degenerate (and every reader, unless the beam is in his own eye, will acknowledge the truth of the observation) into a mere matter of recollection; a title-page acquaintance with books, or gossiping tales of their authors, upon the credit of which many a dull fellow assumes the credit of a literary man, and passes muster in the shops of the booksellers, which in truth are his proper arena, more readily than a real scholar. Even, however, where the labour of illustration would be necessarily and profitably employed, we cannot help wishing that it had not fallen to the share of the present editor. These things, we might say with Terence, are worthy to be done; tu indignus, qui faceres tamen. Learning has its pioneers, to dig wells, and hew down obstructions, -as it has its generals for eminence and renown. Mr Scott is certainly the most interested of any one in his own reputation; and it may seem presumptuous in strangers to be more alarmed for him than he is for himself. But fame is never stationary; and a name which is always in the world's mouth for some new project or other, and breathed upon by every publisher in London, can hardly keep its lustre uncontaminated. This is not said harshly towards Mr Scott; it is the language of reverence and admiration. He has raised two adamantine pillars, his noble poems, which will perpetuate his glory. From this he will, we hope, detract little, but he certainly can add little to it, by compiling biographical anecdotes. There is no man living, probably, who could have written Marmion; but how many hundreds might have put together this edition of Dryden! A The life of Dryden, as is well known, was written by Johnson, with more copiousness of biography than was usual with him, and with peculiar vigour and justness of criticism. None, perhaps, of the Lives of the Poets, is entitled to so high a rank. No prejudice interfered with his judgment; he approved his pclitics; he could feel no envy of such established fame; he had a mind precisely formed to relish the excellences of Dryden-more vigorous than refined; more reasoning than impassioned. living author, Mr Malone, followed, a few years ago, with what he called Some Account of the Life and Writings of John Dryden.' This was prefixed to his edition of the poet's prose works; and is an eminent instance of that undistinguishing cojlection of rubbish, which the amateurs of black-letter have principally introduced. All facts, great and small, to the purpose or not, are set down indiscriminately by these writers but, if a choice must be made, the frivolousness of an anecdote seems to be its best recommendation. Like those young ladies at boardingschools, who are reported to prefer chalk and tobacco-pipes to meat and pudding, a biographer of this class finds his appetite H 3 : more more ravenous, in proportion as the trash before him is less nourishing. To quit these remarks, it may be presumed, that the painful drudgery of Mr Malone did not leave much to do for the present editor. He has, however, acknowledged his obligation. to the libraries of Mr Bindley and Mr Heber,-gentlemen in whom the love of collecting, which is an amusement to others, assumes the dignity of a virtue; because it gives ampler scope to the exercise of friendship, and of a generous sympathy with the common cause of literature. The present edition is comprised in eighteen volumes. Of these, the first contains the Life of Dryden. His dramatic pieces are found in the next seven; his poems, from the ninth to the fifteenth inclusive; and some miscellaneous prose in the three last volumes. Great part of these has not been printed by Malone; especially a translation of the Life of St Francis Xavier, which Mr Scott has retained, on account of the curious and ininteresting character of the work itself. To all the plays and poems are prefixed introductory remarks; and notes are subjoined, sometimes exceedingly copious. Upon the two parts of Absalom and Ahitophel, they extend to 120 pages, closely printed. The Life itself is, in many places, but an abstract of what is said more at length in the notes. Mr Scott professes it to be the object of this biographical memoir, to connect, with the account of Dryden's life and publications, such a general view of the literature of the time, as may enable the reader to estimate, how far the age was indebted to the poet, and how far the poet was influenced by the taste and manners of the age. He begins with a sketch of the state of English poetry, both before, and immediately after the Restoration. This is somewhat more rapid than one might wish, from a writer so well qualified to dwell upon the subject; nor do we think he has done full justice to the merit of our elder poets. It is surely very lukewarm praise to say of Spenser, that his magic tale continues to interest us, in despite of the languor of a continued allegory;' and many will be dissatisfied with hearing, that nature had denied to Ben Johnson the flow of imagination, and a vivid perception of what is naturally beautiful.' In censuring the forced analogies of the metaphysical poets, and the slightness of Waller and Suckling, has not Mr Scott overlooked the boldness and fertility of genius which not only Drayton, Crashaw, and Davenant, but many smaller poets of that age, exhibit? There seems, indeed, rather a tendency to represent the Restoration as a favourable epoch to literature. Nothing, however, can be more unfounded, than to make an Augustan age of the times of Charles II. Taste was then, in fact, at its lowest ebb; ebb; an assertion, of which the trash collected in this edition of: Dryden would furnish abundant proof. We are told, indeed, by the present editor, that the critical judgment of Charles II. was by no means contemptible; but he has not endeavoured to reconcile this loyal position with the awkward fact of the high admiration shown to Elkanah Settle's Empress of Morocco. Before we proceed, it may be noticed, that Mr Scott appears to have forgotten (p. 48.), that Gondibert was published many years before the Restoration. Dryden's family pedigree has been illustrated, with all his usual patience about trifles, by Mr Malone; who does not even besitate to transcribe the epitaph upon one Pickering, his maternal grandfather. Mr Scott is not quite so luxuriant upon this dull subject. That he was of a baronet's family, born in Northamptonshire, and educated at Westminster, and Trinity College, Cambridge, is well known. It seems impossible to ascertain the laws of germination, if we may so speak, in the human faculties.. No one, surely, would suspect Dryden of slow parts. His mind was diligently enriched and cultivated; but its vigour and anima-. tion must have been from nature. He did not pullulate, however, so early as is usual with poets. There is no reason to suppose that he wrote much in youth; and what he wrote is indifferent enough. At an age, when Lucan and Tasso had run out their course, and Milton had given the most precious samples of his genius, Dryden had achieved nothing that could raise him much above ordinary men. The first of his poems which possesses any. considerable merit, is the epistle to Dr Charlton, upon his treatise of Stonehenge, written in 1663, with great ease and elegance, and in a tone of versification, though not forcible, like that which he afterwards adopted, much more harmonious than that of most contemporary writers. But his effulgence broke out three years afterwards, in the Annus Mirabilis. Of this poem, Mr Scott says, although he allows it much praise, that it is not written in his later, better, and most peculiar style of poetry. It shows, however, we think, the full character of the author's mind, and differs less from his other works, than from those of any different hand. Variety is its chief want, as dignity is its greatest excellence; but in despite of this defect, and of much bad taste, we doubt whether so continued a strain of poetry could at that time be found in the language. Waller's Panegyric,' at least, and Denham's Cooper's Hill,' the most celebrated poems of the age, are very inferior to it. We come in the second, and two next chapters, to the theatrical works of Dryden. These are now for the first time collected, and give its chief value to the present edition. There cannot be a greater contrast than between the plays of the elder English dra matists, and those of Dryden and his age. The former, even setting Shakespeare aside, are among the highest boasts of English literature. The fertility of Fletcher, the pure diction of Mas singer, and innumerable beauties of some less considerable writers, have never since been excelled. These poets, as they often resembled Shakespeare in his command of language, his knowledge of nature, and expression of character, so they went far beyond him in all his blemishes. Their plots, from a love of exciting surprise, which was borrowed perhaps from the Spanish stage, are full of capricious changes, in which the interest of the reader is lost. Even the unity of character is often sacrificed to the desire of astonishing; and we sometimes find the hero of the first act become a coward in the third; and a virtuous young gentleman turned suddenly into a ravisher or an assassin. The troubles of the civil war, and the fanatical antipathy to stage plays, which distinguished the predominating party, silenced the muse of the buskin, and broke the continuity of writings, which had given a tone to public feeling as to the drama, from about the middle of Queen Elizabeth's reign. When the theatres were reopened upon the Restoration, another generation had risen, and the scale of taste was to be adjusted anew. It is justly observed by Mr Scott, that the French theatre, which was now thought to be in perfection, guided the criticism of Charles II.'s court, and afforded the pattern of those tragedies, which continued in fashion for twenty years after the restoration, and which were called rhyming or he roic plays. He finds the origin of that unnatural and pedantic dialogue which prevailed through these performances, in the romances of Calprenede and Scudery; and in the necessity of modifying every expression of passion and feeling, so as not to exceed the decorum prescribed by the presence of a royal spectator. It may be doubtful, however, whether the inflexible nature of French verse, and its want of a proper poetical dialect, will not principally account for these defects. They were, too, established and rendered legitimate by the authority of Corneille, whose genius, in many respects, resembled that of Dryden. It would be ridiculous (although we think Dryden, upon the whole, by far the superior) to balance his heroic plays against Cinna and Polyeucte; but the merits and defects of the two writers are much of the same class. Voltaire somewhere confesses of his countryman, that he has written no line that ever drew a tear; an avowal, by the way, which ought to have silenced him, when he affected to set the name of Corneille above that of Shakespeare. Of Dryden, the same may perhaps be said, with very little exception; but each had great knowledge of men; great power of reasoning reasoning in forcible and compressed language; and a command of the versification of his own tongue. The following account of these heroic tragedies is lively and just. The rage for imitating the French stage, joined to the successful efforts of our author, had now carried the heroic or rhyming tragedy to its highest pitch of popularity. The principal requisites of such a drama are summed up by Dryden in the two first lines of the "Orlando Furioso, The story thus partaking of the nature of a romance of chivalry, the whole interest of the play necessarily turned upon love and honour, those supreme idols of the days of knight-errantry. The love introduced was not of that ordinary sort which exists between persons of common mould: it was the love of Amadis and Oriana, of Oroondates and Statira; that love which required a sacrifice of every wish, hope, and feeling unconnected with itself, and which was expressed in the language of prayer and of adoration. It was that love which was neither to be chilled by absence, nor wasted by time, nor quenched by infidelity. No caprice in the object beloved entitled her slave to emancipate himself from her fetters; no command, however unreasonable, was to be disobeyed. If required by the fair mistress of his affections, the hero was not only to sacrifice his interest, but his friend, his honour, his word, his country, even the gratification of his love itself, to maintain the character of a submissive and faithful adorer. Much of this mystery is summed up in the following speech of Almatride to Almanzor, and his answer; from which it appears, that a lover of the true heroic vein never thought himself so happy, as when he had an opportunity of thus showing the purity and disinterestedness of his passion. Almanzor is commanded by his mistress to stay to assist his rival, the king, her husband. The lover very naturally asks, "Almanz. What recompence attends me, if I stay? Your flame's too noble to deserve a cheat, I no return of love can ever make, But what I ask is for my husband's sake "Almanz. I'll stop at nothing that appears so brave. I'll do't, and now I no reward will have. You've given my honour such an ample field, The most applauded scenes in these plays turned upon nice dis cussions |