Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 5.djvu/207

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DRY


169


DUALISM


the first result of which had been "Religio Laici". This poem, while a defence of the Church of England, showed a desire for an infallible guide in religious matters and indicates the direction in which Dryden's thoughts were turning. The accession of James gave him the additional incentive of belonging to the king's reliyon, a powerful motive in Dryden's case, for he was a devoted adherent to authority in Church and State. Dryden was accused of time-serving by his enemies, but this charge is easily disproved by his perseverance in his conversion during the next reign, when he refused even to dedicate his translation of Virgil to William III, lest he should be suspected of denying his religious or political principles.

Dryden published in April, 1687, "The Hind and the Panther", in some ways his most important work. It is divided into three parts ; the first describes the dif- ferent sects in England under the allegorical figures of beasts ; the second deals with a controversy between the Hind (the Catholic Church) and the Panther (the Church of England); the third continues this dia- logue and develops personal and doctrinal satire. In this poem Dryden succeeded in the difficult task of rendering argument in verse interesting. Especially noteworthy are lines 499-555 (second part), in which he describes the foundation and the authority of the Church, and lines 235-50 (third part), in which he de- fends his own course of action. In 1688 Dryden trans- lated the " Life of St. Francis Zavier" from the French (1682) of Pere Dominique Bouhours, S. J., and when an heir to the throne was born he celebrated the event in his poem of "Britannia Rediviva". The Revolu- tion of 1688 deprived him of his laureateship, and other lucrative posts, on account of his refusal to take the oaths of allegiance to the new government, and left him practically tlependent upon his own literary exertions. He turned once more to the stage and produced in 1690 "Don Sebastian", a tragi-comedy in blank verse and prose which rivals "All for Love" for the supreme place among his plays, and in the same year "Amphitryon"', a comedy, based on Moli- dre, though with several original situations. In 1691 followed "King Arthur", an opera-masque; in 1692 "Cleomenes", in which Dryden in the course of the blank verse relapses into rhj'me; in 1694 "Love Tri- umphant", a tragi-comedy in blank verse and prose, the last of his plays. In 1693 he published another of his great critical essays, "A Discourse concerning the Original and Progress of Satire", and in 1695 "A Parallel of Poetry and Painting", prefixed to his translation of DuFresnoy's "Art of Painting".

With his remarkable power of adaptation Dryden now gave his attention to another literary form, that of translation. He had before this, in 1680, made some translations of Ovid; and in the "Miscellanies" of 1684 and 1685, and of 1693 and 1694 there are speci- mens of Ovid, Horace, Homer, Theocritus and Lucre- tius, which, together with his more complete transla- tions of Virgil and Juvenal, make a total of about 30,000 lines. In July, 1697, the "Pastorals", the "Georgics", and the ".'Eneid" of Virgil were pub- lished, and the edition was sold off in about six months. Meanwhile, in 1692, Dryden had composed an elegy on Eleonora, Countess of Abingdon, for which he received 500 guineas. About this time, also, he wrote his famous address to Congreve on the failure of the " Double Dealer". In 1699, at the close of his life, he published his "Fables". This volume con- tained five paraphrases of Chaucer, three of Boccac- cio, besides the first book of the "Iliad", and "Alex- ander's Feast", perhaps his greatest lyrical poem, written in 1697 for a musical society in London which celebrated St. Cecilia's day. Dryden had also written the ode for the celebration in 1687 by the same society. Dryden did not long survive the publication of his last book. He died of inflammation caused by gout, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.


Dryden's position in the history of EngUsh literature is one of supreme importance. He brought the rhymed couplet as a means of satire to a brilliancy and a point never surpassed before or since his time; as a close and logical reasoner in verse he has never been equalled. .As a dramatist he did much good work and in some cases, as in "All for Love" or "Don Se- bastian", he achieved supreme distinction as a lyrist. He has left many exquisite songs and at least two of the finest odes in the language. As a translator and adaptor he ranks high, while as a prose writer he not only produced a body of criticism which established him as one of the greatest of English critics, but he also clarified English prose and marked the way for future development. As a man, he shared the faults of his time, but the scandals heaped upon him by his enemies have fallen away \mder critical examination, and the impression remains of a brave, honest English- man, earnest in every cause he championed, who loved to praise those who befriended him, and who could suffer reverses in silence and dignity. The standard edition of Dryden's works is that edited by Walter Scott in 18 volumes in 1808 and re-edited by George Saintsbury (Edinburgh, 1882-93).

For lives of Drvden, see Saintsbury, Druden in Enohsh Men of Letters Series (1881); Christie. Memoir in Globe Edition of Dryden's Poems (London. 1870); Idem in Dryden's Satires (0.\:- ford, 1871, .'ith ed.. 1893); Coluns, Memoir in The Satires of Dryden (London, 1893). See also Ker in Introduction to The Essays of John Dryden (Oxford, 1900), II; Root. Dryden's Conversion to the Roman Catholic Faith in Publications of the Modern Language Association of America (June, 1907), new aeries. XV, Pt. II; Belj.xme, Le public et les hommes de lettre^ en Angleterre au dix-huitihne sii'cle (Paris, 1883).

Charles Dryden, eldest son of John Dryden the poet, b. at Charlton, in Wiltshire, England, in 1665 or 1666; d. in 1704. He was educated at Westminster, and elected to Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1683, but could not enter, being a Catholic. He contributed to the second volume of his father's "Miscellany" of 1685, and turned into English the seventh satire for the translation of Juvenal in 1692. He then went to Italy and became chamberlain to Pope Innocent XII, coming back to England in 1697 or 1698. He was drowned in the Thames and was buried at Windsor, 20 August, 1704.

GiLLOw, Bibl. Diet. Eng. Cath., s. v.; Diet. Xal. Biog.. s. v.

Arthur H. Quinn. Dry Mass. See Mass.

Dualism (from Lat. duo, two), like most other philo- sophical terms, has been employed in different mean- ings by different schools. — First, the name has been used to denote the religious or theological system which would explain the universe as the outcome of two eter- nally opposed and coexisting principles, conceived as good and evil, light and darkness, or some other form of conflicting powers. We find this theory widely prevalent in the East, and especially in Persia, for several centuries before the Christian Era. The Zend- Avesta, ascribed to Zoroaster, who probably lived in the sixth century B. c. and is supposed to be the founder or reformer of the Medo-Persian religion, ex- plains the world as the outcome of the struggle be- tween Ormuzd and Ahriman. Ormuzd is infinite light, supreme wisdom, and the author of all good; Ahriman is the principle of darkness and of all evil. In the third century after Christ, Manes, for a time a convert to Christianity, developed a fonn of Gnosti- cism, subsequently styled Manichaeism, in which he sought to fuse some of the elements of the Christian religion with the dualistic creed of Zoroastrianism (see Mank'h.eism and ZoROASTBn). Christian philos- ophy, expounded with minor differences by theologians and philosophers from St. Augustine downwards, holds generally that physical evil is the result of the necessary limitations of finite created beings, and that moral evil, which alone is evil in the true sense, is a consequence of the creation of beings ptjssessed of