Palamon and Arcite | Page 5

Crowne wallowed in tragedy, Tate remodeled
Shakspere; so did Shadwell, who was later to measure swords with
Dryden, and receive for his rashness an unmerciful castigation. But by
all odds the strongest name in tragedy was Thomas Otway, who smacks
of true Elizabethan genius in the Orphan_ and _Venice Preserved. In
comedy we receive the brilliant work of Etheridge, the vigor of
Wycherley, and, as the century drew near its close, the dashing wit of
Congreve, Vanbrugh, and Farquhar. This burst of brilliancy, in which
the Restoration drama closes, was the prelude to the Augustan Age of
Queen Anne and the first Georges, the period wherein flourished that
group of self-satisfied, exceptionally clever, ultra-classical wits who

added a peculiar zest and charm to our literature. As Dryden grew to
old age, these younger men were already beginning to make themselves
heard, though none had done great work. In poetry there were Prior,
Gay, and Pope, while in prose we find names that stand high in the roll
of fame,--the story-teller Defoe, the bitter Swift, the rollicking Dick
Steele, and delightful Addison.
This is the background in politics, society, and letters on which the life
of Dryden was laid during the last half of the seventeenth century.
There were conditions in his environment which materially modified
his life and affected his literary form, and without a knowledge of these
conditions no study of the man or his works can be effective or
satisfactory. Dryden was preëminently a man of his times.

LIFE OF DRYDEN.
John Dryden was born at the vicarage of Aldwinkle, All Saints, in
Northamptonshire, August 9, 1631. His father, Erasmus Dryden, was
the third son of Sir Erasmus Dryden of Cannons Ashby. The estate
descended to Dryden's uncle, John, and is still in the family. His mother
was Mary Pickering. Both the Drydens and Pickerings were Puritans,
and were ranged on the side of Parliament in its struggle with Charles I.
As a boy Dryden received his elementary education at Tichmarsh, and
went thence to Westminster School, where he studied under the famous
Dr. Busby. Here he first appeared in print with an elegiac poem on the
death of a schoolfellow, Lord Hastings. It possesses the peculiarities of
the extreme Marinists. The boy had died from smallpox, and Dryden
writes:
"Each little pimple had a tear in it To wail the fault its rising did
commit."
He entered Trinity College, Cambridge, May 18, 1650, took his B.A. in
1654, and then, though he received no fellowship, lingered at the
university for three years. Tradition tells us that he had no fondness for
his Alma Mater, and certainly his verse contains compliments only for

Oxford.
His father had died in 1654 and had bequeathed him a small estate.
When, in 1657, he finally left the university, he attached himself to his
uncle, Sir Gilbert Pickering, a general of the Commonwealth. In 1658
he wrote Heroic Stanzas on Cromwell's Death; but shortly thereafter he
went to London, threw himself into the life of literary Bohemia, and at
the Restoration, in 1660, wrote his Astroea Redux, as enthusiastically
as the veriest royalist of them all. This sudden transformation of the
eulogist of Cromwell to the panegyrist of Charles won for Dryden in
some quarters the name of a political turncoat; but such criticism was
unjust. He was by birth and early training a Puritan; add to this a poet's
admiration for a truly great character, and the lines on Cromwell are
explained; but during his London life he rubbed elbows with the world,
early prejudices vanished, his true nature asserted itself, and it was John
Dryden himself, not merely the son of his father, who celebrated
Charles' return.
On December 1, 1663, he married Lady Elizabeth Howard, eldest
daughter of the Earl of Berkshire, and the sister of a literary intimate.
Tradition has pronounced the marriage an unhappy one, but facts do
not bear out tradition. He nowhere referred other than affectionately to
his wife, and always displayed a father's warm affection for his sons,
John, Charles, and Erasmus. Lady Elizabeth outlived her husband and
eventually died insane.
During the great plague in London, 1665, Dryden fled with his wife to
Charleton. He lived there for two years, and during that time wrote
three productions that illustrate the three departments of literature to
which he devoted himself: Annus Mirabilis, a narrative and descriptive
poem on the fire of 1666 and the sea fight with the Dutch, the _Essay
on Dramatic Poesy_, his first attempt at literary criticism in prose, and
the Maiden Queen_, a drama. In _Annus Mirabilis we find the best
work yet done by him. Marinist quaintness still clings here and there,
and he has temporarily deserted the classical distich for a quatrain
stanza; but here, for the first time,