them, and the extent of service' (Scott-during the Napoleonic wars).

1. 424. the church of womankind, alluding to the doctrine of passive obedience.

1. 427. It rested, &c., it remained either to drop Cymon or to raise him up again.

1. 429. pleased, was determined; Latin placuit. Cf. 1. 557. 1. 484. menage, a variant of manage, common in Dryden's time, and used in the sense of French ménager, to husband, treat carefully.

1. 539. provoke, call forth, summon; Latin provocare. For another sense, see Religio Laici, l. 346.

1. 552. suborn, prepare, provide; Latin subornare. It pleased. Cf. I. 429.

1. 557.

1. 559. required, demanded.

1. 608. floats, overspreads, drenches, inundates. 1. 613. buxom, pliant, yielding. Cf.

the buxom air',

Faerie Queene 1. xi. 37 and Paradise Lost II. 842.

1. 624. missive, missile; regular in the seventeenth century.

SONGS AND LYRICAL PASSAGES

These passages exhibit the variety of measures to be found in Dryden's lyrics. He is not one of our great song writers because in his songs he is habitually playful and hasty, and only occasionally (as in the passage from Cleomenes) does he express deep and poignant feeling; but in the technique of his verse he is a master, without a rival in his time or for long after.

PAGE 139. Farewell ungrateful traitor. The verse is copied by Keats in his song ' In a drear-nighted December '.

1. 3. creature, commonly pronounced at this time cray-tur. PAGE 141. Ask not the cause. 'A splendid example of its style' (Saintsbury).

1. 4. Cf. p. 193, note on The Hind and the Panther, p. 102, 1. 12. PAGE 142. The Secular Masque was written by Dryden for his benefit performance at Drury Lane on 25 March 1700. The day chosen in honour of the old poet was supposed to be the first day of the new century. Up to 1752 the official year began not on 1 January but on 25 March; and 1700 was wrongly taken by the theatre managers to be the first year of the new century, not the last of the old.

The subject of the masque, as the title shows, was the century which was supposed to have ended. 'By the introduction of the deities of the chase, of war, and of love, as governing the various changes of the seventeenth century, the poet alludes to the sylvan sports of James I, the bloody wars of his son, and the licentious gallantry which reigned in the

courts of Charles II and James his successor (Scott). The whole piece is written with great spirit, and is of great interest prosodically. Only the closing lines are here given. They were probably the last that Dryden wrote.

OF DRAMATIC POESY

This Essay was written in the country', probably at Charlton in Wiltshire, while the theatres were shut on account of the Plague (May 1665 to Christmas 1666), but parts of it belong to 1667. It was published late in 1667, though dated 1668. It was Dryden's only critical work that was issued by itself; his other essays were Prefaces.

The introduction passes brilliantly from the battle of 3 June 1665 to contemporary poetry, and ends with a statement of Dryden's aims in verse. The second extract is Dryden's famous estimate of the great Elizabethans.

The text is from the revised edition of 1684.

PAGE 143, 1. I. that memorable day, 3 June 1665. The English fleet was commanded by the Duke of York. 1. 15. the park, St. James's Park.

1. 18. Eugenius, Charles Sackville, Lord Buckhurst, afterwards Sixth Earl of Dorset ; see note on my patron', Epistle to Congreve, p. III, 1. 49.

Crites, Sir Robert Howard (1626-98), son of the Earl of Berkshire, and the brother of Dryden's wife. Dryden had collaborated with him in The Indian Queen.

Lisideius, Sir Charles Sedley (1639-1701), best known now for his lyrics. His 'borrowed name is an anagram of the Latin form Sidleius.

Neander, Dryden.

1. 25. the bridge, London Bridge, then the only bridge. PAGE 144, 1. 15. congratulated to the rest that, now congratulated the rest on that'; a regular usage in Dryden's time.

1. 22. concernment, importance.

1. 29.

PAGE 145, 1. 17. Quem in concione, &c. Cicero, Pro Archia x. one of them, Robert Wild (1609-79), a dissenting clergyman, whose famous poem' (p. 147, 1. 9) was Iter Boreale, attempting something upon the successful and matchless march of the Lord General George Monk from Scotland to London, in the winter 1659', published 1660. He at once brought out An Essay upon the late victory obtained by the Duke of York upon June 3, 1665 (licensed 16 June), some time before Dryden wrote this passage. Dryden had presumably seen the poem when he expressed his 'mortal apprehension'. clenches, or clinches', puns, plays upon words.

1. 30.

1. 31. catachresis, an improper kind of speech, .. the

expressing of one matter by the name of another which is incompatible with, and sometimes clean contrary to it' (The Mysterie of Rhetorique unvail'd, by John Smith, 1657, p. 48). 1. 32. Clevelandism. John Cleveland (1613-58) was the most vigorous of the Cavalier satirical poets. In a later section of this Essay, Dryden says we cannot read a verse of Cleveland's without making a face at it, as if every word were a pill to swallow he gives us many times a hard nut to break our teeth, without a kernel for our pains'.

PAGE 146, 1. 7. my other extremity of poetry, unidentified ; Richard Flecknoe (see note on MacFlecknoe) has been suggested. He wrote verses on the victory, which were included in his Epigrams in 1670.

1. 15. ten little words. Cf. Pope, Essay on Criticism, ll. 346, 347:

While expletives their feeble aid do join,

And ten low words oft creep in one dull line.

1. 23. Pauper, &c. Martial, Epigrams viii. 19.

PAGE 147, 1. 6. Withers, i. e. George Wither (1588–1667). His later work overshadowed the delicacy of his early poems, to which justice was not done till the nineteenth century. Cf. The Dunciad I. 296.

1. 12.

by the candles' ends, a method of auction adopted from France; bids were accepted while the candle-end kept burning.

1. 19. Qui Bavium, &c. Virgil, Eclogues iii. 90 ('Who hates not Bavius, let him love thy songs ').

1. 28. Petronius, Satyricon ii.

PAGE 148, 1. 8. Indignor, &c. Horace, Epistles II. i. 76, 77. ('I lose my patience, and I own it too, When works are censured not as bad but new.' Pope.)

1. II. Si meliora, &c. Ibid. 34, 35 ( If Time improve our wit as well as wine, Say at what age a Poet grows divine.’ Pope.)

PAGE 150, 11. 7-34.

See Johnson on this model of en

comiastic criticism p. 4, ll. 20 et seq.

1. 24. Quantum, &c. Virgil, Eclogues i. 25.

1. 25. Mr. Hales,-John Hales (1584-1656), fellow of Eton. The Golden Remains of the Ever Memorable Mr. John Hales was published in 1659. The same anecdote is given in Charles Gildon's Reflections on Mr. Rymer's Short View of Tragedy, 1694, and in Nicholas Rowe's Life of Shakespeare, 1709, with additional details which date it 1633-7.

PAGE 151, 1. 4. while he lived. Beaumont died in 1616. There is no evidence that Jonson submitted his plays to Beaumont's censure. For the verses he writ to him', see Jonson, Epigrams 55: How do I love thee, Beaumont, and thy Muse '.

DISCOURSE ON SATIRE

This Discourse is the Dedication (to the Earl of Dorset) of Dryden's translation of Juvenal and Persius. It illustrates Dryden's statement that the nature of a preface is rambling (p. 168, 1. 27), and contains several passages which may be removed without loss from their setting. In the passages here given Dryden speaks of himself or his writings.

PAGE 153, 1. 11. King Arthur. This passage suggested to Scott the lines in Marmion (Canto I, Introduction) beginning And Dryden, in immortal verse,

Had raised the Table Round again.

PAGE 154, 1. 3. machines, the supernatural agencies in a heroic poem, whether the gods and goddesses of classical mythology, or the Godhead and angels of the Christian religion. Dryden had argued that Christian poets have not hitherto been acquainted with their own strength'.

1. 7. my little salary ill paid. Dryden's salary on his appointment as Poet Laureate and Historiographer was £200 with one butt or Pype of the best Canary Wyne'. In 1679 his salary was raised to £200 as Historiographer and £100 as Laureate, with the butt of wine. But the salary was never paid punctually; there is a Treasury warrant of 6 May 1684 for the payment of arrears since 1680. See E. K. Broadus, The Laureateship, 1921, PP. 61-3.

1. 13. your charity. See notes on p. 111, 1. 49 and p. 143, 1. 18. PAGE 157, 1. 24. Heinsius,-Dâniel Heinsius (1580-1655), Dutch scholar, in his De Satyra Horatiana, ed. 1629, PP. 59 et seq. Heinsius is quoted by Barten Holyday: see 1. 16. 1. 31. secuit, &c. Persius, Sat. i. 114.

PAGE 158, 1. 1. Ense, &c. Juvenal, Sat. i. 165.

1. 4. Holyday,-Barten Holyday (1593-1661), sometime Archdeacon of Oxford; his translation of Persius appeared in 1616, and his Juvenal posthumously in 1673. Dryden quotes from the Preface to the Juvenal: Juvenal's change of the ancient Satyre was, methinks, not only a Change, but a Perfection. For, what is the end of Satyre, but to Reform ? whereas a perpetual Grin does rather Anger than Mend '. Dryden had Holyday's preface lying open before him, and took several points from it.

1. 17. Stapylton, Sir Robert (d. 1669), published The First Six Satyrs of Juvenal in English verse in 1644, and a complete version in 1647.

PAGE 159, 1. 18. Jack Ketch (d. 1686), public executioner, notorious for his barbarity: see Macaulay's History, ch. v (execution of Monmouth).

1. 22. Zimri. See Absalom and Achitophel, 11. 544-68.

Buckingham began the frolic' by satirizing Dryden in The Rehearsal.

1. 31. obnoxious, liable, exposed; the usual sense in the seventeenth century.

PREFACE TO FABLES

This was the last of Dryden's critical essays, and of itself is sufficient to explain Dryden's belief that what judgment I had increases rather than diminishes'. It contains our first great estimate of Chaucer, which ranks with the estimate of Shakespeare in his early essay Of Dramatic Poesy. It is memorable also for what it tells us about Dryden himself.

PAGE 160, 1. 9. a certain nobleman, the Duke of Buckingham -Zimri. The palace is Cliveden.

PAGE 161, 1. 3. Sandys, George (1578-1644), translator of Ovid's Metamorphoses, 1621-6.

1. 11. Spenser. See The Faerie Queene, IV. ii. 34.

1. 17. Fairfax's translation of Tasso, Godfrey of Bulloigne, or the Recovery of Jerusalem, was published in 1600.

1. 32. Chaucer was supposed, by reason of his court connexions, to have been Poet Laureate, but the office was not definitely established till the seventeenth century. E. K. Broadus, The Laureateship, p. 16.

See

PAGE 162, 1. II. octave rhyme. This stanza was used before Boccaccio, but he established it as the measure for heroic verse'.

1. 24. Rymer. See note (p. 195) on epistle To Mr. Congreve, 1. 41 (p. III); here Dryden properly commends_Rymer's learning. Rymer's account of Chaucer's debt to Provençal is to be found in his Short View of Tragedy, 1693, pp. 77, 78. Dryden does not distinguish between Provençal and Old French.

PAGE 164, 1. 8. staved, broken up into staves, like contraband hogsheads.

1. 21. Horace,-Ars Poetica, 1. 322.

1. 23. right in court, a translation of the legal phrase rectus in curia, said of a man who has put himself right by getting rid of some disability which might have been brought up against him in court, e. g. by having a sentence of outlawry reversed.

1. 27. a religious lawyer, Jeremy Collier, in his Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage, 1698. PAGE 165, 1. 31. philology, the study of literature, polite

learning.

PAGE 166, ll. 5, 6. the Decameron in the

There is no certain direct borrowing from
Canterbury Tales.

1. 9. the invention of Petrarch. Dryden has got the facts