in 1680; and numerous translations from Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Lucretius and Theocritus appeared in the four volumes of Miscellany Poems—Miscellany Poems (1684), Sylvae (1685), Examen poeticum (1693), The Annual Miscellany (1694 by the “most eminent hands”); in 1693 was published the verse translation of the Satires of Juvenal and of Persius by “Mr Dryden and several other eminent hands,” which contained his “Discourse concerning the Original and Progress of Satire”; and in 1697 Jacob Tonson published his most important translation, The Works of Virgil. The book, which was the result of three years’ labour, was a vigorous, rather than a close, rendering of Virgil into the style of Dryden. Among other notable poems of this period are the two “Songs for St Cecilia’s Day,” written for a London musical society for 1687 and 1697, and published separately. The second of these is the famous ode on “Alexander’s Feast.” The well-known paraphrase of Veni, Creator Spiritus was posthumously printed, and his “Ode to the memory of Anne Killigrew,” called by Dr Johnson the noblest ode in the language, was written in 1686.
His next work was to render some of Chaucer’s and Boccaccio’s tales and Ovid’s Metamorphoses into his own verse. These translations appeared in November 1699, a few months before his death, and are known by the title of Fables, Ancient and Modern. The preface, which is an admirable example of Dryden’s prose, contains an excellent appreciation of Chaucer, and, incidentally, an answer to Jeremy Collier’s attack on the stage. Thus a large portion of the closing years of Dryden’s life was spent in translating for bread. He had a windfall of 500 guineas from Lord Abingdon for a poem on the death of his wife in 1691, and he received liberal presents from his cousin John Driden and from the duke of Ormonde, but generally he was in considerable pecuniary straits. Besides, his three sons held various posts in the service of the pope at Rome, and he could not well be on good terms with both courts. However, he was not molested in London by the government, and in private he was treated with the respect due to his old age and his admitted position as the greatest of living English poets. He held a small court at Wills’s coffee-house, where he spent his evenings; here he had a chair by the fire in winter and by the window in summer; Congreve, Vanbrugh and Addison were among his admirers, and here Pope saw the old poet of whom he was to be the most brilliant disciple. He died at his house in Gerrard Street, London, on the 1st of May 1700 and was buried on the 13th of the month in Westminster Abbey. Dryden’s portrait, by Sir G. Kneller, is in the National Portrait Gallery.
Bibliography.—The Comedies, Tragedies and Operas written by John Dryden, Esq. (2 vols., 1701) was published by Tonson, who also issued the poet’s Dramatick Works (6 vols., 1717), edited by Congreve. Poems on Various Occasions and Translations from Several Authors (1701), also published by Tonson, was very incomplete, and although other editions followed there was no satisfactory collection until the edition of the Works (18 vols., 1808, 2nd ed. 1821) by Sir Walter Scott, who supplied historical and critical notes with a life of the author. This, as revised and corrected by G. Saintsbury (18 vols., Edinburgh, 1882–1893), remains the standard edition. His Critical and Miscellaneous Prose Works (4 vols., 1800) were edited by Edmund Malone, who collected industriously the materials for a life of Dryden. Convenient partial modern editions are the Poetical Works (Globe edition, 1870) edited by W. D. Christie with an excellent “life”; The Best Plays of John Dryden (Mermaid series, 2 vols.), edited by G. Saintsbury; and Essays of John Dryden (2 vols., 1900, Oxford), edited by W. P. Ker. Besides the critical and biographical matter in these editions see Dr Johnson’s Lives of the Poets; Dryden (English Men of Letters series, 1881), by G. Saintsbury; A. Beljame, Le Public et les hommes de lettres en Angleterre 1660–1744 (2nd ed. Paris, 1897); A. W. Ward, History of English Dramatic Literature (new ed. 1899), vol. iii. pp. 346-392; J. Churton Collins, Essays and Studies; W. J. Courthope, History of English Poetry, vol. iv. (1903), chap, xiv., and L. N. Chase, The English Heroic Play (New York, 1903). See also English Literature. (W. M.; M. Br.)
DRYOPITHECUS (Gr. δρῦς, oak, πίθηκος, ape, “the ape of the oak-woods”), the name of an extinct ape or monkey from Miocene deposits of France, believed to be allied to the baboons, but perhaps with some affinity to the higher apes.
DRY ROT, a fungoid disease in timber which occasions the destruction of its fibres, and reduces it eventually to a mass of dry dust. It is produced most readily in a warm, moist, stagnant atmosphere, while common or wet rot is the result of the exposure of wood to repeated changes of climatic conditions. The most formidable of the dry rot fungi is the species Merulius lacrymans, which is particularly destructive of coniferous wood; other species are Polyporus hybridus, which thrives in oak-built ships, and P. destructor and Thelephora puteana, found in a variety of wooden structures.
The felling of trees when void of fresh sap, as a means of obviating the rotting of timber, is a practice of very ancient origin. Vitruvius directs (ii. cap. 9) that, to secure good timber, trees should be cut to the pith, so as to allow of the escape of their sap, which by dying in the wood would injure its quality; also that felling should take place only from early autumn until the end of winter. The supposed superior quality of wood cut in winter, and the early practice in England of felling oak timber at that season, may be inferred from a statute of James I., which enacted “that no person or persons shall fell, or cause to be felled, any oaken trees meet to be barked, when bark is worth 2s. a cart-load (timber for the needful building and reparation of houses, ships or mills only excepted), but between the first day of April and last day of June, not even for the king’s use, out of barking time, except for building or repairing his Majesty’s houses or ships.” In giving testimony before a committee of the House of Commons in March 1771, Mr Barnard of Deptford expressed it as his opinion that to secure durable timber for shipbuilding, trees should be barked in spring and not felled till the succeeding winter. In France, so long ago as 1669, a royal decree limited the felling of timber from the 1st of October to the 15th of April; and, in an order issued to the commissioners of forests, Napoleon I. directed that the felling of naval timber should take place only from November 1 to March 15, and during the decrease of the moon, on account of the rapid decay of timber, through the fermentation of its sap, if cut at other seasons. The burying of wood in water, which dissolves out or alters its putrescible constituents, has long been practised as a means of seasoning. The old “Resistance” frigate, which went down in Malta harbour, remained under water for some months, and on being raised was found to be entirely freed from the dry rot fungus that had previously covered her; similarly, in the ship “Eden,” the progress of rot was completely arrested by 18 months’ submergence in Plymouth Sound, so that after remaining a year at home in excellent condition she was sent out to the East Indies. It was an ancient practice in England to place timber for thrashing-floors and oak planks for wainscotting in running water to season them. Whale and other oils have been recommended for the preservation of wood; and in 1737 a patent for the employment of hot oil was taken out by a Mr Emerson.
For the modern processes of preserving timber see Timber.
DUALISM (from rare Lat. dualis, containing two, from duo), a philosophical term applied to all theories which attempt to explain facts by reference to two coexistent principles. The term plays an important part in metaphysical, ethical and theological speculation.
In Metaphysics.—Metaphysical dualism postulates the eternal coexistence of mind and matter, as opposed to monism both idealistic and materialistic. Two forms of this dualism are held. On the one hand it is said that mind and matter are absolutely heterogeneous, and, therefore, that any causal relation between them is ex hypothesi impossible. On the other hand is a hypothetical dualism, according to which it is held that mind cannot bridge over the chasm so far as to know matter in itself, though it is compelled by its own laws of cause and effect to postulate matter as the origin, if not the motive cause, of its sensations. It follows that, for the thinking mind, matter is a necessary hypothesis. Hence the theory is a kind of monism, inasmuch as it confessedly does not assert the existence of matter save as an intellectual postulate for the thinking mind. Matter, in other words, must be assumed to exist, though mind cannot know it in itself. From this question there emerges a second and more difficult problem. Consciousness, it is held, is of two
