theirs. It was too lusty for their showy and volatile spirits." The last sentences remind us of Scott's lofty apologetic tribute:
And Dryden, in immortal strain.
Had raised the Table Round again,
But that a ribald king and court
Bade him toil on, to make them sport;
Demanded for their niggard pay,
Fit for their souls, a looser lay.
Licentious satire, song, and play;
The world defrauded of the nigh design,
Profaned the God-given strength, and marred the mighty line.[1]
In estimating the influence of this stalwart, brawny athletes on English poetry as an art, Mr. Bell holds that he belonged to the class of writers who inaugurate an epoch, not to the lower class which spring from it, and that he effected in his day "a greater revolution in English poetry than it experienced before, or can ever probably be susceptible of again." We, at this distance of time, can only by familiar and intimate acquaintance with the literature extending from the reign of the last of the Tudors to the last of the Stuarts, appreciate even in a low degree the extent of this revolution. Dryden "simplified, strengthened, and enlarged" the expression of our national verse. "The fantastical conceits, and involved casuistry of the metaphysical poets faded before the broad light of his genius, and he established in their place a poetry massive and clear, grand and noble in the utterance, and thoroughly national in its spirit and in the integrity of its diction." We should be sorry to see the Elizabethan minstrels, and their immediate followers, with all their imperfections on their heads, discarded for the sake of Glorious John—for they were rich in qualities wherein he was poor indeed—qualities too, which, after all, take a higher place in the true regions of poetry[2] than those by which he is distinctively ennobled; but we acquiesce in the importance attributed by his present editor to the result of his innovations.
Several hitherto unpublished letters are given in the Memoir, thanks to the industrious researches of Mr. Bell, and the courtesy of the living representative of Dryden's family. There is also "at least one new and very material fact," on which its discoverer, with a satisfaction highly natural in such a case, lays very considerable stress. This fact relates to the "cause and effect" chronology of the poet's "perversion" to Romanism. What Mr. Bell has discovered is, that, whereas it has hitherto been believed that the pension granted by James II. instantly
- ↑ Marmion. Introduction to Canto First.
- ↑ Says Wordsworth: "I admire his talents and genius highly—but his is not a poetical genius. The only qualities I can find in Dryden that are essentially poetical, are a certain ardour and impetuosity of mind, with an excellent ear." Wordsworth contends, moreover, that Dryden's language, notwithstanding his great command of it, is not really poetical language, "being neither of the imagination nor of the passions," that is to say, the amiable, the ennobling, or the intense passions. It would be "as when one letteth out water," were we to discuss the general position here assumed, or its special application to John Dryden. And then Mr. Bell's reminder is unanswerable, if not all-sufficient, that let the critics quarrel as they will, out of the strife of tongues there rises a still small voice of consentaneous homage to Dryden's fame, Dryden's power, Dryden's massive strength.
