NOTE.-The photogravure frontispiece of Dryden is from the original portrait (1664) in the かな BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH I JOHN DRYDEN is the greatest and the most representative English man of letters of the last quarter of the seventeenth century. From the death of Milton in 1674 to his own in 1700 no other writer can compare with him in versatility and power; indeed, in the varied character of his work, as dramatist, satirist, controversialist, translator, and critic, he has few rivals in the entire history of English literature. Though he composed his most important original poems to serve some passing political purpose, he made them immortal by his literary genius. Half unconsciously he became the founder of a literary school that retained its preeminence for more than a hundred years after his death. Any account of his life should deal primarily with his writings and with the political events that gave the occasion for many of them; at the same time it should pay due heed to Dryden's own personality, which has not always been treated with the respect that it deserves. Dryden was by profession a writer, not a hero or prophet; he suffers by the inevitable comparison with his great contemporary Milton. Yet, beneath his superficial inconsistency he had a large general honesty and uprightness, and the fierce invective of his satires must not blind us to his kindliness and generosity. Though not heroic, Dryden is eminently lovable. Dryden's parents were landed gentry. His father, Erasmus Dryden, third son of Sir Erasmus Dryden, baronet, married on October 21, 1630, Mary, daughter of the Reverend Henry Pickering, rector of Aldwincle All Saints, in Northamptonshire. John Dryden, the first of the fourteen children of this marriage, is said to have been born on August 9, 1631, at the parsonage house of Aldwincle All Saints, the residence of his mother's parents. He was brought up under strongly Puritan influences, since both the Drydens and the Pickerings took the side of the Parliament in its conflict against Charles I. He was educated first at Westminster School in London, under the famous master, Dr. Busby, to whom he later sent his own sons; and next at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he matriculated in July, 1650, and where he took his bachelor's degree in January, 1654. The Conclusion Book of Trinity College records that in July, 1652, Dryden was disciplined for “his disobedience to the vice master, and his contumacy in taking his punishment inflicted by him." A pleasanter glimpse of the young poet is given in a letter quoted by Mr. Christie: "Dryden. . . was reckoned a man of good parts and learning while in college: he had ... read over and very well understood all the Greek and Latin poets. He stayed to take his bachelor's degree, but his head was too roving and active, or what else you 'll call it, to confine himself to a college life; and so he left it and went to London into gayer company, and set up for a poet, which he was as well qualified for as any man." 2 While at school and college Dryden had made some trifling experiments in writing verse. At Westminster School he had translated, as "a Thursday-night's exercise,"3 the 1 Malone points out that this date rests on no better authority than a note by Pope, first printed in the 1735 edition of his works. 1 Sea Select Poems by Dryden, ed, Christie and Firth, Oxford, 1893, page xvi. • Bee page 365. Third Satire of Persius, and had composed in honor of his deceased schoolmate, Lord Hastings, an elegy which is still preserved. In 1650 he prefixed a short complimentary poem to Sion and Parnassus, a collection of religious poems by his friend John Hoddesdon. In 1655 he wrote a curious letter to his cousin Honor Driden, mingling verse and prose in a strain of conventional and not too delicate gallantry. These early pieces are full of extravagant conceits of the school of Cowley, and show at the best only a boyish dexterity in copying a prevailing literary fashion. Nothing is known of Dryden's life between 1654 and 1658. In June, 1654, his father had died, leaving to him, as the eldest son, landed property which yielded about forty pounds a year, enough at that time to support a single man in decent comfort. A year later, if the heading of the letter to Honor Driden be correct, he was still at Cambridge. From this fantastic epistle, which indicates nothing more than a college flirtation, some critics have strangely concluded that the young poet was seriously in love with his cousin. Whether he continued to reside in Cambridge, or returned to his father's estate after 1655, cannot positively be determined. If Shadwell is correct in speaking of him, "when he came first to town," as a raw young fellow of seven and twenty," he did not remove to London and "set up for a poet" until 1658. 66 1 Dryden's life after his settlement in London may be conveniently divided into three periods: the first ending in 1681, the second in 1688, and the third with his death in 1700. In the first period, after a few occasional poems, Dryden chose the drama as the most profitable field of literary work, and by his success in it became the leading English man of letters of his time. In 1681, having from a number of causes become thoroughly dissatisfied with his occupation as a playwright, he turned to satire and controversial writing, both in prose and verse, and brought his consummate literary skill to the service of the royal power and the Tory party. By the Revolution of 1688, he was deprived of his position as a court favorite, and thrown back upon his pen for support. After some attempts, only partially successful, to recover his position as a popular dramatist, he found a congenial occupation as a translator of the Greek and Latin poets, and as a modernizer of Chaucer. II When Dryden settled in London, his first patron was his own cousin, Sir Gilbert Pickering, a favorite of Oliver Cromwell, and one of the peers nominated by him to his upper house. The great Protector himself was nearing his end; he died on September 3, 1658, after a short illness, but the Puritan government still seemed firmly established in England. Thus we are not surprised to find that Dryden's first important work was A Poem upon the Death of his Late Highness Oliver, Lord Protector of England, Scotland, & Ireland, which was probably written soon after Cromwell's funeral on November 23, 1658. In this elegy he adopts the four-line stanza that Davenant had brought into prominence by his Gondibert. His style, simpler and more direct than in his earlier poems, shows the influence of the study of Davenant, and also, no doubt, of Denham and Waller. As a young, ambitious literary man, Dryden began his career by copying authors of established reputation. This imitative method he followed to some extent through his whole life, modifying and developing his own numbers by the constant reading of earlier poets. The critical faculty was always a prominent element in his genius. Yet in stanzas like that which concludes the poem, he already shows that vigorous, rapid verse which remains his distinguishing characteristic among English poets : 1 See The Medal of John Bayes. |