APPENDIX I

POEMS ATTRIBUTED TO DRYDEN OR ONLY IN PART WRITTEN BY HIM

[The canon of Dryden's writings is not easy to determine. Dryden seems to have had no trace of petty vanity in regard to his own minor works. For one of Tonson's miscellany volumes he might gather together a dozen old prologues and songs that he had lying by him, but further than this he made no attempt to collect his occasional poems. Hence it is likely that among the anonymous pieces printed in miscellanies, between 1660 and 1700, by busy and conscienceless editors, there may be found some written by him. After his death many pieces, some certainly genuine, others as certainly spurious, were published under his name.

In the text of the present volume there are included several poems that are only in part by Dryden, or that may not be his work at all: see, for example, the headnotes on pages 76, 137. In the present Appendix there are included: (1) some pieces ascribed to Dryden in his own time, or shortly after it, but of doubtful authenticity; (2) some poems assigned to Dryden on internal evidence, in modern times; (3) a translation of Boileau's Art of Poetry, in which Dryden had some small share. Finally, there follows a series of titles of poems that have been printed in editions of Dryden's works, or have been otherwise attributed to him, but that are in all probability spurious. An explanatory note accompanies each title.]

PROLOGUE, EPILOGUE, AND SONG
FROM THE INDIAN QUEEN

[This heroic play was first printed in Four New Plays. ... written by. ... Sir Robert Howard, 1665. It was first acted in January, 1664 (Pepys' Diary, January 27). Dryden's name was never joined to it in his lifetime; nor was the play included in the first collected edition of his dramatic works, published in 1701. But in his Connection of The Indian Emperor to The Indian Queen (Scott-Saintsbury edition, ii. 321) Dryden claims part of the latter drama as his own work. (Compare headnote, page 21.) It is therefore just possible that he is the author of one or more of the following pieces.]

PROLOGUE

As the music plays a soft air, the curtain rises softly, and discovers an Indian boy and girl sleeping under two plantain trees; and, when the curtain is almost up, the music turns into a tune expressing an alarm, at which the boy wakes, and speaks:

Boy. Wake, wake, Quevira! our soft rest
must cease,

And fly together with our country's peace;
No more must we sleep under plantain shade,
Which neither heat could pierce, nor cold in-
vade;

Where bounteous nature never feels decay,
And op'ning buds drive falling fruits away.
QUEVIRA. Why should men quarrel here,

where all possess

10

As much as they can hope for by success?
None can have most, where nature is so kind
As to exceed man's use, tho' not his mind.
Boy. By ancient prophecies we have been
told,

Our world shall be subdued by one more old;
And, see, that world already 's hither come.
QUE. If these be they, we welcome then our
doom.

Their looks are such that mercy flows from