The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II | Page 7

"serene and silent art" of painting; and the very noble epistle addressed to Congreve, which reminds you of one giant hand of genius held out to welcome and embrace another. Gross flatterer as Dryden often was, there is something in this epistle that rings true, and the emotion in it you feel even all his powers could never have enabled him to counterfeit. Such generous patronage of rising, by acknowledged merit, was as rare then as it is still. The envy of the literary man too often crowns his gray hairs with a chaplet of nightshade, and pours its dark poison into the latest cup of existence.
His "Annus Mirabilis" is another instance of perverted power, and ingenuity astray. Written in that bad style he found prevalent in his early days--the style of the metaphysical poets, Cowley, Donne, and Drayton--the author ever and anon soars out of his trammels into strong and simple poetry, fervid description, and in one passage--that about the future fortunes of London--into eloquent prophecy. The fire of London is vigorously pictured, but its breath of flame should have burned up petty conceit and tawdry ornament. He should have sternly daguerreotyped the spectacle of the capital of the civilised world burning--a spectacle awful, not only in the sight of men, but, as Hall says of the French Revolution, in that of superior beings. We need not dwell on the far-famed absurdities which the poem contains--about God turning a "crystal pyramid into a broad extinguisher" to put out the fire--of the ship compared to a sea-wasp floating on the waves--and of men in the fight killed by "aromatic splinters" from the Spice Islands! Criticism has long ago said its best and its worst about these early escapades of a writer whose taste, to the last, was never commensurate with his genius.
His Translations we have not included in this edition, as we reserve them, along with other masterpieces of translated verse, for a separate issue afterwards. That of the "Art of Poetry," sometimes included in editions of his works, was not his, but only revised by him. We may say here, in general, however, that although there are more learned and more correct translators than Dryden, there are few who have produced versions so vigorous, so full of exuberant life, and, in those parts of the authors suitable to the peculiarities of the translator's own genius, so faithful to their spirit and soul, if not to their letter and their body, as he. Parts of Virgil he does not translate well; he has no sympathy with Maro's elegance, concinnitas, chaste grandeur, and minute knowledge of nature; but wherever Virgil begins to glow and gallop, Dryden glows and gallops with him; and wherever Virgil is nearest Homer, Dryden is nearest him.
We have reserved to the close his Fables, as, on the whole, forming the culmination of Dryden the artist, if not, perhaps, of Dryden the poet. In preparing his poems for publication, how refreshing we found it to pass from a needful although cursory perusal of his plays, and a revision of his prologues, to these comparatively pure, right-manly, and eloquent compositions--the fables of Dryden! We do not, because it would be hardly fair, with Wordsworth, seek to compare them with the Chaucerian originals--a comparison under which they would be infallibly crushed. We prefer looking at them as bearing only the relation to Chaucer which Macpherson's, did to the original, Ossian. And regarding them in this light, as adaptations, where the original author furnishes only the ground-work, they are surely masterpieces and models of composition, if not exemplars of creative power and genius. How free and majestic their numbers! How bold and buoyant their language! How interesting the stories they tell! How perfect the preservation, and artful the presentment, of the various characters! What a fine chivalrous spirit breathes in "Palamon and Arcite!" What a soft yet purple, pure yet gorgeous, light of love hovers over the "Flower and the Leaf!"--the only poem of Dryden's in which--thanks perhaps to his master, Chaucer--the poet discovers the slightest perception of that
"Love which spirits feel?In climes where all is equable and pure."
What gay and gallant badinage, exquisite irony, and interesting narrative, in the story of "The Cock and Fox!" And what knowledge of human nature and skilful construction in "The Wife of Bath's Tale!" We are half inclined, with George Ellis, to call these fables the "noblest specimen of versification to be found in any modern language." We gather, too, from them a notion about Dryden's capabilities, which we may state. It is, that had Dryden lived in a novel and romance-writing age, and turned his great powers in that direction, he might have easily become the best fictionist--next to Cervantes and Scott--that ever lived, possessing, as he did, most of the qualities of