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Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1

S >> Samuel Johnson >> Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1




Poverty, like other rigid powers, is sometimes too hastily accused. If
the excellence of Dryden's works was lessened by his indigence, their
number was increased; and I know not how it will be proved, that if he
had written less he would have written better; or that, indeed, he would
have undergone the toil of an author, if he had not been solicited by
something more pressing than the love of praise.

But, as is said by his Sebastian,

What had been is unknown; what is, appears.

We know that Dryden's several productions were so many successive
expedients for his support; his plays were, therefore, often borrowed;
and his poems were almost all occasional.

In an occasional performance no height of excellence can be expected
from any mind, however fertile in itself, and however stored with
acquisitions. He whose work is general and arbitrary has the choice of
his matter, and takes that which his inclination and his studies have
best qualified him to display and decorate. He is at liberty to delay his
publication till he has satisfied his friends and himself, till he has
reformed his first thoughts by subsequent examination, and polished away
those faults which the precipitance of ardent composition is likely to
leave behind it. Virgil is related to have poured out a great number of
lines in the morning, and to have passed the day in reducing them to
fewer.

The occasional poet is circumscribed by the narrowness of his subject.
Whatever can happen to man has happened so often, that little remains
for fancy or invention. We have been all born; we have most of us been
married; and so many have died before us, that our deaths can supply
but few materials for a poet. In the fate of princes the publick has an
interest; and what happens to them of good or evil, the poets have always
considered as business for the muse. But after so many inauguratory
gratulations, nuptial hymns, and funeral dirges, he must be highly
favoured by nature, or by fortune, who says any thing not said before.
Even war and conquest, however splendid, suggest no new images; the
triumphal chariot of a victorious monarch can be decked only with those
ornaments that have graced his predecessors.

Not only matter but time is wanting. The poem must not be delayed till
the occasion is forgotten. The lucky moments of animated imagination
cannot be attended; elegancies and illustrations cannot be multiplied
by gradual accumulation; the composition must be despatched, while
conversation is yet busy, and admiration fresh; and haste is to be
made, lest some other event should lay hold upon mankind. Occasional
compositions may, however, secure to a writer the praise both of learning
and facility; for they cannot be the effect of long study, and must be
furnished immediately from the treasures of the mind.

The death of Cromwell was the first publick event which called forth
Dryden's poetical powers. His heroick stanzas have beauties and defects;
the thoughts are vigorous, and, though not always proper, show a mind
replete with ideas; the numbers are smooth; and the diction, if not
altogether correct, is elegant and easy.

Davenant was, perhaps, at this time, his favourite author, though
Gondibert never appears to have been popular; and from Davenant he
learned to please his ear with the stanza of four lines alternately
rhymed.

Dryden very early formed his versification; there are in this early
production no traces of Donne's or Jonson's ruggedness; but he did not so
soon free his mind from the ambition of forced conceits. In his verses on
the restoration, he says of the king's exile:

He, toss'd by fate,
Could taste no sweets of youth's desir'd age,
But found his life too true a pilgrimage.

And afterwards, to show how virtue and wisdom are increased by adversity,
he makes this remark:

Well might the ancient poets then confer
On night the honour'd name of counsellor:
Since, struck with rays of prosperous fortune blind,
We light alone in dark afflictions find.

His praise of Monk's dexterity comprises such a cluster of thoughts
unallied to one another, as will not elsewhere be easily found:

'Twas Monk, whom providence design'd to loose
Those real bonds false freedom did impose.
The blessed saints that watch'd this turning scene
Did from their stars with joyful wonder lean,
To see small clues draw vastest weights along,
Not in their bulk, but in their order strong.

Thus pencils can by one slight touch restore
Smiles to that changed face that wept before.
With ease such fond chimeras we pursue.
As fancy frames for fancy to subdue;
But, when ourselves to action we betake,
It shuns the mint like gold that chymists make:
How hard was then his task, at once to be
What in the body natural we see!
Man's architect distinctly did ordain
The charge of muscles, nerves, and of the brain,
Through viewless conduits spirits to dispense
The springs of motion from the seat of sense:
'Twas not the hasty product of a day,
But the well-ripen'd fruit of wise delay.
He, like a patient angler, ere he strook,
Would let them play awhile upon the hook.
Our healthful food the stomach labours thus,
At first embracing what it straight doth crush.
Wise leeches will not vain receipts obtrude,
While growing pains pronounce the humours crude;
Deaf to complaints, they wait upon the ill,
Till some safe crisis authorize their skill.

He had not yet learned, indeed he never learned well, to forbear the
improper use of mythology. After having rewarded the heathen deities for
their care,

With Alga who the sacred altar strows?
To all the seagods Charles an offering owes;
A bull to thee, Portunus, shall be slain;
A ram to you, ye tempests of the main.

He tells us, in the language of religion,

Pray'r storm'd the skies, and ravish'd Charles from thence,
As heav'n itself is took by violence.

And afterwards mentions one of the most awful passages of sacred history.

Other conceits there are, too curious to be quite omitted; as,

For by example most we sinn'd before,
And, glass-like, clearness mix'd with frailty bore.
How far he was yet from thinking it necessary to found his sentiments on
nature, appears from the extravagance of his fictions and hyperboles:

The winds, that never moderation knew,
Afraid to blow too much, too faintly blew;
Or, out of breath with joy, could not enlarge
Their straiten'd lungs.

It is no longer motion cheats your view;
As you meet it, the land approacheth you;
The land returns, and in the white it wears
The marks of penitence and sorrow bears.

I know not whether this fancy, however little be its value, was not
borrowed. A French poet read to Malherbe some verses, in which he
represents France as moving out of its place to receive the king: "Though
this," said Malherbe, "was in my time, I do not remember it."

His poem on the Coronation has a more even tenour of thought. Some lines
deserve to be quoted:

You have already quench'd sedition's brand;
And zeal, that burnt it, only warms the land;
The jealous sects that durst not trust their cause
So far from their own will as to the laws,
Him for their umpire and their synod take,
And their appeal alone to Caesar make.

Here may be found one particle of that old versification, of which, I
believe, in all his works, there is not another:

Nor is it duty, or our hope alone,
Creates that joy, but full _fruition_.

In the verses to the lord chancellor Clarendon, two years afterwards, is
a conceit so hopeless at the first view, that few would have attempted
it; and so successfully laboured, that though, at last, it gives the
reader more perplexity than pleasure, and seems hardly worth the study
that it costs, yet it must be valued as a proof of a mind at once subtile
and comprehensive:

In open prospect nothing bounds our eye,
Until the earth seems join'd unto the sky;
So in this hemisphere our utmost view
Is only bounded by our king and you:
Our sight is limited where you are join'd,
And beyond that no farther heaven can find.
So well your virtues do with his agree,
That, though your orbs of different greatness be,
Yet both are for each other's use dispos'd,
His to enclose, and yours to be enclos'd.
Nor could another in your room have been,
Except an emptiness had come between.

The comparison of the chancellor to the Indies leaves all resemblance too
far behind it:

And as the Indies were not found before
Those rich perfumes which from the happy shore
The winds upon their balmy wings convey'd,
Whose guilty sweetness first their world betray'd;
So by your counsels we are brought to view
A new and undiscover'd world in you.

There is another comparison, for there is little else in the poem, of
which, though, perhaps, it cannot be explained into plain prosaick
meaning, the mind perceives enough to be delighted, and readily forgives
its obscurity, for its magnificence:

How strangely active are the arts of peace,
Whose restless motions less than wars do cease:
Peace is not freed from labour, but from noise;
And war more force, but not more pains employs.
Such is the mighty swiftness of your mind,
That, like the earth's, it leaves our sense behind,
While you so smoothly turn and roll our sphere,
That rapid motion does but rest appear.
For as in nature's swiftness, with the throng
Of flying orbs while ours is borne along,
All seems at rest to the deluded eye,
Mov'd by the soul of the same harmony:
So, carry'd on by your unwearied care,
We rest in peace, and yet in motion share.

To this succeed four lines, which, perhaps, afford Dryden's first attempt
at those penetrating remarks on human nature, for which he seems to have
been peculiarly formed:

Let envy then those crimes within you see,
From which the happy never must be free;
Envy that does with misery reside,
The joy and the revenge of ruin'd pride.

Into this poem he seems to have collected all his powers; and after this
he did not often bring upon his anvil such stubborn and unmalleable
thoughts; but, as a specimen of his abilities to unite the most
unsociable matter, he has concluded with lines, of which I think not
myself obliged to tell the meaning:

Yet unimpair'd with labours, or with time,
Your age but seems to a new youth to climb.
Thus heav'nly bodies do our time beget,
And measure change, but share no part of it:
And still it shall without a weight increase,
Like this new year, whose motions never cease.
For since the glorious course you have begun
Is led by Charles, as that is by the sun,
It must both weightless and immortal prove,
Because the centre of it is above.

In the Annus Mirabilis he returned to the quatrain, which from that time
he totally quitted, perhaps from experience of its inconvenience, for he
complains of its difficulty. This is one of his greatest attempts. He
had subjects equal to his abilities, a great naval war, and the fire
of London. Battles have always been described in heroick poetry; but a
seafight and artillery had yet something of novelty. New arts are long in
the world before poets describe them; for they borrow every thing from
their predecessors, and commonly derive very little from nature, or from
life. Boileau was the first French writer that had ever hazarded in verse
the mention of modern war, or the effects of gunpowder. We, who are less
afraid of novelty, had already possession of those dreadful images:
Waller had described a seafight. Milton had not yet transferred the
invention of firearms to the rebellious angels.

This poem is written with great diligence, yet does not fully answer the
expectation raised by such subjects and such a writer. With the stanza
of Davenant, he has sometimes his vein of parenthesis, and incidental
disquisition, and stops his narrative for a wise remark.

The general fault is, that he affords more sentiment than description,
and does not so much impress scenes upon the fancy, as deduce
consequences and make comparisons.

The initial stanzas have rather too much resemblance to the first lines
of Waller's poem on the War with Spain; perhaps such a beginning is
natural, and could not be avoided without affectation. Both Waller and
Dryden might take their hint from the poem on the civil war of Rome:
"Orbem jam totum," &c.

Of the king collecting his navy, he says,

It seems, as ev'ry ship their sov'reign knows,
His awful summons they so soon obey:
So hear the scaly herds when Proteus blows,
And so to pasture follow through the sea.

It would not be hard to believe that Dryden had written the two first
lines seriously, and that some wag had added the two latter in burlesque.
Who would expect the lines that immediately follow, which are, indeed,
perhaps indecently hyperbolical, but certainly in a mode totally
different:

To see this fleet upon the ocean move,
Angels drew wide the curtains of the skies;
And heav'n, as if there wanted lights above,
For tapers made two glaring comets rise.

The description of the attempt at Bergen will afford a very complete
specimen of the descriptions in this poem:

And now approach'd their fleet from India, fraught
With all the riches of the rising sun:
And precious sand from southern climates brought,
The fatal regions where the war begun.

Like hunted castors, conscious of their store,
Their waylaid wealth to Norway's coast they bring:
Then first the north's cold bosom spices bore,
And winter brooded on the eastern spring.

By the rich scent we found our perfum'd prey,
Which, flank'd with rocks, did close in covert lie;
And round about their murd'ring cannon lay,
At once to threaten and invite the eye.

Fiercer than cannon, and than rocks more hard,
The English undertake th' unequal war;
Sev'n ships alone, by which the port is barr'd,
Besiege the Indies, and all Denmark dare.

These fight like husbands, but like lovers those;
These fain would keep, and those more fain enjoy;
And to such height their frantick passion grows,
That what both love, both hazard to destroy:

Amidst whole heaps of spices lights a ball,
And now their odours arm'd against them fly:
Some preciously by shatter'd porc'lain fall,
And some by aromatick splinters die.

And though by tempests of the prize bereft,
In heav'n's inclemency some ease we find;
Our foes we vanquish'd by our valour left,
And only yielded to the seas and wind.

In this manner is the sublime too often mingled with the ridiculous.
The Dutch seek a shelter for a wealthy fleet: this, surely, needed no
illustration; yet they must fly, not like all the rest of mankind on the
same occasion, but "like hunted castors;" and they might with strict
propriety be hunted; for we winded them by our noses--their _perfumes_
betrayed them. The _husband_ and the _lover_, though of more dignity than
the castor, are images too domestick to mingle properly with the horrours
of war. The two quatrains that follow are worthy of the author. The
account of the different sensations with which the two fleets retired,
when the night parted them, is one of the fairest flowers of English
poetry:

The night comes on, we eager to pursue
The combat still, and they asham'd to leave:
Till the last streaks of dying day withdrew,
And doubtful moonlight did our rage deceive.

In th' English fleet each ship resounds with joy,
And loud applause of their great leader's fame:
In fiery dreams the Dutch they still destroy,
And, slumb'ring, smile at the imagin'd flame.

Not so the Holland fleet, who, tir'd and done,
Stretch'd on their decks like weary oxen lie;
Faint sweats all down their mighty members run,
(Vast bulks, which little souls but ill supply.)

In dreams they fearful precipices tread,
Or, shipwreck'd, labour to some distant shore;
Or, in dark churches, walk among the dead:
They wake with horrour, and dare sleep no more.

It is a general rule in poetry, that all appropriated terms of art should
be sunk in general expressions, because poetry is to speak an universal
language. This rule is still stronger with regard to arts not liberal, or
confined to few, and, therefore, far removed from common knowledge; and
of this kind, certainly, is technical navigation. Yet Dryden was of
opinion, that a seafight ought to be described in the nautical language;
"and certainly," says he, "as those, who in a logical disputation keep to
general terms, would hide a fallacy, so those who do it in any poetical
description would veil their ignorance."

Let us then appeal to experience; for by experience, at last, we learn as
well what will please as what will profit. In the battle, his terms seem
to have been blown away; but he deals them liberally in the dock:

So here some pick out bullets from the side,
Some drive old _okum_ through each _seam_ and rift;
Their left hand does the _calking-iron_ guide,
The rattling _mallet_ with the right they lift.

With boiling pitch another near at hand
(From friendly Sweden brought) the _seams in-slops_:
Which, well-laid o'er, the salt sea-waves withstand,
And shake them from the rising beak in drops.

Some the _gall'd_ ropes with dauby _marling_ bind,
Or sear-cloth masts with strong _tarpawling_ coats;
To try new _shrouds_ one mounts into the wind,
And one below, their ease or stiffness notes.

I suppose there is not one term which every reader does not wish
away[121].

His digression to the original and progress of navigation, with his
prospect of the advancement which it shall receive from the Royal
Society, then newly instituted, may be considered as an example seldom
equalled of seasonable excursion and artful return.

One line, however, leaves me discontented; he says, that, by the help of
the philosophers,

Instructed ships shall sail to quick commerce,
By which remotest regions are allied.

Which he is constrained to explain in a note "by a more exact measure of
longitude." It had better become Dryden's learning and genius to have
laboured science into poetry, and have shown, by explaining longitude,
that verse did not refuse the ideas of philosophy.

His description of the Fire is painted by resolute meditation, out of a
mind better formed to reason than to feel. The conflagration of a city,
with all its tumults of concomitant distress, is one of the most dreadful
spectacles which this world can offer to human eyes; yet it seems to
raise little emotion in the breast of the poet; he watches the flame
coolly from street to street, with now a reflection, and now a simile,
till at last he meets the king, for whom he makes a speech, rather
tedious in a time so busy; and then follows again the progress of the
fire.

There are, however, in this part some passages that deserve attention; as
in the beginning:

The diligence of trades and noiseful gain,
And luxury, more late, asleep were laid;
All was the night's, and in her silent reign
No sound the rest of nature did invade
In this deep quiet----

The expression, "all was the night's," is taken from Seneca, who remarks
on Virgil's line,

Omnia noctis erant, placida composta quiete,

that he might have concluded better,

Omnia noctis erant.

The following quatrain is vigorous and animated:

The ghosts of traitors from the bridge descend,
With hold fanatick spectres to rejoice;
About the fire into a dance they bend,
And sing their sabbath notes with feeble voice.

His prediction of the improvements which shall be made in the new city is
elegant and poetical, and, with an event which poets cannot always boast,
has been happily verified. The poem concludes with a simile that might
have better been omitted.

Dryden, when he wrote this poem, seems not yet fully to have formed his
versification, or settled his system of propriety.

From this time he addicted himself almost wholly to the stage, "to
which," says he, "my genius never much inclined me," merely as the most
profitable market for poetry. By writing tragedies in rhyme, he continued
to improve his diction and his numbers. According to the opinion of
Harte, who had studied his works with great attention, he settled his
principles of versification in 1676, when he produced the play of Aureng
Zebe; and, according to his own account of the short time in which he
wrote Tyrannick Love, and the State of Innocence, he soon obtained the
full effect of diligence, and added facility to exactness.

Rhyme has been so long banished from the theatre, that we know not its
effect upon the passions of an audience; but it has this convenience,
that sentences stand more independent on each other, and striking
passages are, therefore, easily selected and retained. Thus the
description of night in the Indian Emperor, and the rise and fall of
empire in the Conquest of Granada, are more frequently repeated than any
lines in All for Love, or Don Sebastian.

To search his plays for vigorous sallies and sententious elegancies, or
to fix the dates of any little pieces which he wrote by chance, or by
solicitation, were labour too tedious and minute.

His dramatick labours did not so wholly absorb his thoughts, but that he
promulgated the laws of translation in a preface to the English Epistles
of Ovid; one of which he translated himself, and another in conjunction
with the earl of Mulgrave.

Absalom and Achitophel is a work so well known, that particular
criticism is superfluous. If it be considered as a poem political and
controversial, it will be found to comprise all the excellencies of which
the subject is susceptible; acrimony of censure, elegance of praise,
artful delineation of characters, variety and vigour of sentiment, happy
turns of language, and pleasing harmony of numbers; and all these
raised to such a height as can scarcely be found in any other English
composition.

It is not, however, without faults; some lines are inelegant or improper,
and too many are irreligiously licentious. The original structure of the
poem was defective; allegories drawn to great length will always break;
Charles could not run continually parallel with David.

The subject had likewise another inconvenience; it admitted little
imagery or description; and a long poem of mere sentiments easily becomes
tedious; though all the parts are forcible, and every line kindles new
rapture, the reader, if not relieved by the interposition of something
that sooths the fancy, grows weary of admiration, and defers the rest.

As an approach to historical truth was necessary, the action and
catastrophe were not in the poet's power; there is, therefore, an
unpleasing disproportion between the beginning and the end. We are
alarmed by a faction formed out of many sects various in their
principles, but agreeing in their purpose of mischief, formidable for
their numbers, and strong by their supports, while the king's friends are
few and weak. The chiefs on either part are set forth to view; but when
expectation is at the height, the king makes a speech, and

Henceforth a series of new times began.

Who can forbear to think of an enchanted castle, with a wide moat and
lofty battlements, walls of marble and gates of brass, which vanishes at
once into air, when the destined knight blows his horn before it?

In the second part, written by Tate, there is a long insertion, which,
for poignancy of satire, exceeds any part of the former. Personal
resentment, though no laudable motive to satire, can add great force to
general principles. Self-love is a busy prompter.

The Medal, written upon the same principles with Absalom and Achitophel,
but upon a narrower plan, gives less pleasure, though it discovers equal
abilities in the writer. The superstructure cannot extend beyond the
foundation; a single character or incident cannot furnish as many ideas,
as a series of events, or multiplicity of agents. This poem, therefore,
since time has left it to itself, is not much read, nor, perhaps,
generally understood; yet it abounds with touches both of humorous and
serious satire. The picture of a man whose propensions to mischief are
such, that his best actions are but inability of wickedness, is very
skilfully delineated and strongly coloured:

Power was his aim; but, thrown from that pretence,
The wretch turn'd loyal in his own defence,
And malice reconcil'd him to his prince.
Him, in the anguish of his soul, he serv'd;
Rewarded faster still than he deserv'd:
Behold him now exalted into trust;
His counsels oft convenient, seldom just.
Ev'n in the most sincere advice he gave,
He had a grudging still to be a knave.
The frauds he learnt in his fanatick years,
Made him uneasy in his lawful gears:
At least as little honest as he could;
And, like white witches, mischievously good.
To this first bias, longingly he leans;
And rather would be great by wicked means.

The Threnodia, which, by a term I am afraid neither authorized nor
analogical, he calls Augustalis, is not among his happiest productions.
Its first and obvious defect is the irregularity of its metre, to which
the ears of that age, however, were accustomed. What is worse, it has
neither tenderness nor dignity; it is neither magnificent nor pathetick.
He seems to look round him for images which he cannot find, and what
he has he distorts by endeavouring to enlarge them. "He is," he says,
"petrified with grief;" but the marble sometimes relents, and trickles in
a joke:

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