n his exquisite imitation of Horace's sixth satire; and Thomson and Cowper, by their descriptions of rural life, have completely obliterated from the public mind the feeble draught of Pomfret. [Extract from The Choice.] If Heaven the grateful liberty would give I'd have a clear and competent estate, Should be reliev'd with what my wants could spare; EARL OF DORSET. CHARLES SACKVILLE, EARLOF DORSET (1637-1706), wrote little, but was capable of doing more, and being a liberal patron of poets, was a nobleman highly popular in his day. Coming very young to the possession of two plentiful estates, and in an age when pleasure was more in fashion than business, he applied his talents rather to books and conversation than to politics. In the first Dutch war he went a volunteer under the Duke of York, and wrote or finished a song (his best composition, one of the prettiest that ever was made,' according to Prior) the night before the naval engagement in which Opdanı, "he Dutch admiral, was blown up, with all his crew. He was a lord of the bedchamber to So the dull eel moves nimbler in the mud Song. Dorinda's sparkling wit and eyes, Love is a calmer, gentler joy; That runs his link full in your face. Song. Written at sea, the first Dutch war, 1665, the night belon an engagement. To all you ladies now at land, We men at sea indite; But first would have you understand How hard it is to write; The Muses now, and Neptune too, We must implore to write to you. With a fa la, la, la, la. For though the Muses should prove kind, Yet if rough Neptune rouse the wind, To wave the azure main, Our paper, pen, and ink, and we, Roll up and down our ships at sea. With a fa, &c. Then, if we write not by each post, The king with wonder and surprise, 1 And quit their fort at Goree; For what resistance can they find With a fa, &c. Let wind and weather do its worst, Be you to us but kind; Let Dutchmen vapour, Spaniards curse, 'Tis then no matter how things go, Or who's our friend, or who's our foe. To pass our tedious hours away, But now our fears tempestuous grow, When any mournful tune you hear, As if it sigh'd with each man's care For being so remote: Think then how often love we've made To you, when all those tunes were play'd. With a fa, &c. In justice, you cannot refuse All those designs are but to prove And now we've told you all our loves, DUKE OF BUCKINGHAMSHIRE, JOHN SHEFFIELD, DUKE OF BUCKINGHAMSHIRE (1649-1721) was associated in his latter days with the wits and poets of the reign of Queen Anne, but he properly belongs to the previous age. He went with Prince Rupert against the Dutch, and was afterwards colonel of a regiment of foot. In order to learn the art of war under Marshall Turenne, he made a campaign in the French service. The literary taste of Sheffield was never neglected amidst the din of arms, and he made himself an accomplished scholar. He was a member of the privy council of James II., but acquiesced in the Revolution, and was afterwards a member of the cabinet council of William and Mary, with a pension of £3000. Sheffield is said to have 'made love' to Queen Anne when they were both young, and her majesty heaped honours on the favourite immediately on her accession to the throne. He was an opponent of the court of George I., and continued actively engaged in public affairs till his death. Sheffield wrote several poems and copies of verses. Among the [Extract from the Essay on Poetry.] Of all those arts in which the wise excel, No kin 1 of work requires so nice a touch, Which gains the head, while t'other wins the heart. * * * First, then, of songs, which now so much abound; * Of all the ways that wisest men could find To mend the age, and mortify mankind, Satire well writ has most successful prov'd, And cures, because the remedy is lov'd. 1 "Tis hard to write on such a subject more, By painful steps at last we labour up Do those mere sounds the world's attention draw! But what, alas! avails it, poor mankind, DRAMATISTS. JOHN DRYDEN. trical representation the regular introduction of actresses, or female players, and the use of moveable scenery and appropriate decorations. Females had performed on the stage previous to the Restoration, and considerable splendour and variety of scenery had been exhibited in the Court Masques and Revels. Neither, however, had been familiar to the public, and they now formed a great attraction to the two patent theatres. Unfortunately, these powerful auxiliaries were not brought in aid of the good old dramas of the age of Elizabeth and James. Instead of adding grace and splendour to the creations of Shakspeare and Jonson, they were lavished to support a new and degenerate dramatic taste, which Charles II. had brought with him from the continent. Rhyming or heroic plays had long been fashionable in France, and were dignified by the genius of Corneille and Racine. They had little truth of colouring or natural passion, but dealt exclusively with personages in high life and of transcendent virtue or ambition; with fierce combats and splendid processions; with superhuman love and beauty; and with long dialogues alternately formed of metaphysical subtlety and the most extravagant and bombastic expression. 'Blank verse,' says Dryden, 'is acknowledged to be too low for a poem, nay more, for a paper of verses; but if too low for an ordinary sonnet, how much more for tragedy!' Accordingly, the heroic plays were all in rhyme, set off not only with superb dresses and decorations, but with 'the richest and most ornate kind of verse, and the farthest removed from ordinary colloquial diction.' The comedies were degenerate in a different way. They were framed after the model of the Spanish stage, an 1 adapted to the taste of the king, as exhibiting a variety of complicated intrigues, successful disguises, and constantly-shifting scenes and adventures. The old native English virtues of sincerity, conjugal fidelity, and prudence, were held up to constant ridicule, as if amusement could only be obtained by obliterating the moral feelings. Dryden ascribes the licentiousness of the stage to the example of the king. Part, however, must be assigned to the earlier comedies of Beaumont and Fletcher, and part to the ascetic puritanism and denial of all public amusements during the time of the commonwealth. If the Puritans had contented themselves with regulating and purifying the theatres, they would have conferred a benefit on the nation; but, by shutting them up entirely, and denouncing all public recreations, they provoked a counteraction in the taste and manners of the people. The over-austerity of one period led naturally to the shameless degeneracy of the succeeding period; and deeply is it to be deplored, that the great talents of Dryden were the most instrumental in extending and prolonging this depravation of the national taste. The operas and comedies of Sir William Davenant were the first pieces brought out on the stage after the Restoration. He wrote twenty-five in all; but, notwithstanding the partial revival of the old dramatists, none of Davenant's productions have been reprinted. His last work,' says Southey, 'was his worst; it was an alteration of the Tempest, executed in conjunction with Dryden; and marvelous indeed it is, that two men of such great and indubitable genius should have combined to debase, and vulgarise, and pollute such a poem as the Tempest.' The marvel is enhanced when we consider that Dryden writes of their joint labour with evident complacency, at the same time that his prologue to the adapted play contains the following just and At the restoration of the monarchy the drama was also restored, and with new lustre, though less decency. Two theatres were licensed in the metropolis, one under the direction of Sir William Davenant, who, as already mentioned, had been permitted to act plays even during the general proscription of the drama, and whose performers were now (in comphment to the Duke of York) named the Duke's Company. The other establishment was managed by Thomas Killigrew, a well-known wit and courtier, beautiful character of is great predecessor :whose company took the name of the King's Servants. As when a tree's cut down, the secret root Davenant effected two great improvements in thea- | Lives under ground, and thence new branches shoot; 1 So, from old Shakspeare's honour'd dust, this day If they have since outwrit all other men, 'Tis with the drops which fell from Shakspeare's pen. Dryden was in the full tide of his theatrical popularity when Davenant died, in 1688. The great poet commenced writing for the stage in 1662, when he produced his Wild Gallant, which was followed next year by the Rival Ladies, the serious parts of which are in rhyme. He then joined Sir Robert Howard in composing the Indian Queen, a rhyming heroic play, brought out in 1664, with a splendour never before seen in England upon a public stage. A continuation of this piece was shortly afterwards written by Dryden, entitled the Indian Emperor, and both were received with great applause. All the defects of his style, and many of the choicest specimens of his smooth and easy versification, are to be found in these inflated tragedies. In 1667 was represented his Maiden Queen, a tragi-comedy; and shortly afterwards the Tempest. These were followed by two comedies copied from the French of Moliere and Corneille; by the Royal Martyr. another furious tragedy, and by his Conquest of Granada, in two parts, in which he concentrated the wild magnificence, incongruous splendour, and absurd fable that run through all his heroic plays, mixed up with occasional gleams of true genius. The extravagance and unbounded popularity of the heroic drama, now at its height, prompted the Duke of Buckingham to compose a lively and amusing farce, in ridicule of Dryden and the prevailing taste of the public, which was produced in 1671, under the title of the Rehearsal. The success of the 'Rehearsal' was unbounded; the very popularity of the plays ridiculed aiding, as Sir Walter Scott has remarked, 'the effect of the satire, since everybody had in their recollection the origiaals of the passages parodied.' There is little genuine wit or dramatic art in the 'Rehearsal, but it is a clever travesty, and it was well-timed. A fatal blow was struck at the rhyming plays, and at the rant and fustian to which they gave birth. Dryden now resorted to comedy, and produced Marriage a-laMode, and the Assignation. In 1673 he constructed a dramatic poem, the State of Innocence, or the Fall of Man, out of the great epic of Milton, destroying, of course, nearly all that is sublime, simple, and pure, in the original. His next play, Aureng-Zebe (1675), was also 'heroic,' stilted, and unnatural; but this was the last great literary sin of Dryden. He was now engaged in his immortal satires and fables, and he abandoned henceforward the false and glittering taste which had so long deluded him. His All for Love, and Troilus and Cressida, are able adaptations from Shakspeare in blank verse. The Spanish Friar 18 a good comedy, remarkable for its happy union of two plots, and its delineation of comic character. His principal remaining plays are Don Sebastian (1690), Amphitryon (1690), Cleomenes (1692), and Love Triumphant (1694). 'Don Sebastian' is his highest effort in dramatic composition, and though de formed, like all his other plays, by scenes of spurious and licentious comedy, it contains passages that approach closely to Shakspeare. The quarre. and reconciliation of Sebastian and Dorax is a masterly copy from the similar scene between Brutus and Cassius. In the altercation between Ventidius and Antony in 'All for Love,' he has also challenged comparison with the great poet, and seems to have been inspired to new vigour by the competition. This latter triumph in the genius of Dryden was completed by his 'Ode to St Cecilia' and the 'Fables,' published together in the spring of 1700, a few weeks before his death-thus realising a saying of his own Sebastian A setting sun Should leave a track of glory in the skies. Dryden's plays have fallen completely into oblivion. He could reason powerfully in verse, and had the command of rich stores of language, information, and imagery. Strong energetic characters and pas sions he could portray with considerable success, but he had not art or judgment to construct an interesting or consistent drama, or to preserve himself from extravagance and absurdity. The female character and softer passions seem to have been entirely beyond his reach. His love is always licentiousness -his tenderness a mere trick of the stage. Like Voltaire, he probably never drew a tear from reader or spectator. His merit consists in a sort of Eastern magnificence of style, and in the richness of his versification. The bowl and dagger-glory, ambition, lust, and crime-are the staple materials of his tragedy, and lead occasionally to poetical grandeur and brilliancy of fancy. His comedy is, with scarce an exception, false to nature, improbable and illarranged, and subversive equally of taste and morality. Before presenting a scene from Dryden, we shall string together a few of those similes or detached sentiments which relieve the great mass of his turgid dramatic verse : Love is that madness which all lovers have; Conquest of Granada, Part II. So Venus moves, when to the Thunderer, A change so swift what heart did ever feel! Was it his youth, his valour, or success? [Midnight Repose.] Spanish Friar. Ber. Now death draws near, a strange perplexity Creeps coldly on me, like a fear to die: Courage uncertain dangers may abate, But who can bear th' approach of certain fate? St. Cath. The wisest and the best some fear may show, Both heavenly faith and human fear obey; Tyrannic Love. [Love Anticipated after Death.] PORPHYRIUS. BERENICE. Por. You either this divorce must seek, or die. me? Ber. My earthy part, Which is my tyrant's right, death will remove. [Adam after the Fall.] ADAM. RAPHAEL. EVE. Mid Adam. Heaven is all mercy; labour I would choose; And could sustain this Paradise to lose: The bliss; but not the place. 'Here,' could I say, 'Heaven's winged messenger did pass the day; Under this pine the glorious angel stay'd:' Then show my wondering progeny the shade. In woods and lawns, where'er thou didst appear, Each place some monument of thee should bear. I, with green turfs, would grateful altars raise, And heaven, with gums and offer'd incense, praise. Raph. Where'er thou art, He is; th' eternal ming Acts through all places; is to none confined: Fills ocean, earth, and air, and all above. And through the universal mass does move. Thou canst be no where distant: yet this place Had been thy kingly seat, and here thy race, From all the ends of peopled earth, had come To reverence thee, and see their native home. |