Chapter 21

Paquot states the number of the printed works and treatises of the elder Drusius at forty-eight, and of the unprinted at upwards of twenty. Of the former more than two-thirds were inserted in the collection entitledCritici sacri, sive annolata doctissimorum virorum in Vetus et Novum Testamentum(Amsterdam, 1698, in 9 vols. folio, or London, 1660, in 10 vols. folio). Amongst the works of Drusius not to be found in this collection may be mentioned—(1)Alphabetum Hebraicum vetus(1584, 4to); (2)Tabulae in grammaticam Chaldaicam ad usum juventutis(1602, 8vo); (3) An edition of Sulpicius Severus (Franeker, 1807, 12mo); (4)Opuscula quae ad grammaticam spectant omnia(1609, 4to); (5)Lacrymae in obitum J. Scaligeri(1609, 4to); and (6)Grammatica linguae sanctae nova(1612, 4to).

DRUSUS, MARCUS LIVIUS,Roman statesman, was colleague of Gaius Gracchus in the tribuneship, 122b.c.The proposal of Gracchus (q.v.) to confer the full franchise on the Latins had been opposed not only by the senate, but also by the mob, who imagined that their own privileges would thereby be diminished. Drusus threatened to veto the proposal. Encouraged by this, the senatorial party put up Drusus to outbid Gracchus. Gracchus had proposed to found colonies outside Italy; Drusus provided twelve in Italy, to each of which 3000 citizens were to be sent. Gracchus had proposed to distribute allotments to the poorer citizens subject to a state rent-charge; Drusus promised them free of all charge, and further that they should be inalienable. In addition to the franchise, immunity from corporal punishment (even in the field) was promised the Latins. The absence of Gracchus, and the inefficiency of his representative at Rome, led to the acceptance of these proposals, which were never intended to be carried. Drusus himself declined all responsibility in connexion with carrying them out. He was rewarded for his services by the consulship (112), and the title ofpatronus senatus. He received Macedonia for his province, where he distinguished himself in a campaign against the Scordisci, whom he drove across the Danube, being the first Roman general who reached that river. It is possible that he is the Drusus mentioned by Plutarch as having died in 109, the year of his censorship.

Appian,Bell. Civ.i. 23; Plutarch,Gaius Gracchus, 8-11; Florus iii. 4; A. H. J. Greenidge,Hist. of Rome, vol. i. (1904).

His son,Marcus Livius Drusus, became tribune of the people in 91b.c.He was a thoroughgoing conservative, wealthy and generous, and a man of high integrity. With some of the more intelligent members of his party (such as Marcus Scaurus and L. Licinius Crassus the orator) he recognized the need of reform. At that time an agitation was going on for the transfer of the judicial functions from the equites to the senate; Drusus proposed as a compromise a measure which restored to the senate the office of judices, while its numbers were doubled by the admission of 300 equites. Further, a special commission was to be appointed to try and sentence all judices guilty of taking bribes. But the senate was lukewarm, and the equites, whose occupation was threatened, offered the most violent opposition. In order, therefore, to catch the popular votes, Drusus proposed the establishment of colonies in Italy and Sicily, and an increased distribution of corn at a reduced rate. By help of these riders the bill was carried. Drusus now sought a closer alliance with the Italians, promising them the long-coveted boon of the Roman franchise. The senate broke out into open opposition. His laws were abrogated as informal, and each party armed its adherents for the civil struggle which was now inevitable. Drusus was stabbed one evening as he was returning home. His assassin was never discovered.

See Rome:History, ii. “The Republic” (Period C); also Appian,Bell. Civ.i. 35; Florus iii. 17; Diod. Sic. xxxvii. 10; Livy,Epit.70; Vell. Pat. ii. 13.

DRUSUS, NERO1CLAUDIUS(38-9b.c.) Roman general, son of Tiberius Claudius Nero and Livia Drusilla, stepson of Augustus and younger brother of the emperor Tiberius. Having held the office of quaestor and acted as praetor for his brother during the latter’s absence in Gaul, he began (in 15b.c.) the military career which has made his name famous. In conjunction with Tiberius, he carried on a successful campaign against the Raeti and Vindelici, who, although repulsed from Italy, continued to threaten the frontiers of Gaul. The credit of the decisive victory, however, must be assigned to Tiberius. Two of theOdesof Horace (iv. 4 and 14) were written to glorify the exploits of the brothers. In 13 Drusus was sent as governor to the newly organized province of the three Gauls, where considerable discontent had been aroused by the exactions of the Roman governor Licinius. Drusus made a fresh assessment for taxation purposes, and summoned the Gallic representatives to a meeting at Lugdunum to discuss their grievances. It was of great importance to pacify the Gauls, in order to have his hands free to deal with the German tribes, one of which, the Sugambri, on the right bank of the Rhine, had seized the opportunity, during the absence of Augustus, to cross the river (12). Drusus drove them back and pursued them through the island of the Batavi and the land of the Usipetes (Usipes, Usipii) to their own territory, which he devastated. Sailing down the Rhine, he subdued the Frisii and, in order to facilitate operations against the Chauci, dug a canal (Fossa Drusiana) leading from the Rhenus (Rhine) to the Isala (Yssel)2into the lacus Flevus (Zuidersee) and the German Ocean. Making his way along the Frisian coast, he conquered the island of Burchanis (Borkum), defeated the Bructeri in a naval engagement on the Amisia (Ems), and went on to the mouth of the Visurgis (Weser) to attack the Chauci. On the way back his vessels grounded on the shallows, and were only got off with the assistance of the Frisii. Winter being close at hand, the campaign was abandoned till the following spring, and Drusus returned to Rome with the honour of having been the first Roman general to reach the German Ocean.

In his second campaign (11), Drusus defeated the Usipetes, threw a bridge over the Luppia (Lippe), attacked the Sugambri, and advanced through their territory and that of the Tencteri and Chatti as far as the Weser, where he gained a victory over the Cherusci. Lack of provisions, the approach of winter, and an inauspicious portent prevented him from crossing the Weser. While making his way back to the Rhine he fell into an ambuscade, but the carelessness of the enemy enabled him to inflict a crushing defeat upon them. In view of future operations, he built two castles, one at the junction of the Luppia and Aliso (Alme), the other in the territory of the Chatti on the Taunus, near Moguntiacum (Mainz).

The third campaign (10) was of little importance. The Chatti had joined the Sugambri in revolt; and, after some insignificant successes, Drusus returned with Augustus and Tiberius to Rome, and was elected consul for the following year. In spite of unfavourable portents at Rome, he determined to enter upon his fourth and last campaign (9) without delay. He attacked and defeated the Chatti, Suebi, Marcomanni and Cherusci, crossed the Weser and penetrated as far as the Albis (Elbe). Here trophies were set up to mark the farthest point ever reached by a Roman army. Various measures were taken to secure the possession of the conquered territory: fortresses were erected along the Elbe, Weser and Maas (Meuse,Mosa); a flotilla was placed upon the Rhine and a dam built upon the right arm of its estuary to increase the flow of water into the canal mentioned above. Drusus was said to have been deterred from crossing the Elbe by the sudden appearance of a woman of supernatural size, who predicted his approaching end. On his return, probably between the Elbe and the Saale (Sala), his horse stumbled and threw him. His leg was fractured and he died thirty days after the accident,on the 14th of September. Suetonius mentions an absurd rumour that he had been poisoned by order of Augustus, because he had refused to obey the order for his recall. The body was carried to the winter quarters of the army, whence it was escorted by Tiberius to Rome, the procession being joined by Augustus at Ticinum (Pavia). Tiberius delivered an oration over the remains in the Forum, whence they were conveyed to the Campus Martius and cremated, and ashes being deposited in the mausoleum of Augustus.

Drusus was one of the most distinguished men of his time. His agreeable manners, handsome person and brilliant military talents gained him the affection of the troops, while his sympathy with republican principles, endeared him to the people. It is not too much to say that, had he and his son lived long enough, they might have brought about the abolition of the monarchy. Although the successes of Drusus, resulting in the subjection of the German tribes from the Rhine to the Elbe, were too rapid to be lasting, they brought home the fact of the existence of the Romans to many who had never heard their name. For his victories he received the title of Germanicus. He married Antonia, the daughter of Marcus Antonius the triumvir, by whom he had three children: Germanicus, adopted by Tiberius; Claudius, afterwards emperor; and a daughter Livilla.

The chief ancient authorities for the life of Drusus are Dio Cassius, the epitomes of Livy, Suetonius (Claudius), Tacitus (portions of theAnnals), Florus (whose chief source is Livy), Velleius Paterculus, and theConsolatio ad Liviam. The German campaigns were described in the last books of Livy and the lostBella Germaniaeof the elder Pliny. As would naturally be expected, they have produced an extensive literature in Germany, J. Asbach’s “Die Feldzüge des Nero Claudius Drusus” (Rhein. Jahrb.lxxxv. 14-30) being especially recommended; see also Mommsen’sHistory of the Roman Provinces, i.; Merivale,History of the Romans under the Empire, ch. 36; A. Stein in Pauly-Wissowa’sRealencyclopädie(1899), where other authorities are given; J. C. Tarver,Tiberius the Tyrant(1902).

1Originally Decimus.2The district extending from Westervoort to Doesborgh.

1Originally Decimus.

2The district extending from Westervoort to Doesborgh.

DRUSUS CAESAR(c. 15b.c.-a.d.23), commonly called Drusus junior, to distinguish him from his uncle Nero Claudius Drusus, was the only son of the emperor Tiberius by his first wife Vipsania Agrippina. After having held several curule offices, he was consul elect ina.d.14, the year of Augustus’s death. His father, on his accession to the throne, immediately sent him to put down a mutiny of the troops in Pannonia, a task which he successfully accomplished (Tacitus,Annals, i. 24-30). As governor of Illyricum (17), he set the Germanic tribes against one another, and encouraged Catualda, chief of the Gothones, to drive out Marbod (Maroboduus), king of the Marcomanni. On his return Drusus was consul a second time (21) and in the following year received the tribunician authority from Tiberius, which practically indicated him as heir to the throne. Sejanus, who also aspired to the supreme power, determined to remove Drusus. He endeavoured to poison Tiberius’s mind against him, seduced Drusus’s wife and persuaded her to assist him in murdering her husband. Her physician Eudemus prepared and the eunuch Lygdus administered a slow poison, from the effects of which Drusus died after a lingering illness. Although Tiberius is said to have received the news of his death with indifference, there is no reason to suppose that he had any hand in it; indeed, he seems to have entertained a genuine affection for his son. Drusus was a man of violent passions, a drunkard and a debauchee, but not entirely devoid of better feelings, as is shown by his undoubtedly sincere grief at the death of Germanicus. The cunning and reserve which he exhibited on occasion were probably due to the instructions or influence of Tiberius (Annals, iii. 8), since he was himself naturally frank and open, and for this reason, notwithstanding his vices, more popular than his father. He revelled in bloody gladiatorial displays, and the sharpest swords used on such occasions were called “Drusine.”

See Tacitus,Annals, i. 76, iv. 8-11; Dio Cassius lvii. 13, 14; Suetonius,Tiberius, 62; J. C. Tarver,Tiberius the Tyrant(1902).

DRYADES,orHamadryades, in Greek mythology, nymphs of trees and woods. Each particular tree (δρῦς) was the home of its own special Dryad, who was supposed to be born and to die with it (ἅμα).

DRYANDER, JONAS(1748-1810), Swedish botanist, was born in 1748. By his uncle, Dr Lars Montin, to whom his education was entrusted, he was sent to the university of Gothenburg, whence he removed to Lund. After taking his degree there in 1776, he studied at Upsala under Linnaeus, and then became for a time tutor to a young Swedish nobleman. He next visited England, and, on the death of his friend Dr Daniel Charles Solander (1736-1782), succeeded him as librarian to Sir Joseph Banks. He was librarian to the Royal Society and also to the Linnean Society. Of the latter, in 1788, he was one of the founders, and, when it was incorporated by royal charter in 1802, he took a leading part in drawing up its laws and regulations. He was vice-president of the society till his death, which took place in London on the 19th of October 1810. Besides papers in the Transactions of the Linnean and other societies, Dryander publishedDissertatio gradualis fungos regno vegetabili vindicans(Lund, 1776), andCatalogus bibliothecae historico-naturalis Josephi Banks, Bart.(London, 1796-1800, 5 vols.). He also edited the first and part of the second edition of W. Aiton’sHortus Kewensisand W. Roxburgh’sPlants of the Coast of Coromandel.

DRYBURGH ABBEY,a monastic ruin in the extreme south-west of Berwickshire, Scotland, about 5 m. S.E. of Melrose, and 1¼ m. E. of St Boswells station on the North British railway’s Waverley route from Edinburgh to Carlisle. The name has been derived from the Gaelicdarach bruach, “oak bank,” in allusion to the fact that the Druids once practised their rites here. The abbey occupies the spot where, about 522, St Modan, an Irish Culdee, established a sanctuary—a secluded position on a tongue of land washed on three sides by the Tweed. Founded in 1150 by David I.—though it has also been ascribed to Hugh de Morville (d. 1162), lord of Lauderdale and constable of Scotland—it enjoyed great prosperity until 1322, when it was partially destroyed by the English under Edward II. It suffered again at the hands of Richard II. in 1385, and was reduced to ruin during the expedition of the earl of Hertford in 1545. After the Reformation the estate was erected into a temporal lordship and given (1604) by James VI. to John Erskine, 2nd earl of Mar. At a later date it was sold, but reverted to a branch of the Erskines in 1786, when it was acquired by the 11th earl of Buchan. In 1700 the abbey lands belonged to Thomas Haliburton, Scott’s great-grandfather, and, but for an extravagant grand-uncle who became bankrupt and had to part with the property, they would have descended to Sir Walter by inheritance. “We have nothing left of Dryburgh,” he said, “but the right of stretching our bones there.” The style in general is Early English, but the west door and the restored entrance from the nave to the cloisters are fine examples of transitional Norman. Though in various stages of decay, nearly every one of the monastic buildings is represented by a fragment. Of the cruciform church—190 ft. long by 75 broad at the transepts—there remain some of the outer walls, a segment of the choir, the east aisle of the north transept, the stumps of some of the pillars of the nave, the west gable, the south transept and its adjacent chapel of St Modan. The most beautiful of these relics is St Mary’s aisle of the north transept, in which were buried Sir Walter Scott (1832), his wife, son, his son-in-law John Gibson Lockhart, and his ancestors, the Haliburtons of New Mains. Sir Walter’s tomb is a plain block of polished Peterhead granite, inscribed only with his name and the dates of his birth and death. The next aisle is the burial-place of the Erskines of Shielhill and the Haigs of Bemersyde. On the south side of the church, at a lower level, stand the cloisters, about 100 ft. square, bounded on the west by the dungeons, on the south-west by the cellars and refectory, in the west wall of which is an exquisite ivy-clad rose window, and on the east by the chapter-house, on a still lower level. The chapter-house, a lofty building with vaulted roof, is the most complete structure of the group, and adjoining it on the south are, first the abbot’s parlour and then the library, the three apartments communicating with each other, and constituting the oldest portion of the abbey. In the grounds are many venerable trees, a yew near the chapter-house being at least coeval with the abbey.

DRYDEN, JOHN(1631-1700), English poet, born on or about the 9th of August 1631, at Aldwinkle, in Northamptonshire, was of Cumberland stock, though his family had been settled for three generations in Northamptonshire, had acquired estates and a baronetcy, and intermarried with landed families in that county. His great-grandfather, who first carried the name south, and acquired by marriage the estate of Canons Ashby, is said to have known Erasmus, and to have been so proud of the great scholar’s friendship that he gave the name of Erasmus to his eldest son. The name Erasmus was borne by the poet’s father, the third son of Sir Erasmus Dryden. The leanings and connexions of the family were Puritan and anti-monarchical. Sir Erasmus Dryden went to prison rather than pay loan money to Charles I.; the poet’s uncle, Sir John Dryden, and his father Erasmus, served on government commissions during the Commonwealth. His mother’s family, the Pickerings, were still more prominent on the Puritan side. Sir Gilbert Pickering, his cousin, was chamberlain to the Protector, and was summoned to Cromwell’s House of Lords in 1657. A trustworthy tradition asserts that John Dryden was born at the rectory of Aldwinkle All Saints, of which his maternal grandfather, Henry Pickering, was rector.

Dryden’s education was such as became a scion of these respectable families of squires and rectors, among whom the chance contact with Erasmus had left a certain tradition of scholarship. His father, whose own fortune, added to his wife’s, was not large, procured for the poet, who was the eldest of fourteen children, admission to Westminster school as a king’s scholar, under the famous Dr Busby. Some elegiac verses which Dryden wrote there on the death of a schoolfellow, Henry, Lord Hastings, son of the earl of Huntingdon, in 1649, were published inLacrymae Musarum, among other elegies by “divers persons of nobility and worth” in commemoration of the same event. He appeared soon after again in print, among writers of commendatory verses to a friend of his, John Hoddesdon, who published a volume ofEpigramsin 1650. Dryden’s contribution is signed “John Dryden of Trinity C.,” as he had gone up from Westminster to Cambridge in May 1650. He was elected a scholar of Trinity on the Westminster foundation in October of the same year, and took his degree of B.A. in 1654. The only recorded incident of his college residence is some unexplained act of disobedience to the vice-master, for which he was “put out of commons” and “gated” for a fortnight. His father died in 1654, leaving him master of two-thirds of a small estate near Blakesley, worth about £60 a year. The next three years he is said to have spent at Cambridge. In any case they were spent somewhere in study; for his first considerable poem bears indisputable marks of scholarly habits, as well as of a command of verse that could not have been acquired without practice.

The middle of 1657 is given as the date of his leaving the university to take up his residence in London. In one of his many subsequent literary quarrels, it was said by Shadwell that he had been clerk to Sir Gilbert Pickering, his cousin, who was chamberlain to Cromwell; and nothing is more likely than that he obtained some employment under his powerful cousin when he came to London. He is said to have lived at first in the house of his first publisher, Herringman, with whom he was connected till 1679, when Jacob Tonson began to publish his books. He first emerged from obscurity with hisHeroic Stanzas(1659) to the memory of the Protector. That these stanzas should have made him a name as a poet does not appear surprising when we compare them with Waller’s verses on the same occasion. Dryden took some time to consider them, and it was impossible that they should not give an impression of his intellectual strength. Donne was his model; it is obvious that both his ear and his imagination were saturated with Donne’s elegiac strains when he wrote; yet when we look beneath the surface we find unmistakable traces that the pupil was not without decided theories that ran counter to the practice of the master. It is plainly not by accident that each stanza contains one clear-cut brilliant point. The poem is an academic exercise, and it seems to be animated by an under-current of strong contumacious protest against the irregularities tolerated by the authorities. Dryden had studied the ancient classics for himself, and their method of uniformity and elaborate finish commended itself to his robust and orderly mind. In itself the poem is a magnificent tribute to the memory of Cromwell.

To those who regard the poet as a seer with a sacred mission, and refuse the name altogether to a literary manufacturer to order, it comes with a certain shock to find Dryden, the hereditary Puritan, the panegyrist of Cromwell, hailing the return of King Charles inAstraea Redux(1660), deploring his long absence, and proclaiming the despair with which he had seen “the rebel thrive, the loyal crost.”A Panegyric on the Coronationfollowed in 1661. From a literary point of view also,Astraea Reduxis inferior to theHeroic Stanzas.

Dryden was compelled to supplement his slender income by his writings. He naturally first thought of tragedy,—his own genius, as he has informed us, inclining him rather to that species of composition; and in the first year of the Restoration he wrote a tragedy on the fate of Henry, duke of Guise. But some friends advised him that its construction was not suited to the requirements of the stage, so he put it aside, and used only one scene of the original play later on, when he again attempted the subject with a more practised hand. Having failed to write a suitable tragedy, he next turned his attention to comedy, although, as he admitted, he had little natural turn for it. “I confess,” he said, in a short essay in his own defence, printed beforeThe Indian Emperor, “my chief endeavours are to delight the age in which I live. If the humour of this be for low comedy, small accidents and raillery, I will force my genius to obey it, though with more reputation I could write in verse. I know I am not so fitted by nature to write comedy; I want that gaiety of humour which is required to it. My conversation is slow and dull; my humour saturnine and reserved; in short, I am none of those who endeavour to break jests in company or make repartees. So that those who decry my comedies do me no injury, except it be in point of profit; reputation in them is the last thing to which I shall pretend.” He was really as well as ostentatiously a playwright; the age demanded comedies, and he endeavoured to supply the kind of comedy that the age demanded. His first attempt was unsuccessful. Bustle, intrigue and coarsely humorous dialogue seemed to him to be part of the popular demand; and, looking about for a plot, he found something to suit him in a Spanish source, and wroteThe Wild Gallant. The play was acted in February 1663, by Thomas Killigrew’s company in Vere Street. It was not a success, and Pepys showed good judgment in pronouncing the play “so poor a thing as ever I saw in my life.” Dryden never learned moderation in his humour; there is a student’s clumsiness and extravagance in his indecency; the plays of Etheredge, a man of the world, have not the uncouth riotousness of Dryden’s. Of this he seems to have been conscious, for when the play was revived, in 1667, he complained in the epilogue of the difficulty of comic wit, and admitted the right of a common audience to judge of the wit’s success. Dryden, indeed, took a lesson from the failure ofThe Wild Gallant; his next comedy,The Rival Ladies, also founded on a Spanish plot, produced before the end of 1663, and printed in the next year, was correctly described by Pepys as “a very innocent and most pretty witty play,” though there was much in it which the taste of our time would consider indelicate. But he never quite conquered his tendency to extravagance.The Wild Gallantwas not the only victim.The Assignation, or Love in a Nunnery, produced in 1673, shared the same fate; and even as late as 1680, when he had had twenty years’ experience to guide him,The Kind Keeper, or Mr Limberhamwas prohibited, after three representations, as being too indecent for the stage. Dislike to indecency we are apt to think a somewhat ludicrous pretext to be made by Restoration playgoers, and probably there was some other reason for the sacrifice ofLimberham; still there is a certain savageness in the spirit of Dryden’s indecency which we do not find in his most licentious contemporaries. The undisciplined force of the man carried him to an excess from which more dexterous writers held back.

After the production ofThe Rival Ladiesin 1663, Dryden assisted Sir Robert Howard in the composition of a tragedy in heroic verse,The Indian Queen, produced with great splendour in January 1664. He married Lady Elizabeth Howard, Sir Robert’s sister and daughter of the 1st earl of Berkshire, on the 1st of December 1663. Lady Elizabeth’s reputation was somewhat compromised before this union, which was not a happy one, and there is some evidence for the scandal in a letter written by her before her marriage to Philip, 2nd earl of Chesterfield.The Indian Queenwas a great success, one of the greatest since the reopening of the theatres. This was in all likelihood due much less to the heroic verse and the exclusion of comic scenes from the tragedy than to the magnificent scenic accessories—the battles and sacrifices on the stage, the spirits singing in the air, and the god of dreams ascending through a trap. The novelty of these Indian spectacles, as well as of the Indian characters, with the splendid Queen Zempoalla, acted by Mrs Marshall in a real Indian dress of feathers presented to her by Mrs Aphra Behn, as the centre of the play, was the chief secret of the success ofThe Indian Queen. These melodramatic properties were so marked a novelty that they could not fail to draw the town. Dryden was tempted to return to tragedy; he followed upThe Indian QueenwithThe Indian Emperor, or the Conquest of Mexico by the Spaniards, which was acted in 1665, and also proved a success.

But Dryden was not content with writing tragedies in rhymed verse. He took up the question of the propriety of rhyme in serious plays immediately after the success ofThe Indian Queen, in the preface to an edition (1664) ofThe Rival Ladies. In that first statement of his case, he considered the chief objection to the use of rhyme, and urged his chief argument in its favour. Rhyme was not natural, some people had said; to which he answers that it is as natural as blank verse, and that much of its unnaturalness is not the fault of the rhyme but of the writer, who has not sufficient command of language to rhyme easily. In favour of rhyme he has to say that it at once stimulates the imagination, and prevents it from being too discursive in its flights.

During the Great Plague, when the theatres were closed, and Dryden was living at Charlton, Wiltshire, at the seat of his father-in-law, the earl of Berkshire, he occupied a considerable part of his time in thinking over the principles of dramatic composition, and threw his conclusions into the form of a dialogue, which he called anEssay of Dramatick Poesieand published in 1668. The essay takes the form of a dialogue between Neander (Dryden), Eugenius (Charles, Lord Buckhurst, afterwards earl of Dorset), Crites (Sir R. Howard), and Lisideius (Sir C. Sedley), who is made responsible for the famous definition of a play as a “just and lively image of human nature, representing its passions and humours, and the changes of fortune to which it is subject, for the delight and instruction of mankind.” Dryden’s form is of course borrowed from the ancients, and his main source is the critical work of Corneille in the prefaces and discourses contained in the edition of 1660, but he was well acquainted with the whole body of contemporary French and Spanish criticism. Crites maintains the superiority of the classical drama; Lisideius supports the exacting rules of French dramatic writing; Neander defends the English drama of the preceding generations, including, in a long speech, an examination of Ben Jonson’sSilent Woman. Neander argues, however, that English drama has much to gain by the observance of exact methods of construction without abandoning entirely the liberty which English writers had always claimed. He then goes on to defend the use of rhyme in serious drama. Howard had argued against the use of rhyme in a “preface” toFour New Plays(1665), which had furnished the excuse for Dryden’s essay. Howard replied to Dryden’s essay in a preface toThe Duke of Lerma(1668). Dryden at once replied in a masterpiece of sarcastic retort and vigorous reasoning,A Defence of an Essay of Dramatique Poesie, prefixed to the second edition (1668) ofThe Indian Emperor. It is the ablest and most complete statement of his views about the employment of rhymed couplets in tragedy.

Before his return to town at the end of 1666, when the theatres (which had been closed during the disasters of 1665 and 1666) were reopened, Dryden wrote a poem on the Dutch war and the Great Fire entitledAnnus Mirabilis. The poem is in quatrains, the metre of hisHeroic Stanzasin praise of Cromwell, which Dryden chose, he tells us, “because he had ever judged it more noble and of greater dignity both for the sound and number than any other verse in use amongst us.” The preface to the poem contains an interesting discussion of what he calls “wit-writing,” introduced by the remark that “the composition of all poems is or ought to be of wit.” His description of the Great Fire is a famous specimen of this wit-writing, much more careless and daring, and much more difficult to sympathize with, than the graver conceits in his panegyric of the Protector. InAnnus Mirabilisthe poet apostrophizes the newly founded Royal Society, of which he had been elected a member in 1662.

From the reopening of the theatres in 1666 till November 1681, the date of hisAbsalom and Achitophel, Dryden produced nothing but plays. The stage was his chief source of income.Secret Love, or the Maiden Queen, a tragi-comedy, produced in March 1667, was based on an episode in theArtamène, ou le Grand Cyrusof Mlle de Scudéry, the historical original of the “Maiden Queen” being Christina, queen of Sweden. The prologue claims that the piece is written with pains and thought, by the exactest rules, with strict observance of the unities, and “a mingled chime of Jonson’s humour and of Corneille’s rhyme”; but it owed its success chiefly to the charm of Nell Gwyn’s acting in the part of Florimel. It is noticeable that only the more passionate parts of the dialogue are rhymed, Dryden’s theory apparently being that rhyme is then demanded for the elevation of the style. His next play,Sir Martin Mar-all, or the Feigned Innocence, an adaptation in prose of the duke of Newcastle’s translation of Molière’sL’Étourdi, was produced at the Duke’s theatre, without the author’s name, in 1667. It was about this time that Dryden became a retained writer under contract for the King’s theatre, receiving from it £300 or £400 a year, till it was burnt down in 1672, and about £200 for six years more till the beginning of 1678. His co-operation with Davenant in a new version (1667) of Shakespeare’sTempest—for his share in which Dryden can hardly be pardoned on the ground that the chief alterations were happy thoughts of Davenant’s, seeing that he affirms he never worked at anything with more delight—must also be supposed to be anterior to the completion of his contract with the Theatre Royal. He was engaged to write three plays a year, and he contributed only ten plays during the ten years of his engagement, finally exhausting the patience of his partners by joining in the composition of a play for the rival house. In adaptingL’Étourdi, Dryden did not catch Molière’s lightness of touch; his alterations go towards making the comedy into a farce. Perhaps all the more on this accountSir Martin Mar-allhad a great run at the theatre in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. There is always a certain coarseness in Dryden’s humour, apart from the coarseness of his age,—a certain forcible roughness of touch which belongs to the character of the man. HisAn Evening’s Love, or the Mock Astrologer, an adaptation fromLe Feint Astrologueof the younger Corneille, produced at the King’s theatre in 1668, seemed to Pepys “very smutty, and nothing so good asThe Maiden QueenorThe Indian Emperorof Dryden’s making.” Evelyn thought it foolish and profane, and was grieved “to see how the stage was degenerated and polluted by the licentious times.”Ladies à la Mode, another of Dryden’s contract comedies, produced in 1668, was “so mean a thing,” Pepys says, that it was only once acted, and Dryden never published it. Of his other comedies,Marriage à la Mode(produced 1672),The Assignation, or Love in a Nunnery(1673),The Kind Keeper, or Mr Limberham(1678), only the first was moderately successful.

While Dryden met with such indifferent success in his willing efforts to supply the demand of the age for low comedy, he struck upon a really popular and profitable vein in heroic tragedy.Tyrannic Love, or the Royal Martyr, a Roman playdealing with the persecution of the Christians by Maximin, in which St Catherine is introduced, and with her some supernatural machinery, was produced in 1669. It is in rhymed couplets, but the author again did not trust solely for success to them; for, besides the magic incantations, the singing angels, and the view of Paradise, he made Nell Gwyn, who had stabbed herself as Valeria, start to life again as she was being carried off the stage, and speak a riotous epilogue, in violent contrast to the serious character of the play.Almanzor and Almahide, or the Conquest of Granada, a tragedy in two parts, was written in 1669 to 1670. The historical background is taken chiefly from Mlle de Scudéry’s romance ofAlmahide, but Dryden borrows freely from other books of hers and her contemporaries. This piece seems to have given the crowning touch of provocation to the wits, who had never ceased to ridicule the popular taste for these extravagant heroic plays. Dryden almost invited burlesque in his epilogue to the second part ofThe Conquest of Granada, in which he charged the comedy of the Elizabethan age with coarseness and mechanical humour, and its conceptions of love and honour with meanness, and claimed for his own time and his own plays an advance in these respects.The Rehearsal, written by the duke of Buckingham, with the assistance, it was said, of Samuel Butler, Martin Clifford, Thomas Sprat and others, and produced in 1671, was a severe and just punishment for this boast. Davenant was originally the hero, but on his death in 1668 the satire was turned upon Dryden, who is here unmercifully ridiculed under the name of Bayes, the name being justified by his appointment in 1670 as poet laureate and historiographer to the king (with a pension of £300 a year and a butt of canary wine). It is said thatThe Rehearsalwas begun in 1663 and ready for representation before the plague. But this probably only means that Buckingham and his friends had resolved to burlesque the absurdities of Davenant’s operatic heroes inThe Siege of Rhodes, and the extravagant heroics ofThe Indian Queen. Materials accumulated upon them as the fashion continued, and by the time Dryden had produced hisTyrannic Love, and hisConquest of Granada, he had so established himself as the chief offender as to become naturally the central figure of the burlesque. Later Dryden fully avenged himself on Buckingham by his portrait of Zimri inAbsalom and Achitophel. His immediate reply is contained in the preface “Of Heroic Plays” and the “Defence of the Epilogue,” printed in the first edition (1672) of hisConquest of Granada. In these, so far from laughing with his censors, he addresses them from the eminence of success. “But I have already swept the stakes; and, with the common good fortune of prosperous gamesters, can be content to sit quietly; to hear my fortune cursed by some, and my faults arraigned by others, and to suffer both without reply.” Heroic verse, he assures them, is so established that few tragedies are likely henceforward to be written in any other metre. In the course of a year or twoThe Conquest of Granadawas attacked also by Elkanah Settle, on whom Dryden revenged himself later, making him the “Doeg” of the second part ofAbsalom and Achitophel.

His next tragedy,Amboyna(1673), an exhibition of certain atrocities committed by the Dutch on English merchants in the East Indies, put on the stage to inflame the public mind in view of the Dutch war, was written, with the exception of a few passages, in prose, and those passages in blank verse. An opera which he wrote in rhymed couplets, calledThe State of Innocence, and Fall of Man, an attempt to turn part ofParadise Lostinto rhyme, as a proof of its superiority to blank verse, was prefaced by an “Apology for Heroique Poetry and Poetique Licence,” and entered at Stationers’ Hall in 1674, but it was never acted. The redeeming circumstance about the performance is the admiration professed by the adapter for his original, which he pronounces “undoubtedly one of the greatest, most noble and most sublime poems which either this age or nation has produced.” Dryden is said to have had the elder poet’s leave “to tag his verses.” InAurengzebe, which was Dryden’s last, and also his best, rhymed tragedy, he borrowed from contemporary history, for the Great Mogul was still living. In the prologue he confessed that he had grown weary of his long-loved mistress rhyme and retracted, with characteristic frankness, his disparaging contrast of the Elizabethan with his own age. But the stings ofThe Rehearsalhad stimulated him to do his utmost to justify his devotion to his mistress, and he claims thatAurengzebeis “the most correct” of his plays. It was entered at Stationers’ Hall and probably acted in 1675, and published in the following year.

After the production ofAurengzebehe seems to have rested for an interval from writing, enabled to do so, probably by an additional pension of £100 granted to him by the king. During this interval he would seem to have reconsidered the principles of dramatic composition, and to have made a particular study of the works of Shakespeare. The fruits of this appeared inAll for Love, or the World Well Lost, a version of the story of Antony and Cleopatra, produced in 1678, which must be regarded as a very remarkable departure for a man of his age, and a wonderful proof of undiminished openness and plasticity of mind. In his previous writings on dramatic theory, Dryden, while admiring the rhyme of the French dramatists as an advance in art, did not give unqualified praise to the regularity of their plots; he was disposed to allow the irregular structure of the Elizabethan dramatists, as being more favourable to variety both of action and of character. But now, in frank imitation of Shakespeare, he abandoned rhyme, and, if we might judge fromAll for Love, and the precepts laid down in his “Grounds of Criticism in Tragedy,” prefixed toTroilus and Cressida(1679), the chief point in which he aimed at excelling the Elizabethans was in giving greater unity to his plot. He upheld still the superiority of Shakespeare to the French dramatists in the delineation of character, but he thought that the scope of the action might be restricted, and the parts bound more closely together with advantage.All for LoveandAntony and Cleopatraare two excellent plays for the comparison of the two methods. Dryden gave all his strength toAll for Love, writing the play for himself, as he said, and not for the public. Carrying out the idea expressed in the title, he represents the two lovers as being more entirely under the dominion of love than Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra. Shakespeare’s Antony is moved by other impulses than the passion for Cleopatra; it is his master motive, but it has to maintain a struggle for supremacy; “Roman thoughts” strike in upon him even in the very height of the enjoyment of his mistress’s love, he chafes under the yoke, and breaks away from her of his own impulse at the call of spontaneously reawakened ambition. Dryden’s Antony is so deeply sunk in love that no other impulse has power to stir him; it takes much persuasion and skilful artifice to detach him from Cleopatra even in thought, and his soul returns to her violently before the rupture has been completed. On the other hand, Dryden’s Cleopatra is so completely enslaved by love for Antony that she is incapable of using the calculated caprices and meretricious coquetries which Shakespeare’s Cleopatra deliberately practises as the highest art of love, the surest way of maintaining her empire over her great captain’s heart. It is with difficulty that Dryden’s Cleopatra will agree, on the earnest solicitation of a wily counsellor, to feign a liking for Dolabella to excite Antony’s jealousy, and she cannot keep up the pretence through a few sentences. The characters of the two lovers are thus very much contracted, indeed almost overwhelmed, beneath the pressure of the one ruling motive. And as Dryden thus introduces a greater regularity of character into the drama, so he also very much contracts the action, in order to give probability to this temporary subjugation of individual character. The action of Dryden’s play takes place wholly in Alexandria, within the compass of a few days; it does not, like Shakespeare’s, extend over several years, and present incessant changes of scene. Dryden chooses, as it were, a fragment of a historical action, a single moment during which motives play within a narrow circle, the culminating point in the relations between his two personages. He devotes his whole play, also, to those relations; only what bears upon them is admitted. In Shakespeare’s play we get a certain historical perspective, in which the love of Antony and Cleopatraappears in its true proportions beneath the firmament that overhangs human affairs. In Dryden’s play this love is our universe; all the other concerns of the world retire into a shadowy, indistinct background. If we rise from a comparison of the plays with an impression that the Elizabethan drama is a higher type of drama, taking Dryden’s own definition of the word as “a just and lively image of human nature,” we rise also with an impression of Dryden’s power such as we get from nothing else that he had written since hisHeroic Stanzas, twenty years before.

It was twelve years before Dryden produced another tragedy worthy of the power shown inAll for Love.Don Sebastianwas acted and published in 1690. In the interval, to sum up briefly Dryden’s work as a dramatist, he wroteOedipus(pr. 1679) andThe Duke of Guise(pr. 1683) in conjunction with Nathaniel Lee;Troilus and Cressida(1679);The Spanish Friar(1681);Albion and Albanius, an opera (1685);Amphitryon(1690). InTroilus and Cressidahe follows Shakespeare closely in the plot, but the dialogue is rewritten throughout, and not for the better. The versification and the language of the first and the third acts ofOedipus, which with the general plan of the play were Dryden’s contribution to the joint work, bear marked evidence of his recent study of Shakespeare. TheDuke of Guiseprovided an obvious parallel with contemporary English politics. Henry III. was identified with Charles II., and Monmouth with the duke. The lord chamberlain refused to license it until the political situation was less disturbed. The plot ofDon Sebastianis more intricate than that ofAll for Love. It has also more of the characteristics of his heroic dramas; the extravagance of sentiment and the suddenness of impulse remind us occasionally ofThe Indian Emperor; but the characters are much more elaborately studied than in Dryden’s earlier plays, and the verse is sinewy and powerful. It would be difficult to say whetherDon SebastianorAll for Loveis his best play; they share the palm between them. Dryden’s subsequent plays are not remarkable. Their titles and dates are—King Arthur, an opera (1691), for which Purcell wrote the music;Cleomenes(1692);Love Triumphant(1694).

Soon after Dryden’s abandonment of heroic couplets in tragedy, he found new and more congenial work for his favourite instrument in satire. As usual the idea was not original to Dryden, though he struck in with his majestic step and energy divine, and immediately took the lead. The pioneer was Mulgrave in hisEssay on Satire, an attack on Rochester and the court, which was circulated in MS. in 1679. Dryden himself was suspected of the authorship, and it is not impossible that he gave some help in revising it; but it is not likely that he attacked the king on whom he was dependent for the greater part of his income, and Mulgrave in a note to hisArt of Poetryin 1717 expressly asserts Dryden’s ignorance. Dryden, however, was attacked in Rose Street, Covent Garden, and severely cudgelled by a company of ruffians who were generally supposed to have been hired by Rochester. In the same year Oldham’s satire on the Jesuits had immense popularity, chiefly owing to the excitement about the Popish plot. Dryden took the field as a satirist towards the close of 1681, on the side of the court, at the moment when Shaftesbury, baffled in his efforts to exclude the duke of York from the throne as a papist, and secure the succession of the duke of Monmouth, was waiting his trial for high treason.Absalom and Achitophelproduced a great stir. Nine editions were sold in rapid succession in the course of a year. There was no compunction in Dryden’s ridicule and invective. Delicate wit was not one of Dryden’s gifts; the motions of his weapon were sweeping, and the blows hard and trenchant. The advantage he had gained by his recent studies of character was fully used in his portraits of Shaftesbury and Buckingham, Achitophel and Zimri. In these portraits he shows considerable art in the introduction of redeeming traits to the general outline of malignity and depravity. It is not impossible that the fact that his pension had not been paid since the beginning of 1680 weighed with him in writing this satire to gain the favour of the court. In a play produced in 1681,The Spanish Friar, he had written on the other side, gratifying the popular feeling by attacking the Roman Catholic priesthood.

Three other satires followedAbsalom and Achitophel, one of them hardly inferior in point of literary power.The Medall; aSatyre against Sedition(March 1682) was written in ridicule of the medal struck to commemorate Shaftesbury’s acquittal. Then Dryden had to take vengeance on the literary champions of the Whig party who had opened upon him with all their artillery. Their leader, Shadwell, had attacked him inThe Medal of John Bayes, which Dryden answered in October 1682 byMac Flecknoe, or a Satyr upon the True-Blew Protestant Poet, T.S.This satire, in which Shadwell filled the title-rôle, served as the model of theDunciad. To the second part ofAbsalom and Achitophel(November 1682), written chiefly by Nahum Tate, he contributed a long passage of invective against Robert Ferguson, one of Monmouth’s chief advisers, Elkanah Settle, Shadwell and others.Religio Laici, which appeared in the same month, though nominally an exposition of a layman’s creed, and deservedly admired as such, was not without a political purpose. It attacked the Papists, but declared the “fanatics” to be still more dangerous.

Dryden’s next poem in heroic couplets was in a different strain. On the accession of James, in 1685, he became a Roman Catholic. There has been much discussion as to whether this conversion was or was not sincere. It can only be said that the coincidence between his change of faith and his change of patron was suspicious, and that Dryden’s character for consistency is certainly not of a kind to quench suspicion. The force of the coincidence cannot be removed by such pleas as that his wife had been a Roman Catholic for several years, or that he was converted by his son, who was converted at Cambridge, even if there were any evidence for these statements. Scott defended Dryden’s conversion,—as Macaulay denounced it, from party motives. It is worth while, however, to notice that in his earlier defence of the English Church he exhibits a desire for the definite guidance of a presumably infallible creed, and the case for the Roman Church brought forward at the time may have appeared convincing to a mind singularly open to new impressions. At the same time nothing can be clearer than that Dryden always regarded his literary powers as a means of subsistence, and had little scruple about accepting a brief on any side.The Hind and the Panther, published in 1687, is an ingenious argument for Roman Catholicism, put into the mouth of “a milk-white hind, immortal and unchanged.” There is considerable beauty in the picture of this tender creature, and its enemies in the forest are not spared. One can understand the admiration that the poem received when such allegories were in fashion. It was the chief cause of the veneration with which Dryden was regarded by Pope, who, himself educated in the Roman Catholic faith, was taken as a boy of twelve to see the veteran poet in his chair of honour and authority at Wills’s coffee-house. It was also very open to ridicule, and was treated in this spirit by Prior and Montagu, the future earl of Halifax, inThe Hind and the Panther transversed to the story of the Country Mouse and the City Mouse. Dryden’s other literary services to James were a savage reply to Stillingfleet—who had attacked two papers published by the king immediately after his accession, one said to have been written by his late brother in advocacy of the Church of Rome, the other by his late wife explaining the reasons for her conversion—and a translation of a life of Xavier in prose. He had written also a panegyric of Charles,Threnodia Augustalis, and a poem in honour of the birth of James II.’s heir, under the title ofBritannia rediviva(1688).

Dryden did not abjure his new faith on the Revolution, and so lost his office and pension as laureate and historiographer royal. For this act of constancy he deserves credit, if the new powers would have considered his services worth having after his frequent apostasies. His rival Shadwell reigned in his stead. Dryden was once more thrown mainly upon his pen for support. He turned again to the stage and wrote the plays already enumerated. A great feature in the last decade of his life was his translations from the classics.Ovid’s Epistles translatedappearedin 1680; and numerous translations from Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Lucretius and Theocritus appeared in the four volumes ofMiscellany 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 theSatiresof 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 ofVeni, Creator Spirituswas 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’sMetamorphosesinto his own verse. These translations appeared in November 1699, a few months before his death, and are known by the title ofFables, 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.

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