And on the tongue th' falt'ring accents die : A thousand various thoughts his soul confound: He star'd about; nor aid, nor issue found: His own men stop the pass; and his own walls surround. Once more he pauses, and looks out again, The hero measur'd first, with narrow view, The destin'd mark; and, rising as he threw, With its full swing, the fatal weapon flew. Not with less rage the rattling thunder falls, Or stones from batt'ring-engines break the walls Swift as a whirlwind, from an arm so strong The lance drove on, and bore the death along: Naught could his seven-fold shield the prince avail, Nor aught beneath his arms, the coat of mail: It pierc'd through all, and with a grisly wound Transfix'd his thigh, and doubled him to ground. With groans the Latins rend the vaulted sky: Woods, hills, and valleys, to the voice reply. Now, low on earth, the lofty chief is laid, With eyes cast upwards, and with arms display'd, And, recreant, thus to the proud victor pray'd. In deep suspense, the Trojan seem'd to stand, And, just prepar'd to strike, repress'd his hand. He roll'd his eyes, and ev'ry moment felt His manly soul with more compassion melt; When, casting down a casual glance, he spied The golden belt that glitter'd on his side, The fatal spoil which haughty Turnus tore From dying Pallas, and in triumph wore. Then rous'd anew to wrath, he loudly cries, (Flames while he spoke, came flashing from his eyes,) [tend, "Traitor! dost thou, dost thou to grace preGlad as thou art, in trophies of my friend? To his sad soul a grateful off'ring go! 'Tis Pallas, Pallas gives this deadly blow." He rais'd his arm aloft, and at the word, Deep in his bosom drove the shining sword. The streaming blood distain'd his armsaround; And the disdainful soul came rushing through the wound. ESSAY OF DRAMATIC POESY. Fungar vice cotis, acutum THIS Essay contains the first detailed view of our author's opinions concerning the Drama. In many things, particularly in the main point of preference given to rhyme, he afterwards saw cause to retract some of the principles here laid down. We have endeavoured elsewhere to trace the progress and alteration of Dryden's sentiments upon these subjects. But the reader's attention may be here called to the elegant form into which he has thrown his essay, and which has been so often in vain followed by clumsy imitators. The scene of the dialogue, and the striking incident by which it is introduced, have the happiest effect in arresting the attention; and infinite address is displayed in conducting the subject, from the distant noise of a bloody sea-fight, into the academic prolusions of dramatic criticism. The speakers in the dialogue are four; three of whom are persons "whom their wit and quality have made known to all the town." The fourth, of whose properties the author speaks more modestly, is NEANDER, under which feigned appellation Dryden himself is figured. In corroboration of this, Mr. Malone produces two instances, in which Dryden is called Neander by the famous Corinna, or Eliza Thomas. Moreover, the curious reader must be informed, that there is an anagram in the name of the second personage, LISIDEIUS, which points him out to be Sir Charles Sedley, or Sidley, for his name was spelled both ways. CRITES, the advocate for blank verse, is Sir Robert Howard, our author's friend and brother-in-law; who, in the preface to his plays pub ↑ In an elegy on his death, and in a poem addressed to Captain Gibbon.-Malone, Vol. i. p. 63. For aught I know, an imperfect anagram may be intended; for the letters in the name of Dryden, with a very little aid, will make out the word Neander. 1 For Dryden's connexion with this gay writer, see the dedication of the "Assignation," Lisideius is Sidleius, a little changed. VOL. II.-15 lished in 1665, had censured rhyming tragedies as unnatural. Prior has assured us, that EUGENIUS means the witty Earl of Dorset, then Lord Buckhurst.* A very critical observer may remark an inaccuracy in introducing his lordship as listening to the sound of a seafight, in which he was himself actually engaged. But Dryden did not mean to identify his speakers, and those shadowed out under them, otherwise than in their capacity of critics and authors. Dryden has, with infinite address, avoided, or overcome, the obstacles which commonly attend an argumentative discussion, in form of a dialogue. The author of such disputations, in general, so obviously favours one of the combatants, that we as soon expect Hector to slay Achilles, or Turnus to defeat Eneas, as nourish the least hope of the unfriended champion "The most eminent masters in their several ways appealed to his determination. Waller thought it an honour to consult him in the softness and harmony of his verse, and Dr. Sprat in the delicacy and turn of his prose. Dryden determines by him, under the character of Eugenius, as to the laws of dramatic poetry." This occurs in Prior's dedication of his poems to Lionel, Earl of Dorset and Middlesex, in which he gives his father's character at length, 8vo. edit. 1709. †The evening before the battle, he is said to have composed the lively song beginning, To all you ladies now at land. Prior gives the following account of the matter: "In the first Dutch war, he went a volunteer with the Duke of York; his behaviour during that campaign was such as distinguished the Sackvill, descended from that Hildebrand of the name, who was one of the greatest captains that came into England with the Conqueror. But his making a song the night before the engagement, and it is one of the prettiest that ever was made, carries with it so sedate a presence of mind, and such an unusual gallantry, that it deserves as much to be recorded as Alexander's jesting with his soldiers before he passed the Granicus, or William the First of Orange giving order over night for a battle, and desiring to be called in the morning, lest he should happen to sleep too long." making any effectual resistance. Besides, in prepared arguments of this sort, as in prepared jests on the stage, there is an obvious opening left for those thrusts on which the author chiefly depends for success; so that, instead of admiring the victor, we are angry at the bad address of his antagonist. All these obstacles Dryden has contrived to surmount, by the number of his characters, and the variety of their dialogue; where not only the argument of Neander's antagonist is fairly stated, but the topics are so judiciously varied, that the reader is brought to the point which the author aims at, without stiffness or constraint, as if in the ordinary flow of literary conversation. Thus, as we never see the purpose which Dryden wishes to attain, we arrive at his conclusion without fatigue or prejudice. The "Essay on Dramatic Poetry" was as sailed by several critics. Martin Clifford, of the Charter-House, accused our author of pilfering from the French critics, in the second of four very abusive letters. The only existing edition of these diatribes is one in 1687; but, from their date and import, this may have been a reprint. Sir Robert Howard also attacked the Essay, in the preface to his "Duke of Lerma," which led Dryden to assert his preference of rhyming tragedies, in the Defence prefixed to the "Indian Emperor." This Essay was first published in 1668, or perhaps in the December preceding. Sixteen years afterwards, Dryden bestowed on it a thorough revisal; and having, in many places, altered and amended the expression with unusual care, he published a second edition in 1684, with the following dedication to Lord Buckhurst, afterwards Earl of Dorset, ΤΟ THE RIGHT HONOURABLE CHARLES, EARL OF DORSET AND MIDDLESEX, LORD CHAMBERLAIN OF THEIR MAJESTIES' HOUSEHOLD, KNIGHT OF THE MOST NOBLE ORDER OF THE GARTER, &c. 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 last plague had driven me from the town.* Seeing, 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 Í have said is problematical. For the way of writing 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 troublesome 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 excuse in that little which I have done in it; and I am sure my adversaries can bring no such arguments 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 of you, that you too soon withdraw from us a contentment, 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 commands, 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 quarrel you can have to verse, than that which Spurina had to his beauty, when he tore and mangled the features of his The great pestilence in 1663. As early as 1676, Dryden confesses that he had grown weary of "his long-loved mistress, Rhyme." See the prologue to "Aureng-zebe," the last rhyming tragedy which he ever wrote. But although Dryden sometimes chose to abandon his own opinions, there is no instance of his owning conversion by the arguments of his adversaries. The tragedy of "Pompey the Great," 4to. 1664, translated out of French by certain persons of honour. Waller wrote the first act; Lord Buckhurst, it would seem, translated the fourth. 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 I am almost of opinion, that we should force you to accept of the command, as sometimes the prætorian 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 give part of them to the divertisement of the public, 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 a mauvaise grace, N'ayant pas adoré dans le Temple d'Amour; Il faut qu'il entre; et le 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 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 opinions, as to defend my own, which were first made public.* Sometimes, like a scholar in a fencing-school, I put forth myself, and show 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 prosecuted by some, like pedants, with violence of words; and managed by others, like gentleman, with candour and civility. Even Tully had a controversy with his dear Atticus; and in one of his dialogues makes him sustain the part of an enemy in philosophy, who, in his Valerius Maximus, lib. iv. cap. 5. "Poem to the King's most sacred Majesty."-D'Avenant's Works, folio, 1673, p. 268. See the dedication to the "Rival Ladies,' which is elaborately written in the cause of Rhyme against Blank Verse. |