public. His comedies were enlivened by witty allusions and curious intrigue; his tragedies were sustained by picturesque situations and powerful declamation. Over all he threw the veil of graceful versification, easy, melodious, balancing grievous defects of sense by noble harmony of sound. His recognition of his own indebtedness to this help may have made him so long an advocate of the use of rhyme in tragedy. In his later years, an intimate acquaintance with the Shakespearean authors led Dryden to a juster idea of the province of the drama. He returned to the national use of blank verse, and developed considerable power in portraying violent passion and strongly-marked character. There is splendid imagery in many of his passages. In the preface of All for Love, the poet thus acknowledges the source of his inspiration: "In my style I have professed to imitate the divine Shakespeare.

I hope I may affirm, and without vanity, that by imitating him I have excelled myself."

Dryden's non-dramatic poems were generally written in the heroic couplet, a measure which he wielded with peculiar power. Its regular structure served his purpose alike in argument, description, narration, and declamation. The flowing music of the rhythm, instead of weakening his thought, seemed to give it point and energy. His was a mind in which understanding outweighed imagination. The productions of his earlier years, the Heroic Stanzas on the Death of Cromwell and the Annus Mirabilis, though they rise far above the level of ordinary productions, rise by virtue of excellences of style. But fourteen years later those excellences of style, when vitalized by deep thought and genuine purpose, electrified all England. Absalom and Achitophel exhibits the finest qualities of the English language as a vehicle for reasoning and description. It is full of masterpieces of characterpainting, not always just, but always vigorous. Religio

Laici and the Hind and Panther display Dryden's power in that most difficult species of writing which masks abstract reasoning in poetical form. The arguments of each are clear. The powerful march of the thought, the noble outbursts of enthusiasm, the rhetoric, and the beauty of the abundant illustration, take the judgment by storm, and make us alternately converts to the one faith and to the other. Religio Laici is a direct expression of doctrinal views. The Hind and Panther is half-allegorical in form. Two animals are represented as engaging in an elaborate argument concerning the churches which they symbolize. The "milk-white hind" is the Roman Catholic, the panther the Established Church, while various minor sects take part in the discussion in the characters of the wolf, the bear, the fox, etc. The absurdity of this plan, half-excused by its novelty, is sometimes wholly forgotten in the scope it gives for picturesque imagery and witty descriptive touches.

Many beautiful songs are interspersed among the scenes of Dryden's dramas; but his most admired lyric is the Ode on St. Cecilia's Day* (150). It was written to be set to music, and celebrates the powers and triumphs of that art. In energy and in harmony it surpasses all other lyrics of our language.

Dryden's version of the Eneid is the most famous of his translations. The translator had a spirit much unlike that of the old master, and could not reproduce the spirit of the poem. The majesty of Virgil's manner is always tempered by consummate grace; and Dryden, however endowed with majesty, was deficient in elegance and grace. He was too free and careless to give a faithful version of the most accu

"Mr. St. John, afterwards Lord Bolingbroke, happening to pay a morning visit to Dryden, whom he always respected, found him in an unusual agitation of spirits, even to a trembling. On inquiring the cause-'I have been up all night,' replied the old bard; 'my musical friends made me promise to write them an ode for the Feast of St. Cecilia; I have been so struck with the subject which occurred to me, that I could not leave it till I had completed it-here it is, finished at one sitting.'"-Warton.

rate of poems. A similar lack of adaptability is noticed in his renderings of the Fables from Chaucer and Boccaccio; but their flowing ease of expression, the frequent recurrence of beautiful lines and striking images, and their freedom from the author's fault of occasional coarseness, make them most welcome illustrations of his poetical power.

Dryden's prose writings are numerous, and must have weight in determining our estimate of his ability and influence. They are in the forms of essays, prefaces, or dedications prefixed to his various works. He was the first enlightened critic who wrote in the English language; but in criticism as in poetry he was a development. Macaulay acutely remarks, that no man influenced his age so much as Dryden, because no man was so much influenced by his age. An Essay on Dramatic Poetry was the earliest statement of his critical system. Its general spirit is that of servile conformity to popular opinion; but its reasoning, albeit from false premises, is cogent. The style of his prose writing was admirable; his English was lively, vigorous, idiomatic, equally removed from mannerism and from carelessness.

Interesting discussions of Dryden's life and works may be found in Johnson's Lives of the Poets, Macaulay's Essays, Wilson's Essays (Blackwood's Magazine, Vol. LVII.), Reed's British Poets, Vol. I., Hazlitt's Works, Vol. IV., Part II., Sec. IV., Hallam's Literature of Europe, Vol. IV., North American Review, July, 1868, Taine's English Literature.

W

CHAPTER XVI.

THE CORRUPT DRAMA.

HEN Dryden wrote for the stage, he degraded his talents, as we have seen, to the service of an immoral public. That same corrupt society debauched a company of brilliant men, younger than Dryden, who devoted themselves exclusively to dramatic composition. In aim and in manner they are so unlike the great playwrights of the preceding century that they are often spoken of as the authors of "The New Drama." The aim of Shakespeare and his comrades had been to portray nature and natural passion. Recognizing the fact that nature is infinitely complex, they had introduced comic scenes and characters into their tragedies, as they admitted elevated feeling and language into their comedies. In the new drama that followed the Restoration, an exaggerated, bombastic tragedy, on the one hand, was counterbalanced, on the other, by the comedy of artificial life. Material was drawn, not from nature, but from society. Declamation and pompous tirades displaced the old dialogue-a dialogue so varied, so natural, touching every key of human feeling. Wit usurped the province of humor; and the comic dramatists delineated, not character, but manners. They were apt in reflecting the spirit of their age; but they had no deep philosophic insight into human nature. Their works are a splendid revelation of the powers of the English language; yet few among them are capable of awakening a thrill of genuine sympathetic feeling. They do not deal with the springs of human passion and action; moreover there is an ingrained profligacy about them; and so, while they lack the one quality that would make them attractive, they display the spirit that makes them repulsive to the modern taste.

The works of Dryden may be regarded as the link connecting the older drama with the new.

William Wycherley (1640-1715) was the first of the comic dramatists who reproduced to the fullest extent the peculiar influences of his day. He received his education in the household of a French noble, and returned to England to become a brilliant figure in the society of London. His first comedy, Love in a Wood, was acted when he was thirty-two years old. The Gentleman Dancing-Master, The Country Wife, and The Plain Dealer followed at irregular intervals, the last one appearing in 1677; and these four plays are the only results of his dramatic work. He soon after lost the favor of the Court through an unfortunate marriage, and the remainder of his life was melancholy and ignoble. At the age of sixty-five he made a vain attempt to regain public admiration by means of a collection of poetical miscellanies; but being stained with all the immorality of his youthful productions, and redeemed by none of their intellectual brilliancy, the book fell dead upon the market.

The small number of Wycherley's dramatic works, as well as the style of their composition, indicates that he was neither very original in conception, nor capable of producing anything, save by patient labor and careful revision. The leading ideas of his two best comedies are derived from Molière. But Wycherley, infected with the corruption of his age, modified the data of the great French dramatist, and so changed what was pure as to outrage moral sensibility. Setting aside this ingrained fault, Wycherley's plots and characters reveal much ingenuity and humorous power. His plays are admirably adapted for representation. Frequent sudden transitions of the intrigue fascinate the attention without fatiguing it, and give rise to striking “situations," which are always treated with masterly comic effect. The dialogue is easy, vivacious, amusing, and its touches of witty satire are frequent. The Country Wife is generally pronounced to be the best of his comedies.

In the esteem of his contemporaries William Congreve (1669 *-1729) stood pre-eminent among the comic dramatists. He had the tastes of the man of fashion, with the talents of the man of letters; and his education at Trinity College, Dublin, gave him

* The inscription on his monument says that he was born in 1672.