Part 17

Dryden, as we have seen, had avowed his preference of lively dialogue in comedy to delineation of character, or, in other words, of wit and repartee to what was then called humour. On this subject Shadwell early differed from the laureate. Conscious of considerable powers in observing nature, while he was deficient in that liveliness of fancy which is necessary to produce vivacity of dialogue, Shadwell affected, or perhaps entertained, a profound veneration for the memory of Ben Jonson, and proposed him as his model in the representation of such characters as were to be marked by _humour_, or an affectation of singularity of manners, speech, and behaviour. Dryden, on the other hand, was no great admirer either of Jonson's plays in general, or of the low and coarse characters of vice and folly, in describing which lay his chief excellency; and this opinion he had publicly intimated in the "Essay of Dramatic Poesy." In the preface to the very first of Shadwell's plays, printed in 1668, he takes occasion bitterly, and with a direct application to Dryden, to assail the grounds of this criticism and the comedies of the author who had made it.[17] If this petulance produced any animosity, it was not lasting; for in the course of their controversy, Dryden appeals to Shadwell, whether he had not rather countenanced than impeded his first rise in public favour; and, in 1674, they made common cause with Crowne to write those Remarks, which were to demolish Settle's "Empress of Morocco." Even in 1670, while Shadwell expresses the same dissent from Dryden's opinion concerning the merit of Jonson's comedy, it is in very respectful terms, and with great deference to his respected and admired friend, of whom, though he will not say his is the best way of writing, he maintains his manner of writing it is most excellent[18]. But the irreconcilable difference in their taste soon after broke out in less seemly terms; for Shadwell permitted himself to use some very irreverent expressions towards Dryden's play of "Aureng-Zebe," in the Prologue and Epilogue to his comedy of the "Virtuoso;" and in the Preface to the same piece he plainly intimated, that he wanted nothing but a pension to enable him to write as well as the poet-laureate.[19] This attack was the more intolerable, as Dryden, in the Preface to that very play of "Aureng-Zebe," probably meant to include Shadwell among those contemporaries who, even in his own judgment excelled him in comedy. In 1678 Dryden accommodated with a prologue Shadwell's play of the "True Widow;" but to write these occasional pieces was part of his profession, and the circumstance does not prove that the breach between these rivals for public applause was ever thoroughly healed; on the contrary, it seems likely, that, in the case of Shadwell, as in that of Settle, political hatred only gangrened a wound inflicted by literary rivalry. After their quarrel became desperate, Dryden resumed his prologue, and adapted it to a play by Afra Behn, called the "Widow Ranter, or Bacon in Virginia."[20] Whatever was the progress of the dispute, it is certain that Shadwell, as zealously attached to the Whig faction as Dryden to the Tories, buckled on his armour among their other poetasters to encounter the champion of royalty. His answer to "The Medal" is entitled "The Medal of John Bayes:" it appeared in autumn 1681, and is distinguished by scurrility, even among the scurrilous lampoons of Settle, Care, and Pordage. Those, he coolly says, who know Dryden, know there is not an untrue word spoke of him in the poem; although he is there charged with the most gross and infamous crimes. Shadwell also seems to have had a share in a lampoon, entitled "The Tory Poets," in which both Dryden and Otway were grossly reviled.[21] On both occasions, his satire was as clumsy as his overgrown person, and as brutally coarse as his conversation: for Shadwell resembled Ben Jonson in his vulgar and intemperate pleasures, as well as in his style of comedy and corpulence of body.[22] Dryden seems to have thought, that such reiterated attacks, from a contemporary of some eminence, whom he had once called friend, merited a more severe castigation than could be administered in a general satire. He therefore composed "Mac-Flecknoe, or a Satire on the True Blue Protestant Poet, T.S., by the Author of Absalom and Achitophel," which was published 4th October 1682. Richard Flecknoe, from whom the piece takes its title, was so distinguished as a wretched poet, that his name had become almost proverbial. Shadwell is represented as the adopted son of this venerable monarch, who so long

"In prose and verse was owned without dispute, Through all the realms of Nonsense absolute."

The solemn inauguration of Shadwell as his successor in this drowsy kingdom, forms the plan of the poem; being the same which Pope afterwards adopted on a broader canvas for his "Dunciad." The vices and follies of Shadwell are not concealed, while the awkwardness of his pretensions to poetical fame are held up to the keenest ridicule. In an evil hour, leaving the composition of low comedy, in which he held an honourable station, he adventured upon the composition of operas and pastorals. On these the satirist falls without mercy; and ridicules, at the same time, his pretensions to copy Ben Jonson:

"Nor let false friends seduce thy mind to fame, By arrogating Jonson's hostile name; Let father Flecknoe fire thy mind with praise, And uncle Ogleby thy envy raise. Thou art my blood, where Jonson has no part: What share have we in nature or in art? Where did his wit on learning fix a brand, And rail at arts he did not understand? Where made he love in Prince Nicander's vein, Or swept the dust in Psyche's humble strain?"

This unmerciful satire was sold off in a very short time; and it seems uncertain whether it was again published until 1084, when it appeared with the author's name in Tonson's first Miscellany. It would seem that Dryden did not at first avow it, though, as the title-page assigned it to the author of "Absalom and Achitophel," we cannot believe Shadwell's assertion, that he had denied it with oaths and imprecations. Dryden, however, omits this satire in the [first [23]] printed list of his plays and poems, along with the Eulogy on Cromwell. But he was so far from disowning it, that, in his "Essay on Satire," he quotes "Mac-Flecknoe" as an instance given by himself of the Varronian satire. Poor Shadwell was extremely disturbed by this attack upon him; the more so, as he seems hardly to have understood its tendency. He seriously complains, that he is represented by Dryden as an Irishman, "when he knows that I never saw Ireland till I was three-and-twenty years old, and was there but for four months." He had understood Dryden's parable literally; so true it is, that a knavish speech sleeps in a foolish ear.

"Mac-Flecknoe," though so cruelly severe, was not the only notice which Shadwell received of Dryden's displeasure at his person and politics. "Absalom and Achitophel," and "The Medal," having been so successful, a second part to the first poem was resolved on, for the purpose of sketching the minor characters of the contending factions. Dryden probably conceiving that he had already done his part, only revised this additional book, and contributed about two hundred lines. The body of the poem was written by Nahum Tate, one of those second-rate bards, who, by dint of pleonasm and expletive can find smooth lines if any one will supply them with ideas. The Second Part of "Absalom and Achitophel" is, however, much beyond his usual pitch, and exhibits considerable marks of a careful revision by Dryden, especially in the satirical passages; for the eulogy on the Tory chiefs is in the flat and feeble strain of Tate himself, as is obvious when it is compared with the description of the Green-Dragon Club, the character of Corah, and other passages exhibiting marks of Dryden's hand.

But if the Second Part of "Absalom and Achitophel" fell below the first in its general tone, the celebrated passage inserted by Dryden possessed even a double portion of the original spirit. The victims whom he selected out of the partisans of Monmouth and Shaftesbury for his own particular severity, were Robert Ferguson, afterwards well known by the name of The Plotter; Forbes; Johnson, author of the parallel between James, Duke of York, and Julian the Apostate; but, above all, Settle and Shadwell, whom, under the names of Doeg and Og, he has depicted in the liveliest colours his poignant satire could afford. They who have patience to look into the lampoons which these worthies had published against Dryden, will, in reading his retort, be reminded of the combats between the giants and knights of romance. His antagonists came on with infinite zeal and fury, discharged their ill-aimed blows on every side, and exhausted their strength in violent and ineffectual rage. But the keen and trenchant blade of Dryden never makes a thrust in vain, and never strikes but at a vulnerable point. This, we have elsewhere remarked, is a peculiar attribute of his satire;[24] and it is difficult for one assailed on a single ludicrous foible to make good his respectability though possessed of a thousand valuable qualities; as it was impossible for Achilles, invulnerable everywhere else, to survive the wound which a dexterous archer had aimed at his heel. With regard to Settle, there is a contempt in Dryden's satire which approaches almost to good-humour, and plainly shows how far our poet was now from entertaining those apprehensions of rivalship, which certainly dictated his portion of the "Remarks on the Empress of Morocco." Settle had now found his level, and Dryden no longer regarded him with a mixture of rage and apprehension, but with more appropriate feelings of utter contempt. This poor wight had acquired by practice, and perhaps from nature, more of a poetical ear than most of his contemporaries were gifted with. His "blundering melody," as Dryden terms it, is far sweeter to the ear than the flat and ineffectual couplets of Tate; nor are his verses always destitute of something approaching to poetic fancy and spirit. He certainly, in his transposition of "Absalom and Achitophel," mimicked the harmony of his original with more success than was attained by Shadwell, Buckingham or Pordage.[25] But in this facility of versification all his merit began and ended; in our author's phrase,

"Doeg, though without knowing how or why, Made still a blundering kind of melody; Spurred boldly on, and dashed though thick and thin, Through sense and nonsense, never out nor in; Free from all meaning, whether good or bad, And, in one word, heroically mad. He was too warm on picking-work to dwell, But faggoted his notions as they fell, And, if they rhymed and rattled, all was well."

Ere we take leave of Settle, it is impossible to omit mentioning his lamentable conclusion; a tale often told and moralised upon, and in truth a piece of very tragical mirth. Elkanah, we have seen, was at this period a zealous Whig; nay, he was so far in the confidence of Shaftesbury that, under his direction, and with his materials, he had been intrusted to compose a noted libel against the Duke of York, entitled, "The Character of a Popish Successor." Having a genius for mechanics, he was also exalted to be manager of a procession for burning the Pope; which the Whigs celebrated with great pomp, as one of many artifices to inflame the minds of the people.[26] To this, and to the fireworks which attended its solemnisation, Dryden alludes in the lines to which Elkanah's subsequent disasters gave an air of prophecy:--

"In fireworks give him leave to vent his spite, Those are the only servants he can write; The height of his ambition is, we know, But to be master of a puppet-show; On that one stage his works may yet appear, And a month's harvest keeps him all the year."

Notwithstanding the rank he held among the Whig authors,[27] Settle, perceiving the cause of his patron Shaftesbury was gradually becoming weaker, fairly abandoned him to his fate, and read a solemn recantation of his political errors in a narrative published in 1683. The truth seems to be, that honest Doeg was poet-laureate to the city, and earned some emolument by composing verses for pageants and other occasions of civic festivity; so that when the Tory interest resumed its ascendency among the magistrates, he had probably no alternative but to relinquish his principles or his post, and Elkanah, like many greater men, held the former the easier sacrifice. Like all converts, he became outrageous in his new faith, wrote a libel on Lord Russell a few days after his execution; indited a panegyric on Judge Jefferies; and, being _tam Marte quam Mercurio_, actually joined as a trooper the army which King James encamped upon Hounslow Heath. After the Revolution, he is enumerated, with our author and Tate, among those poets whose strains had been stifled by that great event.[28] He continued, however, to be the city-laureate;[29] but, in despite of that provision, was reduced by want to write plays, like Ben Jonson's Littlewit, for the profane _motions_, or puppet-shows, of Smithfield and Bartholomew fairs. Nay, having proceeded thus far in exhibiting the truth of Dryden's prediction, he actually mounted the stage in person among these wooden performers, and combated St. George for England in a green dragon of his own proper device. Settle was admitted into the Charterhouse in his old age, and died there in 1723. The lines of Pope on poor Elkanah's fate are familiar to every poetical reader:--

"In Lud's old walls though long I ruled, renowned Far as loud Bow's stupendous bells resound; Though my own aldermen conferred the bays, To me committing their eternal praise, Their full-fed heroes, their pacific mayors, Their annual trophies and their monthly wars; Though long my party built on me their hopes, For writing pamphlets, and for roasting popes; Yet lo! in me what authors have to brag on! Reduced at last to hiss in my own dragon. Avert it, heaven! that thou, or Cibber, e'er Should wag a serpent-tail in Smithfield fair! Like the vile straw that's blown about the streets, The needy poet sticks to all he meets; Coached, carted, trod upon, now loose, now fast, And carried off in some dog's tail at last."

As Dryden was probably more apprehensive of Shadwell, who, though a worse poet than Settle, has excelled even Dryden in the lower walks of comedy, he has treated him with sterner severity. His person, his morals, his manners and his politics, all that had escaped or been but slightly touched upon in "Mac-Flecknoe," are bitterly reviewed in the character of Og; and there probably never existed another poet, who, at the distance of a month, which intervened between the publication of the two poems, could resume an exhausted theme with an energy which gave it all the charms of novelty. Shadwell did not remain silent beneath the lash; but his clamorous exclamations only tended to make his castigation more ludicrous.[30]

The Second Part of "Absalom and Achitophel" was followed by the "_Religio Laici_," a poem which Dryden published in the same month of November 1682. Its tendency, although of a political nature, is so different from that of the satires, that it will be most properly considered when we can place it in contrast to the "Hind and Panther." It was addressed to Henry Dickinson, a young gentleman, who had just published a translation of Simon's "Critical History of the New Testament."

As the publication of the two Parts of "Absalom and Achitophel," "The Medal," and "Mac-Flecknoe," all of a similar tone, and rapidly succeeding each other, gave to Dryden, hitherto chiefly known as a dramatist, the formidable character of an inimitable satirist, we may here pause to consider their effect upon English poetry. The witty Bishop Hall had first introduced into our literature that species of poetry; which, though its legitimate use be to check vice and expose folly, is so often applied by spleen or by faction to destroy domestic happiness, by assailing private character. Hall possessed a good ear for harmony; and, living in the reign of Elizabeth, might have studied it in Spenser, Fairfax, and other models. But from system, rather than ignorance or inability, he chose to be "hard of conceit, and harsh of style," in order that his poetry might correspond with the sharp, sour, and crabbed nature of his theme.[31] Donne, his successor, was still more rugged in his versification, as well as more obscure in his conceptions and allusions. The satires of Cleveland (as we have indeed formerly noticed) are, if possible, still harsher and more strained in expression than those of Donne. Butler can hardly be quoted as an example of the sort of satire we are treating of. "Hudibras" is a burlesque tale, in which the measure is intentionally and studiously rendered as ludicrous as the characters and incidents. Oldham, who flourished in Dryden's time, and enjoyed his friendship, wrote his satires in the crabbed tone of Cleveland and Donne. Dryden, in the copy of verses dedicated to his memory, alludes to this deficiency, and seems to admit the subject as an apology:--

"O early ripe! to thy abundant store What could advancing age have added more! It might (what nature never gives the young) Have taught the numbers of thy native tongue. But satire needs not those, and wit will shine Through the harsh cadence of a rugged line."

Yet the apology which he admitted for Oldham, Dryden disdained to make use of himself. He did not, as has been said of Horace, wilfully untune his harp when he commenced satirist. Aware that a wound may be given more deeply with a burnished than with a rusty blade, he bestowed upon the versification of his satires the same pains which he had given to his rhyming plays and serious poems. He did not indeed, for that would have been pains misapplied, attempt to smooth his verses into the harmony of those in which he occasionally celebrates female beauty; but he gave them varied tone, correct rhyme, and masculine energy, all which had hitherto been strangers to the English satire.

Thus, while Dryden's style resembled that of Juvenal rather than Horace, he may claim a superiority, for uniform and undeviating dignity, over the Roman satirist. The age, whose appetite for scandal had been profusely fed by lampoons and libels, now learned, that there was a more elevated kind of satire, in which poignancy might be united with elegance, and energy of thought with harmony of versification. The example seems to have produced a strong effect. No poet, not even Settle (for even the worst artist will improve from beholding a masterpiece), afterwards conceived he had sufficiently accomplished his task by presenting to the public, thoughts, however witty or caustic he might deem them, clothed in the hobbling measure of Donne or Cleveland; and expression and harmony began to be consulted, in satire, as well as sarcastic humour or powerful illustration.

"Mac-Flecknoe," in some degree, differs from the other satires which Dryden published at this time. It is not confined to the description of character, but exhibits an imaginary course of incidents, in which the principal personage takes a ludicrous share. In this it resembles "Hudibras;" and both are quoted by Dryden himself as examples of the Varronian satire. But there was this pointed difference, that Butler's poem is burlesque, and Dryden's mock-heroic. "Mac-Flecknoe" is, I rather believe, the first poem in the English language, in which the dignity of a harmonised and lofty style is employed, not only to excite pleasure in itself, but to increase, by contrast, the comic effect of the scenes which it narrates; the subject being ludicrous, while the verse is noble. The models of satire afforded by Dryden, as they have never been equalled by any succeeding poet, were in a tone of excellence superior far to all that had preceded them.

These reflections on the nature of Dryden's satires, have, in some degree, interrupted our account of his political controversies. Not only did he pour forth these works, one after another, with a fertility which seemed to imply delight in his new labour; but, as if the spirit of the time had taught him speed, he found leisure to oppose the Whigs in the theatre, where the audience was now nearly as much divided as the kingdom by the contending factions. Settle had produced the tragedy of "Pope Joan," Shadwell the comedy of the "Lancashire Witches," to expose to hatred and ridicule the religion of the successor to the crown. Otway and D'Urfey, Crowne and Southerne, names unequal in fame, vied in producing plays against the Whigs, which might counterbalance the effect of these popular dramas. A licence similar to that of Aristophanes was introduced on the English stage; and living personages were exhibited under very slight disguises.[32] In the prologues and epilogues, which then served as a sort of moral to the plays, the veil, thin as it was, was completely raised, and the political analogies pointed out to such of the audience as might otherwise have been too dull to apprehend them. In this sharp though petty war Dryden bore a considerable share. His necessities obliged him, among other modes of increasing his income, to accept of a small pecuniary tribute for furnishing prologues on remarkable occasions, or for new plays; and his principles determined their tendency.[33] But this was not all the support which his party expected, and which he afforded them on the theatre, even while labouring in their service in a different department.