Among My Books, First Series | Page 8

sorrow and our crime To have accepted life so long a time, Without you here."
A weak man, put to the test by rough and angry times, as Waller was, may be pitied, but meanness is nothing but contemptible under any circumstances. If it be true that "every conqueror creates a Muse," Cromwell was unfortunate. Even Milton's sonnet, though dignified, is reserved if not distrustful. Marvell's "Horatian Ode," the most truly classic in our language, is worthy of its theme. The same poet's Elegy, in parts noble, and everywhere humanly tender, is worth more than all Carlyle's biography as a witness to the gentler qualities of the hero, and of the deep affection that stalwart nature could inspire in hearts of truly masculine temper. As it is little known, a few verses of it may be quoted to show the difference between grief that thinks of its object and grief that thinks of its rhymes:--
"Valor, religion, friendship, prudence died At once with him, and all that's good beside, And we, death's refuse, nature's dregs, confined To loathsome life, alas! are left behind. Where we (so once we used) shall now no more, To fetch day, press about his chamber-door, No more shall hear that powerful language charm, Whose force oft spared the labor of his arm, No more shall follow where he spent the days In war or counsel, or in prayer and praise. * * * * * I saw him dead; a leaden slumber lies, And mortal sleep, over those wakeful eyes; Those gentle rays under the lids were fled, Which through his looks that piercing sweetness shed; That port, which so majestic was and strong, Loose and deprived of vigor stretched along, All withered, all discolored, pale, and wan, How much another thing! no more That Man! O human glory! vain! O death! O wings! O worthless world! O transitory things! Yet dwelt that greatness in his shape decayed That still, though dead, greater than Death he laid, And, in his altered face, you something feign That threatens Death he yet will live again."
Such verses might not satisfy Lindley Murray, but they are of that higher mood which satisfies the heart. These couplets, too, have an energy worthy of Milton's friend:--
"When up the arm?d mountains of Dunbar He marched, and through deep Severn, ending war."
"Thee, many ages hence, in martial verse Shall the English soldier, ere he charge, rehearse."
On the whole, one is glad that Dryden's panegyric on the Protector was so poor. It was purely official verse-making. Had there been any feeling in it, there had been baseness in his address to Charles. As it is, we may fairly assume that he was so far sincere in both cases as to be thankful for a chance to exercise himself in rhyme, without much caring whether upon a funeral or a restoration. He might naturally enough expect that poetry would have a better chance under Charles than under Cromwell, or any successor with Commonwealth principles. Cromwell had more serious matters to think about than verses, while Charles might at least care as much about them as it was in his base good-nature to care about anything but loose women and spaniels. Dryden's sound sense, afterwards so conspicuous, shows itself even in these pieces, when we can get at it through the tangled thicket of tropical phrase. But the authentic and unmistakable Dryden first manifests himself in some verses addressed to his friend Dr. Charlton in 1663. We have first his common sense which has almost the point of wit, yet with a tang of prose:--
"The longest tyranny that ever swayed Was that wherein our ancestors betrayed Their freeborn reason to the Stagyrite, And made his torch their universal light. _So truth, while only one supplied the state, Grew scarce and dear and yet sophisticate. Still it was bought, like emp'ric wares or charms, Hard words sealed up with Aristotle's arms_."
Then we have his graceful sweetness of fancy, where he speaks of the inhabitants of the New World:--
"Guiltless men who danced away their time, Fresh as their groves and happy as their clime."
And, finally, there is a hint of imagination where "mighty visions of the Danish race" watch round Charles sheltered in Stonehenge after the battle of Worcester. These passages might have been written by the Dryden whom we learn to know fifteen years later. They have the advantage that he wrote them to please himself. His contemporary, Dr. Heylin, said of French cooks, that "their trade was not to feed the belly, but the palate." Dryden was a great while in learning this secret, as available in good writing as in cookery. He strove after it, but his thoroughly English nature, to the last, would too easily content itself with serving up the honest beef of his thought,