DRYDEN AND POPE.

"GLORIOUS JOHN," as he came to be called, would have been a towering figure

in any historical period. His was a strong intellect, affected in the direction of weakness by the tremendous currents of those strange times. If he could have kept the poet clear of the politician, or the dramatist distinct from the theological controversialist, he might have scaled the heights to the summit, instead of alighting on the lesser peaks to show how easily he might soar if he chose. John Dryden (1631-1700) was the grandson of a Puritan baronet, and though he turned Catholic in later life he kept his Puritan mode of thought and fondness for religious discussion to the last. His advent as a poet dates from his "Heroic Stanzas on the Death of Cromwell," of genuine power and beauty, according to the stilted fashion that prevailed. His hero-worship of the Protector changed two years later into an equally gracious panegyric, welcoming the king, in which he protested his disgust with the "rebels." For this poem, "Astræa Redux," and another in the year following "To His Sacred Majesty," Dryden, then twenty-nine, received a royal grant.

After other literary work, some of it drudgery, he took to writing plays, in compliance with the prevailing fashion. The first was a comedy, "The Wild Gallant," its partial success leading to his agreement to furnish three plays a year to the King's Company. Twenty-seven were thus concocted. Dryden confesses that his taste and talent did not go in that direction. "To the stage my genius never much inclined me." He had to live, and as long as the public demanded this sort of work he would do it. "I know I am

not so fitted by nature to write comedy; I want that gaiety of humor which is required to it. My conversation is slow and dull, my humor saturnine and reserved. So that those who decry my comedies do me no injury, except it be in point of profit; reputation in them is the last thing to which I shall pretend." He joined Sir Robert Howard in producing a tragedy in heroic verse, "The Indian Queen," which took the town by storm, and may be regarded as the first of the spectacular melodramas with battles, flying spirits, real Oriental costumes and scenic effects, which are still popular. His other plays were cast in the supposed heroic vein in rhyme, the propriety of which form he had to defend against the advocates of blank verse. To touch the sublime was not only beyond his reach as an artist in expression, but he had not the conception. Hence the inflated verbiage, the ranting, roaring, imitation of passion, and the falsetto of his pathos in these dramas. His "Conquest of Granada," though not without good points, provoked the Duke of Buckingham to voice the literary judgment of the day in his racy burlesque "The Rehearsal," which ridiculed Dryden in the character of Bayes, the poet. His next play, "Aurungzebe," was his last in rhyme. When he was fifty-seven he set himself to write "All for Love, or the World Well Lost," to prove the superiority of his interpretation of the story of Antony and Cleopatra over Shakespeare's. Apart from its purpose to improve upon the master by restricting the interest to the dominion of passion alone, Dryden's play is a noble work. Meanwhile several of his comedies were suppressed or failed because of their obscenity, yet in his own conduct the author was strictly moral.

In 1681 Dryden showed his great gifts as a satirist in his poem, "Absalom and Achitophel," directed against Lord Shaftesbury, then under arrest for treason for conspiring to exclude the Duke of York from the throne as a papist. This was the first great English satire. In it the Duke of Monmouth, the rebel, who was really a natural son of the king, appears as Absalom, Charles as the Hebrew King, Shaftesbury as the tricky Achitophel, who inspired the revolt. Dryden lashed the hated Shaftesbury, and his personal enemy, Buckingham of "The Rehearsal," called Zimri in the satire,

with all the force of genius, and nine editions were sold in a year. While he admitted and condemned the "Popish Plot," Dryden was out of sympathy with those who would again have plunged the country into civil war. The "Religio Laici," written soon after this, indicated his revulsion from the Puritanism which seemed to encourage unrest. But his final religious change is shown in "The Hind and Panther," which is a strong poetical argument, in the form of fable, for Catholicism. It was written after he joined the Roman communion. A quatrain from this poem has twofold interest, first as being an expression of his feelings on making the change, and also, as a literary singularity, in its close resemblance of spirit and structure to a stanza in Cardinal Newman's exquisite hymn, "Lead, Kindly Light:"

"My thoughtless youth was winged with vain desires;
My manhood, long misled by wandering fires,

Followed false lights; and when their glimpse was gone,
My pride struck out new sparkles of her own."

When the Revolution of 1688 came, Dryden lost his laureateship and other sources of emolument. Again he turned to the stage and miscellaneous literary work. He published translations of the classical poets, from Homer to Virgil. In his sixty-seventh year he wrote the noble ode on St. Cecilia's day, known as "Alexander's Feast;" still later came his versions of tales from Boccaccio and Chaucer, published as "Fables." Despite his versatility, industry, and popularity, Dryden had to struggle for bread to the end. The devotion of his disciple, Alexander Pope; greatly contributed to the growth of his posthumous fame. He died in 1700, the acknowledged head of literary England, if not among the elect poets, still a mighty wielder of verse in serious satire, and capable of poetical flight as lofty as in the ode. Yet his enviable epitaph is found in the tribute of a great modern writer, who says: "It was by no mere figure that the group (of his fellow-authors) called itself a republic of letters, and honored in Dryden the chosen chief of their republic. had done more than any man to create a literary class. It was his resolve to live by his pen, that first raised literature into a profession."

He

ABSALOM.

In this portrait is delineated the Duke of Monmouth, natural son of Charles II., who was the chosen leader of the Protestant party that wished to exclude James, the Duke of York, from the throne. He actually headed a rebellion in 1685.

Of all this numerous progeny was none
So beautiful, so brave, as Absalon:
Whether, inspired by some diviner lust,
His father got him with a greater gust,
Or that his conscious destiny made way
By manly beauty to imperial sway.
Early in foreign fields he won renown
With kings and states allied to Israel's crown;
In peace the thoughts of war he could remove,
And seemed as he were only born for love.
Whate'er he did was done with so much ease,
In him alone 'twas natural to please;
His motions all accompanied with grace,
And Paradise was opened in his face.
With secret joy indulgent David viewed
His youthful image in his son renewed;
To all his wishes nothing he denied

And made the charming Annabel his bride.
What faults he had (for who from faults is free?)
His father could not or he would not see.

Some warm excesses, which the law forebore,
Were construed youth that purged by boiling o'er;

And Ammon's murder by a specious name

Was called a just revenge for injured fame.

Thus praised and loved, the noble youth remained,
While David undisturbed in Sion reigned.

ACHITOPHEL.

THIS character is intended for the Earl of Shaftesbury, who was charged with instigating the Duke of Monmouth to rebellion.

Some, by their Monarch's fatal mercy grown
From pardoned rebels kinsmen to the throne,
Were raised in power and public office high;
Strong bands, if bands ungrateful men could tie.

Of these the false Achitophel was first,
A name to all succeeding ages cursed;
For close designs and crooked counsels fit,
Sagacious, bold, and turbulent of wit,
Restless, unfixed in principles and place,
In power unpleased, impatient of disgrace;
A fiery soul, which working out its way,
Fretted the pigmy body to decay,

And o'er-informed the tenement of clay.
A daring pilot in extremity,

Pleased with the danger, when the waves went high,
He sought the storms; but for a calm unfit,
Would steer too nigh the sands to boast his wit.

Great wits are sure to madness near allied

And thin partitions do their bounds divide;
Else, why should he, with wealth and honor blest,
Refuse his age the needful hours of rest?
Punish a body which he could not please,
Bankrupt of life, yet prodigal of ease?
And all to leave what with his toil he won
To that unfeathered two-legged thing, a son,
Got, while his soul did huddled notions try,
And born a shapeless lump, like anarchy.
In friendship false, implacable in hate,
Resolved to ruin or to rule the state;
To compass this the triple bond he broke,

The pillars of the public safety shook,

And fitted Israel for a foreign yoke;

Then, seized with fear, yet still affecting fame,
Usurped a patriot's all-atoning name.
So easy still it proves in factious times
With public zeal to cancel private crimes.
How safe is treason and how sacred ill,

Where none can sin against the people's will,
Where crowds can wink and no offence be known,
Since in another's guilt they find their own!
Yet fame deserved no enemy can grudge;
The statesman we abhor, but praise the judge.
In Israel's courts ne'er sat an Abbethdin [judge]
With more disceri ing eyes or hands more clean,
Unbribed, unsought, the wretched to redress,
Swift of despatch and easy of access