangitur irâ.
AURENGZEBE.
425
fool enough at home without looking for it abroad;
and am a sufficient theatre to myself of ridiculous
actions, without expecting company either in a
court, a town, or a playhouse. It is on this ac-
count that I am weary with drawing the deformi-
ties of life, and lazars of the people, where every
figure of imperfection more resembles me than it
can do others. If I must be condemned to rhyme,
I should find some ease in my change of punish-
ment. I desire to be no longer the Sisyphus of
the stage; to roll up a stone with endless labour,
which, to follow the proverb, gathers no moss, and
which is perpetually falling down again. I never
thought myself very fit for an employment, where
many of my predecessors have excelled me in all
kinds; and some of my contemporaries, even in
my own partial judgment, have outdone me
in comedy. Some little hopes I have yet remain-
ing, (and those too, considering my abilities, may
be vain,) that I may make the world some part of
amends for many ill plays, by an heroick poem.
Your Lordship has been long acquainted with my
design; the subject of which you know is great,
the story English, and neither too far distant from
the present age, nor too near approaching it.s
Such it is in my opinion, that I could not have
wished a nobler occasion to do honour by it to
5 Dr. Johnson thought that our author's intention to
write an epick poem was here mentioned in obscure
terms, from an apprehension that his plan might be
"purloined, as he says, happened to him when he told it
426
DEDICATION OF
?
+
my King, my country, and my friends; most of
our ancient nobility being concerned in the
action. And your Lordship has one particular
reason to promote this undertaking, because you
were the first who gave me the opportunity of
discoursing it to his Majesty, and his Royal
Highness; they were then pleased both to com-
mend the design, and to encourage it by their
commands; but the unsettledness of my condition
has hitherto put a stop to my thoughts concerning
it. As I am no successor to Homer in his wit, so
neither do I desire to be in his poverty. I can
make no rhapsodies, nor go a begging at the
Grecian doors, while I sing the praises of their
ancestors. The times of Virgil please me better,
because he had an Augustus for his patron; and
to draw the allegory nearer you, I am sure I shall
not want a Mecenas with him. It is for your
Lordship to stir up that remembrance in his
Majesty, which his many avocations of business
have caused him, I fear, to lay aside; and, as
himself and his royal brother are the heroes of the
poem, to represent to them the images of their
warlike predecessors; as Achilles is said to be
roused to glory with the sight of the combat before
the ships. For my own part, I am satisfied to
have offered the design; and it may be to the
more plainly in his Preface to Juvenal." From that
Preface it appears that the poem which he now meditated,
was to have been founded on the actions of either King
Arthur, or the Black Prince.
AURENGZEBE.
427
advantage of my reputation to have it refused
me.
In the mean time, my Lord, I take the confi-
dence to present you with a tragedy, the characters
of which are the nearest to an heroick poem. It
was dedicated to you in my heart, before it was
presented on the stage. Some things in it have
passed your approbation, and many your amend-
ment; you were likewise pleased to recommend
it to the King's perusal before the last hand was
added to it, when I received the favour from him
to have the most considerable event of it modelled
by his royal pleasure. It may be some vanity in
me to add his testimony then, and which he
graciously confirmed afterwards, that it was the
best of all my tragedies, in which he has made
authentick my private opinion of it; at least, he
has given it a value by his commendation, which it
had not by my writing.
6
That which was not pleasing to some of the
fair ladies in the last act of it, as I dare not vin-
dicate, so neither can I wholly condemn, till I find
more reason for their censures. The procedure
of Indamora, and Melesinda seems yet, in my
6“ AurengzebE has the appearance of being the most
elaborate of all the dramas. The personages are imperial,
but the dialogue is often domestick, and therefore suscep-
tible of sentiments accommodated to familiar incidents.
The complaint of life is celebrated, and there are many
passages that may be read with pleasure." Johnson's
Life of DRYDEN.
428.
DEDICATION OF
judgment, natural, and not unbecoming of their
characters. If they who arraign them fail not
more, the world will never blame their conduct;
and I shall be glad, for the honour of my country,
to find better images of virtue drawn to the life
in their behaviour, than any I could feign to adorn
the theatre. I confess I have only represented a
practicable virtue, mixed with the frailties and
imperfections of human life. I have made my
heroine fearful of death, which neither Cassandra
nor Cleopatra would have been; and they them-
selves, I doubt it not, would have outdone
romance in that particular. Yet their Mandana
(and the Cyrus was written by a lady) was not
altogether so hard-hearted; for she sat down on
the cold ground by the King of Assyria, and not
only pitied him who died in her defence, but
allowed him some favours, such perhaps as they
would think should only be permitted to her
Cyrus. I have made my Melesinda, in opposition
to Nourmahal, a woman passionately loving of her
husband, patient of injuries and contempt, and.
constant in her kindness to the last; and in that,
perhaps, I may have erred, because it is not a
virtue much in use. Those Indian wives are
loving fools, and may do well to keep themselves
in their own country, or at least to keep company
with the Arrias and Portias of old Rome; some of
our ladies know better things. But it may be, I
am partial to my own writings; yet I have la-
boured as much as any man to divest myself of
AURENGZEBE.
429
the self-opinion of an author, and am too well satis-
fied of my own weakness to be pleased with any thing
I have written. But on the other side my reason
tells me, that, in probability, what I have seriously
and long considered may be as likely to be just
and natural, as what an ordinary judge (if there be
any such amongst those ladies) will think fit, in a
transient presentation, to be placed in the room of
that which they condemn. The most judicious
writer is sometimes mistaken, after all his care;
but the hasty critick, who judges on a view, is full
as liable to be deceived. Let him first consider
all the arguments which the author had to write
this, or to design the other, before he arraigns him
of a fault; and then perhaps, on second thoughts,
he will find his reason oblige him to revoke his
censure. Yet after all, I will not be too positive.
Homo sum, humani à me nihil alienum puto: as I am
a man, I must be changeable; and sometimes the
gravest of us all are so, even upon ridiculous
accidents. Our minds are perpetually wrought on
by the temperament of our bodies, which makes
me suspect they are nearer allied than either our
philosophers or school-divines will allow them to
be. I have observed, says Montagne, that when
the body is out of order, its companion is seldom
at his ease. An ill dream, or a cloudy day, has
power to change this wretched creature, who is so
proud of a reasonable soul, and make him think
what he thought not yesterday; and Homer was
430
DEDICATION OF
of this opinion, as Cicero is pleased to translate
him for us:
Tales sunt hominum mentes quali pater ipse
Jupiter auctiferâ lustravit lampade terras.
Or as the same author in his Tusculan Questions
speaks, with more modesty than usual, of himself:
Nos in diem vivimus; quodcunque animos nostros
probabilitate percussit, id dicimus. It is not there-
fore impossible but that I may alter the conclusion
of my play, to restore myself into the good graces
of my fair criticks; and your Lordship, who is so
well with them, may do me the office of a friend
and patron, to intercede with them on my promise
of amendment. The impotent lover in Petronius,
though his was a very unpardonable crime, yet was
received to mercy on the terms I offer. Summa
excusationis meæ hæc est: placebo tibi, si culpam
emendare permiseris.
But I am conscious to myself of offering at a
greater boldness in presenting to your view what
my meanness can produce, than in any other
errour of my play; and therefore make haste to
break off this tedious address, which has, I know
not how, already run itself into so much of pe-
dantry, with an excuse of Tully's, which he sent
with his books De Finibus, to his friend Brutus:
De ipsis rebus autem, sæpenumerò, Brute, vereor ne
reprehendar, cum hæc ad te scribam, qui tum in
poesi, (I change it from philosophiâ,) tum in optimo
genere poeseos tantum processeris. Quod si facerem
AURENGZEBE.
431
quasi te erudiens, jure reprehenderer. Sed ab eo
plurimùm absum: nec, ut ea cognoscas quæ
tibi no-
tissima sunt, ad te mitto; sed quià facilimè in nomine
tuo acquiesco, et quia te habeo æquissimum eorum
studiorum quæ mihi communia tecum sunt, æstimatorem
et judicem; which you may please, my Lord, të
apply to yourself, from him, who is
Your LORDSHIP'S
Most obedient,
humble servant,
DRYDEN."
7 This is the only instance I have found of our author's
subscribing his surname, in the French mode, without
the Christian name. His friend, Sir William D'Avenant
sometimes adopted the same mode.
In the Prologue to this tragedy, which was acted by the
King's Servants at the Theatre Royal, Dryden acknow-
ledged, that he was grown "weary of his long-lov'd
mistress, rhyme.' He accordingly never afterwards
produced an heroick play. The reign of rhyming trage-
dies, which were introduced by the bad taste of Charles
the Second, who had learned to admire them during his
residence in France, lasted about fifteen years; from
1662 to 1676. A few heroick plays afterwards appeared,
but they were not long-lived.
THE END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.

***
き
​..
F