Imagens da página
PDF
ePub

DRYDEN.

OF the great poet whofe life I am about to

delineate, the curiofity which his reputation must excite, will require a display more ample than can now be given. His contemporaries, however they reverenced his genius, left his life unwritten; and nothing therefore can be known beyond what cafual mention and uncertain tradition have fupplied.

JOHN DRYDEN was born August 9th, 1631, at Aldwincle near Oundle, the fon of Erafmus Dryden of Tichmersh; who was the third fon of Sir Erafmus Dryden, Baronet, of Canons Afhby. All these places are in Northamptonshire; but the original stock of the family was in the county of Huntingdon.

He is reported by his last biographer, Derrick, to have inherited from his father an eftate of two hundred a year, and to have been bred, as was faid, an Anabaptift. For either of thefe particulars no authority is given. Such a fortune ought to have fecured him from that poverty which feems always to have oppreffed him; or, if he had wafted it, to have made him afhamed of publishing his neceffities. But though he had many enemies,

who

who undoubtedly examined his life with a fcrutiny fufficiently malicious, I do not remember that he is ever charged with waste of his patrimony, or confidered as a deserter from another religion, I am therefore inclined to believe that Derrick was misinformed.

From Westminster School, where he was instructed as one of the king's scholars by Dr. Busby, whom he long after continued to reverence, he was in 1650 elected to one of the Westminster scholarships at Cambridge.

Of his fchool performances, has appeared only a poem on the death of Lord Haftings, compofed with great ambition of fuch conceits as, notwithstanding the reformation begun by Waller and Denham, the example of Cowley ftill kept in reputation. Lord Haftings died of the fmall-pox, and his poet has made of the puftules first rofebuds, and then gems; at laft exalts them into ftars; and fays,

No comet need foretell his change drew on, Whofe corps might feem a conftellation.

At the univerfity he does not appear to have been eager of poetical diftinction, or to have lavifhed his early wit either on fictitious fubjects or publick occafions. He probably confidered that he who purpofed to be an author, ought first to be a ftudent, He obtained, whatever was the reason, no fellowship in the College. Why he was excluded, cannot now be known, and it is vain to guefs: had he thought himself injured, he knew how to complain. In the Life of Plutarch he mentions his education in the College with gratitude; but in a prologue at Oxford, he has these lines; Oxford

3

Oxford to him a dearer name shall be
Than his own mother-university;

Thebes did his rude unknowing youth engage;

He chooses Athens in his riper age.

It was not till the death of Cromwel, in 1658, that he became a publick candidate for fame, by publishing Heroick Stanzas on the late Lord Protector; which, compared with the verfes of Sprat and Waller on the fame occafion, were fufficient to raise great expectations of the rifing poet.

When the king was reftored, Dryden, like the other panegyrifts of ufurpation, changed his opinion, or his profeffion, and published ASTREA REDUX, a poem on the happy restoration and return of his most facred Majefty King Charles the Second.

The reproach of inconftancy was on this occafion, fhared with fuch numbers, that it produced neither hatred nor difgrace; if he changed, he changed with the nation. It was, however, not totally forgotten when his reputation raised him enemies.

The fame year he praised the new king in a fecond poem on his restoration. In the AsTREA was the line,

An horrid ftilnefs first invades the ear,

And in that filence we a tempeft fear: for which he was perfecuted with perpetual ridicule, perhaps with more than was deferved. Silence is indeed mere privation; and, fo confidered, cannot invade; but privation likewife certainly is darkness, and probably cold; yet poetry has never been refused the right of afcribing effects or agency to them as to pofi

tive powers. No man fcruples to say that darknefs hinders him from his work; or that cold has killed the plants. Death is alfo privation, yet who has made any difficulty of affigning to Death a dart and the power of striking?

In fettling the order of his works, there is fome difficulty; for, even when they are important enough to be formally offered to a patron, he does not commonly date his dedication; the time of writing and publishing is not always the fame; nor can the first editions be eafily found, if even from them could be obtained the neceffary information.

The time at which his first play was exhibited is not certainly known, because it was not printed till it was fome years afterwards altered and revived; but if the plays are printed in the order in which they were written, from the dates of fome, thofe of others may be inferred; and thus it may be collected that in 1663, in the thirty-fecond year of his life, he commenced a writer for the stage; compelled undoubtedly by neceffity, for he appears never to have loved that exercife of his genius, or to have much pleased himself with his own dramas.

Of the stage, when he had once invaded it, he kept poffeffion for many years; not indeed without the competition of rivals who fometimes prevailed, or the cenfure of criticks, which was often poignant and often juft; but with fuch a degree of reputation as made him at leaft fecure of being heard, whatever might be the final determination of the publick.

His first piece was a comedy called the Wild Gallant. He began with no happy auguries; for his performance was fo much difapproved, that he was compelled to recall it, and change it from its imperfect state to the form in which it now appears, and which is yet fufficiently defective to vindicate the criticks.

I wish that there were no neceffity of following the progrefs of his theatrical fame, or tracing the meanders of his mind through the whole feries of his dramatick performances; and indeed there is the lefs, as they do not appear in the collection to which this narration is to be annexed. It will be fit however to enumerate them, and to take especial notice of those that are distinguished by any peculiarity intrinfick or concomitant; for the compofition and fate of eight and twenty dramas include too much of a poetical life to be omitted.

In 1664 he published the Rival Ladies, which he dedicated to the earl of Orrery, a man of high reputation both as a writer and a ftatefman. In this play he made his essay of dramatick rhyme, which he defends in his dedication, with fufficient certainty of a favourable hearing; for Orrery was himself a writer of rhyming tragedies.

He then joined with Sir Robert Howard in the Indian Queen, a tragedy in rhyme. The parts which either of them wrote are not diftinguished.

The Indian Emperor was published in 1667. It is a tragedy in rhyme, intended for a fequel to Howard's Indian Queen. Of this connection notice was given to the audience by printed

« AnteriorContinuar »