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Made in Great Britain
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The Temple Press Letchworth
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J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd. Aldine House Bedford St. London

First published in this edition 1912 Last reprinted 1950

821.4
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66

INTRODUCTION

JOHN DRYDEN was born at Aldwinkle All Saints, Northamptonshire, on the 9th August 1631, and was educated at Westminster and at Trinity College, Cambridge. In 1654, the year in which he took his degree, his father died, leaving him a small property. He then drifted to London, where he seems for a time to have been employed in some secretarial capacity or clerkship. His first substantial experiment in literature—the "Heroic Stanzas on the Death of Oliver Cromwell "-appeared in 1659. In these bombastic verses, with all their crudities, affectations, and "metaphysical" conceits, not even the most prescient critic could have detected any indication of the splendid powers which Dryden's work was presently to reveal. With the return of the Stuarts the young poet found it convenient to change his politics, and his next publications celebrated the "happy restoration " and coronation of Charles II. These are marked indeed by a great advance in form and style, but they are now chiefly valuable as showing that Dryden's genius ripened very slowly, In 1663 he married Lady Elizabeth Howard, sister of his friend, Sir Robert Howard, the Crites of the "Essay of Dramatic Poesy;" but the union was not a fortunate one.

By this time Dryden was working his way steadily into notice as a playwright, though he gained no pronounced success till the production (in collaboration with Howard) of "The Indian Queen" in 1664, and its sequel, "The Indian Emperor," in 1665. Then came the plague, the closing of the theatres, and the composition of the "Essay of Dramatic Poesy" and the long 'heroic poem, Annus Mirabilis." The faults of the latter work are numerous and glaring; but it has vigour and distinction, and easily placed its author in the front rank of English poets at a time when poetic genius was at a low ebb, and there were few indeed to contest his position.

With the re-opening of the theatres, Dryden returned with great energy to the dramatic field, and for a number of years continued to produce plays of varying merit and of very

different styles. But though his dramatic works bulk large in his collected writings, they constitute, taken in the mass, the least vital and permanently interesting portion of his total output. While, as the essays here reprinted show, he devoted much attention to critical questions connected with the drama, and wrote of these with remarkable insight and sagacity, his theoretical knowledge of technical principles was not supported by creative power. His tragedies, belonging for the most part to the melodramatic, or so-called "heroic class, had little truth of nature to keep them alive when the taste to which they had appealed passed away; and he himself condemned his comedies to well-merited oblivion by his shameless indulgence in the foulness and profanity unfortunately so characteristic of the Restoration stage. His heroic dramas were ridiculed by the Duke of Buckingham and others in their pungent burlesque play, The Rehearsal," first performed in 1671; many years later—in 1698—he was severely taken to task for the offences of his comedies in the Rev. Jeremy Collier's "Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage.' It will be seen that at the very end of his life, in the preface to his Fables, he had the honesty and good sense to acknowledge the substantial justice of Collier's reproaches.

In 1670 Dryden was made poet-laureate and historiographer-royal; and in 1681 opened a new and most important chapter in his career by the publication of the first of his great satires, "Absalom and Achitophel." An outgrowth from the intense excitement caused by the alleged Popish Plot, this was directed immediately against the Earl of Shaftesbury, then intriguing to have the Duke of York excluded from the succession to the crown in favour of Charles II.'s illegitimate son, the young Duke of Monmouth. The sensation produced by this brilliant polemic was immense, and it is still considered, as Scott said, the finest political satire in the language. Master of a marvellously clear and forcible style, and with the power of making every detail tell, Dryden is here shown at his best, though the satires which followed-"The Medal" and "MacFlecknoe "—are scarcely less dexterous and effective. To this period also belong his two great theological poems, which are especially interesting as illustrating his controversial skill, his ability to make the most of any position he might at the time adopt, and his unrivalled facility as a reasoner in verse. The first of these "Religio Laici "-is a defence of the doctrines of

the Anglican Church, of which he was a member; the second -"The Hind and the Panther"-is an elaborate argument in favour of Roman Catholicism, to which he had in the meantime been converted. The question of the sincerity of his religious change, like that of the real significance of his political fluctuations, is an intricate one, and space cannot be afforded for a consideration of it here.1 But it will be well for the student of Dryden's literary criticism to note that his mind was in a state of almost perpetual vacillation about every subject which he took up, and that emphatic as was his expression of whatever opinion he chanced to hold at any given moment, his changes of judgment were often rapid and fundamental.

He had once more trimmed his political sails to take advantage of the accession of James II. But the revolution of 1688 swept away all hopes he may have cherished of recognition and advancement. Deprived of all his offices and of the income he derived from them, Dryden now accepted with manly courage and dignity the troubles which darkened his declining years, and, turning with renewed industry to literature, maintained under the burden of increasing ill-health a wonderful activity to the end. He produced more plays, translated Juvenal, Persius, and Virgil, and in his Fables (paraphrases from the "Iliad," Ovid, Boccaccio, and Chaucer) gave the world some of his finest work. These were published in November 1699. On the 1st of May of the following year he died.

Milton excepted-and this older and greater John is really a survivor of "the mighty race before the flood "-Dryden is in all respects the most important figure in English literature during the second half of the seventeenth century. Here he merits special attention as our first great prose writer and first systematic critic. English prose before the Restoration— the prose, for example, of Raleigh and Hooker—was stately, rich, and at times magnificent; but it was too cumbrous, intricate, and unwieldy for common use; and it was this kind of prose which, in Dryden's early manhood, was still being written by such men as Milton, Clarendon, and Jeremy Taylor. It was a most important part of the business of the Restoration period-a business which its pedestrian temper particularly fitted it to undertake—to perfect and give currency to an English style which, like the French style by which 'It is admirably treated by Scott, in his Life of Dryden, § 6.

it was largely influenced, should be clear, simple, direct, flexible, and serviceable for the ordinary purposes of exposition and discussion; and Dryden beyond all other men is to be regarded as the leader in this much-needed work of reform. And as the Restoration was the age of the new prose, so it was the age of the new criticism; for though a great deal of criticism had been produced in England before this, it was now for the first time that men began to be seriously concerned about the principles of literature and to analyse methods, institute comparisons, investigate rules, and seek for definite standards of judgment. Here again the power and weight of Dryden's genius gave him an easy supremacy. Johnson called him " the Father of English criticism," and we need scarcely challenge the title.

It was undoubtedly in the dramatic field that Dryden's best work in criticism was done, and of the value of this work the reader of the present volume will now be in a position to judge for himself. To read his essays profitably, however, it is essential that we should place ourselves at the point of view of the time when they were written. It must be remembered that, largely as a result of England's new political and social relations, a great enthusiasm for all things French grew up in this country after the Restoration. Adopting many of the habits, manners, and ideals of their neighbours across the Channel, our cultured classics learned to regard their drama also with the utmost admiration. Now the French dramathe "neo-classic drama ' as it is called-was specially marked by structural correctness, respect for decorum, dignity of mode and speech, love of high-flown rhetoric, and strict adherence, in theory at any rate, to the classic unities of time, place, and action. It was thus inevitable that the newly-bred interest in a form of dramatic art so unlike that of our older stage should bring about a widespread neglect of the free romantic type of play, and lead to openly expressed contempt of the work of the pre-Restoration men, including Shakespeare himself. At the same time, various questions connected with the practice of the French playwrights came naturally to the front: as to the value of the unities, for example, the significance of the love-motive, and the use of narrative instead of action and of rhyme instead of blank verse. Furthermore, throughout the current discussion of these, as of all other similar matters, it was the habit of the age to consult the precedents furnished by antiquity and invoke the authority