the new creation; every power of nature starts from its repose, and the feelings of the mind waken from their slumber, to hasten into the magic circle in which they are invoked. The key that opens the paradise of poetic creation is placed in our hands: language itself changes its ordinary form, and kindles into impassioned eloquence, and then showered from the urn of phantasy appear

The thoughts that breathe, and words that burn. In these plays rhyme was not simply an additional ornament, that, like fringe upon a garment, might be removed without injury; it did not constitute merely a casual part of the vehicle in which the sentiments were conveyed, but it was intimately connected with the structure of the drama, for it removed the dramatic imitation farther from nature, and thus rendered the extravagant sentiments and improbable incidents less offensive; like a harmonious glazing to a picture, it served to keep all the poetic colours in tone. With the disuse of rhyme, an alteration took place in the other constituents of the drama, in the sentiments, the figures, the language, the incidents, and the general principle. I am not aware that Dryden, and the other poets of the heroic school, availed themselves of the power which they possessed of breaking up their verse into irregular pauses, thus giving a greater variety to its intonation, and a bolder and less monotonous character. This has been adopted with success by the actors on the French stage, where the verse with difficulty admits it, and when such an alteration in the manner of delivery was not anticipated or provided for by the author.*

In this play is to be found the bustle, the intrigue, and the disguise of the Spanish plot. The scene between Hippolyto and Amelia (act iv. sc. 3.) is ludicrous and absurd. Perplexities arise without any reasonable cause; and difficulties are solved without any probability of circumstances. The plot is concluded, not by a skilful combination of events gradually closing and conducting to the development, but by an unnatural transfer of affection in the heroines of the drama, suddenly huddled up in the concluding scene. The jealousies and partialities of love at once subside; which had been sustained under perplexity of adventure, artifice of disguise, and variety of situation. Dryden has taken advantage of every form of ornament and every vehicle of expression which our language

Cibber mentions that Sanford, the actor, used to throw the cadence on different parts of the line, in order to avoid surfeiting the audience by a coninual recurrence of rhyme. Scott's Life. p. 96.

could afford; for the play is composed of prose, blank verse, the rhyming heroic couplet, and the quatrain.

He now assisted his friend Sir Robert Howard,* in the Indian Queen. What proportion of the play was written by Dryden cannot be ascertained with exactness; but as the versification is superior to that of Sir Robert's other dramas, it is probable that Dryden heightened and improved whatever was most weak and defective by touches of his vigorous and flowing style. He is accused of copying his Almanzor from the character of MontezuThis play was acted with great applause, and Evelyn has mentioned that the scenes were the richest ever seen in England, or perhaps on any public stage.

ma.

After the Restoration, the theatres were limited to two in number. One was placed under the Duke's theatre. Betterton and other actors the direction of Sir W. Davenant, and called of much merit belonged to it: at the head of the other was placed Killigrew; his performers constituted the king's company, and with this latter theatre Dryden was particularly connected. the subject of his next, The Indian Emperor,'t Sir R. Howard's play suggested to our Poet which, though not printed till October, 1667, had probably been acted early in the winter of 1664. There was not much connexion between the plot of this play, and that of his predecessor. All, it is said, that Dryden borrowed were three ghosts, the sole sad survivors, if such they can be called, of the person dramatis of the Indian Queen, with the exception of Montezuma. This play was dedicated to his earliest patroness, Anne, Dutchess of Monmouth: its own merits, assisted by her influence, ensured its success, and placed Dryden with

out a rival on the throne of dramatic fame.

Dryden has prefixed some lines to a volume of Sir R. Howard's Poetry; they have but little reference to the subject to which they are addressed, and a person would in vain search the poems of the author to discover sufficient materials för so splendid a eulogy. The observations which Dryden makes on the Achilleis of Statius, and of the additional beauties conferred by the translator, show either that he was ignorant of the poem (one of the most beautiful and elegant fragments of antiquity, with golden lights from Virgil's brighter day still hanging on it,) or that in his anxiety to praise, he was careless of the truth. Few poems are more spirited and interesting than the original: none more utterly

worthless than the translation.

To the second edition of the Indian Emperor, in 1668, was prefixed Dryden's Defence of an Essay on Dramatic Poetry. It was directed against the remarks which Sir R. Howard prefixed to his Duke of Lerna. Scott says it is worthy of preservation. as it would be difficult to point out deeper contempt and irony couched under language so temperate, cold, and outwardly respectful.

Sir W. Scott has remarked the charm of the poetry and the ingenuity of the dialogue;' but the praise cannot be extended to any skilfulness of design, or variety of character. The Indians and Spaniards are all indiscriminately cast in the same heroic model.* A succession of scenes carries on the plot without unfolding it, and the voluntary death of many of the characters terminates without interest, what the ingenuity of the poet should have conducted to a more skilful issue. Love misplaced, and affections entangled in an unfortunate choice, provide an intricacy of situation that gives room for the invention of the poet; but no attempt is made to move our affections, which the subect would so easily admit, nor is advantage taken of the striking contrast which the different characters and countries would so easily have afforded. The metaphysical reasoning between the priest and Montezuma, while the latter was on the rack, shows how on Dryden's system, ingenuity of thought and well expressed argument was to compensate for the violation of all probability, and to excuse an infringement ever. on the laws of nature.†

* Sir W. Scott justly says, that he has little doubt but that the heroic tragedies were the legitimate offspring of the French romances of Scuderi and Calprenede. The absolute dominion of Louis XIV. extended over the field of poetry and literature, as well as that of arms; nothing of passion, of emotion, of nature was allowed to be exhibited, lest it should break through the feelings of the audience, and impair the dignity of the monarch, whose system it was that he was the sole and single object of attraction. Every thing was to be formed on an ideal and gigantic scale, every sentiment was to be lofty and striking; the valour of the hero resistless, and the beauty of the heroine unrivalled. Thus Louis lived, and ruled a world of his own creation. This our stage adopted, and Charles approved. See some sensible observations on this subject by a clever entertaining writer, Mons. De Mayer, in the Preface to his Geneviève de Cornouailles, 1764, p. xvii. xxi. Si leurs personnages étoient des giants, c'est que Louis XIV. avoit imprimé 'un grand caractère à son siècle. Louis XIV. que Fredéric a nommé le grand magicien, parceque il a pétri les têtes de ses sujets, n'aimoit que ce qui portoit l'emprunte de la grandeur, &c. -Les héros Grecs et Romains avoient les deux queues, l'écharpe et les grands canons. Orondate et Palamède naissoient, mouroient à Versailles, et se promenoient sur leurs destriers de St. Germains à Marly. Ce ridicule disparut sur la fin du règne de Louis XIV. &c. In Charles the Second's reign the Maid's Tragedy' was prohibited, because it turns on the seduction of Evadne by a licentious king. See Cibber's Apology, p. 199. Waller wrote a fifth act, with a different and less displeasing termination.

Some passages are extravagantly absurd, as
'As if our old world modestly withdrew,
And here in private had brought forth a new.'
And.

In Shakspeare and in the tragedies of the elder dramatists, the difficulties arise from the progress of unrestrained passions, and the indulgence of criminal desires, involving the possessors in the fatal consequences of guilt, and burying them under the ruins of the unhallowed structure which they reared. Thus Othello perishes through jealousy, Macbeth by ambition, Richard by perfidy and cruelty, and Anthony the indolent, the voluptuous, and the brave, was dishonoured and dethroned by her, whose smile could melt the sternest bosoms into love, and at whose feet of beauty the rival sceptres of the earth were laid.

In Dryden, such is the difference in the struc➡ ture of his dramas, the characters are, from the outset, surrounded with elaborate contrivances of perplexity. Affections are dissembled, perverted, or misplaced; the calls of duty and the feelings of desire are placed in opposition to each other; the difficulties do not grow out of the progress of the plot, or arise from the natural development of individual character and the conflict or combinations of the varied passions and affections, but are gratuitously formed; and, at length, when ingenuity has been exhausted, and the arts of evasion baffled by the stubbornness of the materials, a conclusion is obtained by an unnatural and rapid removal of part of the characters, or by an unexpected and unaccountable alteration of their sentiments.

In consequence of the plague, which broke out with such alarming violence this year, and the terrific conflagration on the following, which laid the most populous and wealthy part of London in ashes, no plays were allowed to be exhibited. The prohibition extended from May 1665 to Christmas 1666. During this interval Dryden is supposed, with circumstances, says Johnson, according to the satire imputed to Lord Somers, not honourable to either party, to have married the Lady Elizabeth Howard,*

'I kill'd a double man; the one half lay Upon the ground, the other ran away.' The former couplet is quoted in Timon, a Satire, in the Duke of Buckingham's Works, p. 164.

who but he durst presume
To make th' old world a new withdrawing room,
When of another world she's brought to bed,
What a brave midwife is a laureat's head.'

⚫ She is called the Lady Elzabeth. See Wilson's Life of Congreve passim, and Malone's Life of Dryden, p. 395. I am not at all anxious to promote quarrels between man and wife; or to disturb the virtuous repose of the Lady Elzabeth; but I must say, that I have stumbled on a very awkward letter from her, unnoticed by her biographers, and which, considering the noted gallantry of the person to whom it was addressed, wants, my dear Lady Elzy, some little explanation on your part.

and to have resided in the house of his fatherin-law, the Earl of Berkshire, at Charlton in Wiltshire. His leisure was amused in writing his Essay on Dramatic Poetry, which he dedicated to Lord Buckhurst, and published in the year 1667.

Dryden's marriage either interrupted, or terminated some intrigues into which his connexion with the stage, his youth and attractive appearance perhaps contributed to draw him, and which the gallantry of the age permitted without a frown. An amour with a beautiful actress, Madame Reeve, ended by the lady retiring from the stage to the seclusion of a cloister. There is an allusion too, I am afraid, to something like an intrigue* in another quarter; for the authors of the Rehearsal would let no weakness of our poet escape. The blessings of fame and greatness must be attended with their shadows and inconveniences; thus we are made acquainted with the disfigured person of Davenant, the libelled reputation of Dryden, and the pictured shape of Pope. Our poet, however, received no lasting injury from the imputation of weak

I received yours, though not without great trouble, but am not guilty of any thing you lay to my charge, nor will I ever alter from the expressions! formerly made. Therefore I hope you will not be so unjust as to believe all that the world says of me, but rather credit my protestation of never having named you to my friends, being always carefull of that for my own sake as well as yours; and therefore let it not be in the power of any, nor of your own inclinations to make me less.

Your very Humble Servant. P. S. If you will meet me in the Old Exchange, about six o'clock, I will justify myselfe.'

The above is a letter from the Lady Elizabeth Howard, daughter to the Earl of Berkshire, to Philip, second Earl of Chesterfield. See his Letters, p. 95; at p. 115 of the same work there is a letter without the address from Lord Chesterfield, which the editor thinks was to the same virtuous Lady Elizabeth: but I doubt the correctness of this conjecture, the most open and severe attack on her is in the State Poems:

'At all religions to the last from first,

Thou still hast rail'd, and then espoused the worst, In this thy wisdom such as 'twas before, T'abuse all woman kind-then wed a whore.'

In some verses from Melbourne, addressed to Tonson in 1690, on the publication of Amphytryo, he says, apostrophizing Dryden,

'Hang't-give the fop ungrateful world its will. He (Shadwell) wears the laurel-thou deservedst it still.

Still smooth as when adorn'd with youthful pride, For thy dear sake the blushing virgins died. When the kind gods of wit and love combin'd, And with large gifts thy yielding soul refin'd.' In the key to the Rehearsal, Bayes says, 'I writ that part only for her, you know she is my mistress.'Note. The part of Amaryllis was acted by Mrs. Ann Reeve, who at that time was kept by Mr. Bayes. An anonymous writer mentions his having eat tarts with Dryden and Madam Reeve in the Mulberry Gar. den.' See Gent. Mag. 1745, p. 99

nesses in which most shared; and the reputation of conquests which perhaps all envied. His latest biographer says of him at this time, that his manners were amiable, his reputation high, and his moral character unexceptionable.'

The alliance between a dependent poet, and the daughter of an earl was too unequal, to hold out much reasonable prospect of happiness,* after the first bloom of affection and desire had passed away. The lady was violent and capricious in temper, and weak in understanding, she brought but little fortune to compensate for her deficiencies in the qualities expected in a wife. Dislike was aggravated by poverty. She did not share in the general admiration of her husband's genius, nor lighten the toils by which it was supported. She seems to have possessed neither sweetness of disposition, generosity of mind, nor attraction of person. A man of genius, of all others, can hope for happiness only when united to a woman of sense. What can be expected from narrowness of understanding, prejudice of views, and sullenness of temper, but conflicts, alienation, and misery? Dryden never lost an opportunity of venting such bitter sarcasms against the matrimonial state, as too plainly bore evidence to his domestic misery. Indeed he never wanted a subject for satire, when marriage was to be derided, or the clergyt ridiculed.

The great object of Dryden's essay, mentioned above, was 'to vindicate the honour of the English poets from the censure of those who unjustly preferred the French before them,' -the admiration of Jonson's talents among Dryden's contemporaries had eclipsed, or lowered disadvantageously the greater genius or Shakspeare. Dryden felt the error of the decision, and he developed the merits, and exhibited the excellences of Shakspeare's genius in so masterly a manner as to call forth the highest encomiums from Dr. Johnson, at the time he was directing his attention to the same

I dont quite understand the allusion in the pamphlet, the reason of Mr. Bayes changing his religion, Second Part, 1690, p. 11. You poets ought to be excused for being witty now and then upon those who are got into the oval of matrimony; for either you are plagued with an odd sort of Latitudinarian creatures at home, (which they say is your own misfortune, Mr. Bayes, as well as Mr. Shadwell's,) and then you have all the reason in the world to vent your indignation upon that settlement called a wife, or else you are humbly content to pick a little natural philosophy out of some Fleet-street stroller,' &c.

See Warton's Hist. Engl. Poetry, i. p. 358, where his alteration of Chaucer's images is noticed to gratify his spleen against the church. I possess a poem in quarto, called Whip for the Fool's Back, who styles Honourable Marriage a Cursed Confinement, in his profane Poem of Absalom and Achitophel.'

subject. It will not be easy to find (he says) in all the opulence of our language, a treatise so artfully variegated with successive representations of opposite probabilities, so enlivened with imagery, so brightened with illustrations. His portraits of the English dramatists are wrought with great spirit and diligence. The account of Shakspeare may stand as a perpetual model of encomiastic criticism; exact without minuteness, and lofty without exagge ration. The praise lavished by Longinus, on the attestation of the heroes of Marathon, by Demosthenes, fades away before it. In a few lines is exhibited a character, so extensive in its comprehension, and so curious in its limitations, that nothing can be added, diminished, or referred, nor can the editors and admirers of Shakspeare, in all their emulation of reverence, boast of much more than of having diffused and paraphrased the epitome of excellence; of having changed Dryden's gold for baser metal, of lower value, though of greater bulk.

The essay is written in the form of a dialogue, the persons of the speakers are concealed under fictitious names, but it has been ascertained that through the disguise assumed, the real characters of Lord Buckhurst, Sir C. Sidly, Sir Robert Howard, and Dryden himself appear. The subject of the dialogue is first, the improved system of versification, a comparison of the ancient and classic models with the more irregular system of the French and English drama; the most interesting parts of the whole is that in which the respective merits of Shakspeare and Jonson are examined. It ends with a discussion on the advantages of rhyme in dramatic composition, in which Dryden takes the affirmative part, against the opinions of Sir Robert Howard. The manner in which this last argument is handled occasioned a discussion between Dryden and his brother-in-law.* Sir Robert answered him in the preface to the Duke of Lerna; Dryden retorted in the defence of dramatic poetry, which he prefixed to the second edition of the Indian Emperor. That sensible men and brothers should be at enmity with each other for years, on a disputed point of criticism, shows that the imputation of irritability thrown out against the poetic tribe was not asserted without reason; many years after • The whole dispute arranges itself thus:

1. Dryden in dedication to Lord Orrery, defended dramatic rhyme.

2. Sir R. Howard in Pref. to his plays, censured the opinion.

3. Dryden in Dial. on Dram. Poetry vindicated dmself.

4. Sir R. Howard in the Pref. to the Duke of Lerna observed.

5. Dryden in Pref. to Ind. Emperor replied.

when the subject was forgotten, and so complete a reconciliation had taken place, that Dryden borrowed money from his old enemy, the defence was cancelled, and an original edition of it is said now to be extremely rare.

In 1667, the Annus Mirabilis was published, and the Maiden Queen was acted in the winter of 1666. Charles was not only the patron of this play, but even suggested the plot, and rescued it from the severity of its enemies.

With regard to the Annus* Mirabilis, Scott agrees with Dr. Aikin in confessing the disadvantages of the four line stanza† in which this poem is written, from the necessity of comprising the thought within the limits of the stanza. I hardly acknowledge the force of this objection, for it would apply to the versification of Fope which seldom runs beyond the narrow boundary of the couplet; nor do I see why the Poet might not if he pleased advance on a bolder wing, and extend without impediment the sense beyond the limits of the quatrain: if I rightly recollect, it is in this manner, that Mr. Roscoe has translated the Greek poem of Musurus, and Gray printed his Elegy in continuous stanzas. The use of the stanza itself no doubt Dryden adopted from Davenant, who himself probably derived it from Sir John Davis's immortality of the Soul-for its introduction into our poetry we are indebted, I believe, to Surrey.

Scott says that Dryden seldom suffers his poem to languish, every stanza presents some strong thought or vivid description, but that the structure of the verse has laid him under the odd and unpleasing necessity of filling up his stanza, by coupling a simile, or a moral expressed in the two last lines along with the fact which had been expressed in the first. The plan of this poem is very inartificial, and the unison of two distinct events, the naval fight and the fire of London, is unskilfully adopted. Its defects resemble those of the former. There are lofty allusions connected with mean and minute descriptions more adapted to a gazette than a poem. The sense alternately swells into the bombastic, or descends to the low, and wanders into false allusions, and unnatural conceits. There is an exaggeration in the colouring, and an extravagance in the language, a want of keeping or harmony of style and imagery-elegant similes, and noble sentiments being

The title of Annus Mirabilis, did not originate with Dryden, a prose tract, so entitled, being published in 1662, see Malone's Pr. works of Dryden, vol. iii. p. 250.

Rymer, in his preface to Rapin's Reflections on Aristotle's poetry, had found fault with the qua train; and Davenant defended it in his pref. to Gondibert. The Earl of Sterline had used it in his four Monarchic Tragedies.

united to the low and technical language of the leger. After an allusion to the bees, drawn from the Eneid very poetically expressed, the following stanza occurs.

CXLIX.

Our careful Monarch stands in person by, His new cast cannons' fineness to explore; The strength of big-corn'd powder loves to try, And ball and cartridge sorts for every bore. and

CXLVIII.

Some the gall'd ropes with dawby marline bind,
Or searcloth masts with strong tarpawling coats;
To try new shrouds, one mounts into the wind,
And one below their ease or stiffness notes."

The Maiden Queen, the play which I before mentioned to have been acted in 1666, is said by Langbaine to be founded on some adventures in the grand Cyrus, and Ibrahim, the illustrious bashaw; indeed, Dryden admits that the foundation of his plot was taken from the former. The character of the queen includes all that is interesting or excellent in the plot; the struggles of unrequited passion, and the final triumph of honour and duty, are finely painted, while the catastrophe is so skilfully delayed, that our interest in the decision is maintained till the last. The character of Philocles is impaired by the vacillations of his affection, in the latter scenes; but the indecision of his judgment, and his struggle between virtue and love, lead to one of those situations of difficulty which, as I have previously observed, formed the delight of the artificial drama. Lysistratus is drawn without any bold or prominent features that can enchain attention; a separate vein of comict dialogue, belonging to an underplot, runs through the play, which the author, in the last

scene,

has attempted to unite with the former, by making Celadon assist Philocles; but there is no real unity in the fable. It was necessary, I suppose, to enliven the grave and pathetic part of the plot with descriptions of a gay airy libertine and a clever self-confident girl, under the characters of a courtier and maid of honour. The ignorance of Philocles of the queen's attachment is perhaps out of nature; but it must be viewed with regard to the artificial system Dryden on which these plays are founded. has observed, that the good taste of Charles discovered a blemish in the last scene, which, indeed, arose, from what I observed before, an attempt, too late, to bring the two actions together, when they had previously no links of connexion. Dryden, I believe, was well acquainted with the Spanish drama, and he borrowed from it its unnatural pomp of language, its unpleasing intricacy of incident, and the inartificial and improbable extrication of the

story.

Confident in the resources of his genius, and having successfully tried his dramatic powers, Dryden now entered into an agreement with the King's Theatre,* to supply it with three plays in a year, for one share and a quarter out of twelve shares and three quarters, into which the theatrical stock was divided, and which produced him better than three or four hundred a year, the total profits of the theatre being about four thousand pounds per annum.

An author, who could enter into such an engagement, must, undoubtedly, have great reliance on the fertility of his invention and the copiousness of his resources; but constant practice quickens the power of the intellect, awakens the slumbering associations of the fancy, gives to the taste and judgment an instantaneous selection, and to the hand a surprising facility of execution. Dryden had thought much on the subjects of the drama, had treasured up materials, at least in his imagination, if not assorted them in books. Shakspeare is suppos

• The writers for the Duke's House were, Etheredge, Lord Orrery, Otway, Shadwell, Ravenscroft, Crowne, Settle, Behn, Tate; for the King's, Dryden, Sir Robert Howard, Wycherley, Durfey, James Howard, Lacy, Duffet, and Lee, to the year 1678. Edward Howard, Sidley, and Bankes, gave their plays sometimes to one theatre, sometimes to another.

Jacob says, 'I think, the single consideration of Mr. Dryden having produced sir dramatic performances in one year is sufficient to atone for inconsiderable thefts and trivial irregularities.' Lives, p. 82. But this is a mistake, see Reed's note, in Johnson's Life of Dryden, p. 348. Langbaine's authority led Johnson into the same error. Dryden did not produce more than half the plays for which he contracted; see the Memorial to the Lord Chamberlain, by Killigrew, Hart, &c. Malone's Life, p. 73.