Biography of John Dryden (from Karen)
John Dryden was born at the
vicarage of Aldwinkle, Northamptonshire, on August 9, 1631, son of Erasmus
Dryden and Mary Pickering. His family were Parliamentary supporters with
Puritan leanings. He attended Westminster School as a king's scholar under
Richard Busby and was an avid student of the classics. While at Westminster,
Dryden published his first verses, an elegy "Upon the Death of Lord
Hastings", in Lachrymæ Musarum (1649). He entered Trinity College,
Cambridge, in 1650, and took a BA in 1654.
Dryden moved to London around
1657, and first gained notice with his 'Heroic Stanzas' (1659) on the death of
Lord Protector Cromwell. In the Royalist climate of the Restoration, he
sensibly wrote Astraea Redux (1660) to celebrate the return of King Charles II. For the coronation, Dryden
wrote "To His Sacred Majesty, A Panegyric" (1661). In 1662, Dryden
wrote verses "To My Lord Chancellor" Clarendon, and was elected to
the Royal Society. The theatres had been reopened, demand for entertainments
was high, and Dryden set to writing plays. In 1663, Dryden married Lady
Elizabeth Howard, the sister of his theatrical partner Sir Robert Howard, and
the eldest daughter of the Earl of Berkshire. His first play was the prose
comedy of humours A Wild Gallant (1663), a wholly unremarkable piece,
followed by the tragicomedy The Rival Ladies (1664) and The Indian
Queen (1664). In 1665, the theatres were closed down because of the plague
that raged in London, and the King's court relocated to Oxford. There, Dryden
finally established a reputation as a playwright with The Indian Emperor
(1665), a heroic drama.
The year 1666 was eventful in English history, including both the naval war with the Dutch, and the Great Fire of London. Dryden commemorated this 'year of wonders" in his long poem, Annus Mirabilis, in 1667. This poem secured him the position of Poet Laureate on the death of William D'Avenant in 1668. The same year, he was also given the degree of M. A. by the Archbishop of Canterbury. As a fellow of the Royal Society, he was furthermore made Historiographer Royal in 1670, which brought him an annual income of £200.
The year 1666 was eventful in English history, including both the naval war with the Dutch, and the Great Fire of London. Dryden commemorated this 'year of wonders" in his long poem, Annus Mirabilis, in 1667. This poem secured him the position of Poet Laureate on the death of William D'Avenant in 1668. The same year, he was also given the degree of M. A. by the Archbishop of Canterbury. As a fellow of the Royal Society, he was furthermore made Historiographer Royal in 1670, which brought him an annual income of £200.
In 1668, Dryden began a fruitful
period of both critical and dramatic writing. His first major critical work was
the Essay of Dramatic Poesy (1668), followed by A
Defence of an Essay (1668), and Essay of Heroic Plays (1672). His
plays from this period include the comedy Secret Love (1667); the heroic
drama Tyrannic Love (1669); the two-part The Conquest of Granada
(1670-71); and the comedy Marriage á la Mode (1672). In 1674, Dryden
published a tribute to Milton in
the form of a musical adaptation of Paradise Lost, entitled The State
of Innocence—it was never performed. The tragedy Aureng-Zebe (1676)
was Dryden's first play in blank verse, followed by his masterpiece All for Love (1678), based on the story of
Anthony and Cleopatra.
The success and fame Dryden
enjoyed naturally garnered him enemies. He was ridiculed in Buckingham's The
Rehearsal (1671), and brutally beaten in an attack in Rose Alley, Covent
Garden, on December 18, 1679. It has been suggested, though never proved, that
Lord Rochester had a hand in hiring the ruffians responsible for the attack.
Rochester had lampooned Dryden earlier, and had in turn suspected of Dryden for
complicity in ridiculing him in Lord Mulgrave's Essay on Satire.
With the the unsuccessful prose comedy "Limberham" (1678), the poor adaptation of Troilus and Cressida (1679), and the play "Spanish Friar" (1681), Dryden left his career as dramatist for a time and turned his attention to satire. His political satire on Monmouth and Shaftesbury, Absalom and Achitophel, appeared in 1681. It is one of the great English satires, and it brought him further favor with Charles II, who was pleased at this attack against the Whigs during the Exclusion Crisis. Dryden dutifully wrote the Second Part of Absalom and Achitophel in collaboration with Nahum Tate, as well as another attack on Shaftesbury's supporters, The Medal (1682). These naturally provoked counterattacks, including Thomas Shadwell's The Medal of John Bayes. Dryden in turn responded Mac Flecknoe, full of ridicule for Shadwell, perhaps his most entertaining poem, pirated in 1682, and officially printed in 1684.
Dryden also had a keen interest in theology, and this resulted first in the publication of Religio Laici (1682). This work, the title of which translates as "A Layman's Faith", was a long religious poem arguing Christianity over Deism, the Bible as the guide to salvation, and the Anglican Church over the Catholic Church. This period saw some of Dryden's best poems, the Pindaric ode "Threnodia Augustalis" (1685) at the death of Charles II, the beautiful lyrical ode "To the Pious Memory ... of Mrs Anne Killigrew" (1686) written to commemorate a painter who drowned in the Thames, and "A Song for Saint Cecilia's Day" (1687). Dryden had long grappled with religious uncertainty, and converted into Roman Catholicism in 1686, the year after the ascension to the throne of King James II, a Catholic. In 1687, Dryden published The Hind and the Panther, an allegorical fable criticizing the Anglican church. Dryden suffered for this almost immediately. The Revolution of 1688, which placed the Protestant William III on the throne, caused him to be deprived of his laureateship, and what was worse, he was replaced by his old enemy, Shadwell.
With the the unsuccessful prose comedy "Limberham" (1678), the poor adaptation of Troilus and Cressida (1679), and the play "Spanish Friar" (1681), Dryden left his career as dramatist for a time and turned his attention to satire. His political satire on Monmouth and Shaftesbury, Absalom and Achitophel, appeared in 1681. It is one of the great English satires, and it brought him further favor with Charles II, who was pleased at this attack against the Whigs during the Exclusion Crisis. Dryden dutifully wrote the Second Part of Absalom and Achitophel in collaboration with Nahum Tate, as well as another attack on Shaftesbury's supporters, The Medal (1682). These naturally provoked counterattacks, including Thomas Shadwell's The Medal of John Bayes. Dryden in turn responded Mac Flecknoe, full of ridicule for Shadwell, perhaps his most entertaining poem, pirated in 1682, and officially printed in 1684.
Dryden also had a keen interest in theology, and this resulted first in the publication of Religio Laici (1682). This work, the title of which translates as "A Layman's Faith", was a long religious poem arguing Christianity over Deism, the Bible as the guide to salvation, and the Anglican Church over the Catholic Church. This period saw some of Dryden's best poems, the Pindaric ode "Threnodia Augustalis" (1685) at the death of Charles II, the beautiful lyrical ode "To the Pious Memory ... of Mrs Anne Killigrew" (1686) written to commemorate a painter who drowned in the Thames, and "A Song for Saint Cecilia's Day" (1687). Dryden had long grappled with religious uncertainty, and converted into Roman Catholicism in 1686, the year after the ascension to the throne of King James II, a Catholic. In 1687, Dryden published The Hind and the Panther, an allegorical fable criticizing the Anglican church. Dryden suffered for this almost immediately. The Revolution of 1688, which placed the Protestant William III on the throne, caused him to be deprived of his laureateship, and what was worse, he was replaced by his old enemy, Shadwell.
Dryden returned to the theatre.
He wrote the libretto to Purcell's opera King Arthur (1691); a
tragicomedy, Don Sebastian (1690); a comedy of errors, Amphitryon
(1690); and Cleomenes: the Spartan Hero (1692). Dryden's Love
Triumphant (1694), the prologue of which announced it as his last play, was
a failure. Dryden turned to writing translations, including the satires of
Perseus and Juvenal (1693) and Virgil's Aeneid (1697). He also wrote
more poetry, including "An Ode, on the death of Mr Henry Purcell"
(1696) commemorating the composer, a second ode for St. Cecilia's Day,
"Alexander's Feast" (1697), which was later incorporated into his Fables
Ancient and Modern (1700), paraphrases of Ovid, Boccaccio, and Chaucer.
Dryden died on April 30, 1700,
soon after the publication of the Fables, of inflammation caused by
gout. He was buried in Westminster Abbey. Dryden was a good playwright and
poet, a fine translator, a solid critic, and an excellent satirist whose works
are still worthy of much admiration.
Bibliography:
Bibliography:
- Bredvold,
Louis Ignatius. The Intellectual Milieu of John Dryden.
Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1956. - Hooker,
Edward Niles, H. T. Swedenberg, Jr., Vinton A. Dearing, et al. eds.
The Works of John Dryden. 18 vols.
Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1956. - Eliot,
T. S. Homage to John Dryden.
London: The Hogarth Press, 1924. - Eliot,
T. S. John Dryden: The Poet, The Dramatist, The Critic.
New York: Terence & Elsa Holliday, 1932.
(Repr. New York: Haskell House, 1965, 1968) - Frost,
William. John Dryden :
Dramatist, Satirist, Translator.
New York: AMS Press, 1988. - Gelber,
M. W. The Just And The
Lively: Literary Criticism of John Dryden.
Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999. - Hammond,
Paul. John Dryden: A Literary Life.
New York: St. Martin's Press, 1991. - Hammond,
P. and D. Hopkins, eds. John Dryden:
Tercentenary Essays.
New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. - Hammond,
Paul and David Hopkins, eds. The Poems of John Dryden. 4 vols.
New York: Longman, 1995-2000. - Kirsch,
Arthur C. Dryden's Heroic Drama.
Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Press, 1965. (Repr. 1972). - Miner,
Earl Roy, ed. John Dryden.
London: Bell, 1972. - Myers,
William. Dryden.
London: Hutchinson, 1973. - Saintsbury,
George. Dryden.
New York, Harper, 1881.
(Repr. London: Macmillan, 1930)
(Repr. New York, AMS Press, 1968) - Scott,
Walter, Sir. The Life of John Dryden.
Edited with an introd. by Bernard Kreissman.
Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press [1963] - Sutherland,
James. John Dryden; The Poet as Orator.
Glasgow: Jackson, Son, 1963. - Van
Doren, Mark. John Dryden: A Study of His Poetry.
New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1946.
(Repr. Bloomington & London: Indiana U. Press, 1960, '63, '67, 1973) - Van
Doren, Mark. The Poetry of John Dryden.
New York, Harcourt, Brace and Howe, 1920.
(Repr.& Rev. Ed. Cambridge: Gordon Fraser/The Minority Press, 1931)
(Repr. New York: Haskell House, 1969) - Ward,
Charles Eugene. The Life of John Dryden.
Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, [1961].
Winn, James Anderson. John Dryden And His World.
New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987.
Article Citation:
Jokinen, Anniina. "Life of John Dryden." Luminarium.
21 May 2002. [Date when you accessed the page].
http://www.luminarium.org/eightlit/dryden/drydenbio.htm
Questions for discussion from Karen:
1. Had Spencer become disenchanted with the ways of the Aristocracy and so changed his focus to the growing broader audience for judgment and reputation?2. Is Dryden attempting to link the past with the present and the future in translating, refining the language of the ancients and moderns, as well as adding his own original works?
3. What is the role of interpretation according to Dryden, as implied in the Preface? Is he one of the early voices of hermeneutics as well as the Father of Literary Criticism?
Sources
“Our Lineal Descendants and Clan”: Dryden's Fables and Ancient and Modern and Cultural Politicshttp://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.gsu.edu/openurl?volume=63&date=2000&spage=175&issn=00187895&issue=1
Eighteenth-Century Responses to Dryden's Fables
http://ehis.ebscohost.com/eds/detail?vid=4&hid=115&sid=197abd42-72b4-4d7a-8d8b-9cf0aa23dbea%40sessionmgr115&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWRzLWxpdmU%3d#db=edswah&AN=000207400700002
Past and Present in Dryden's Fables
http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.gsu.edu/openurl?volume=63&date=2000&spage=175&issn=00187895&issue=1
|
Melissa Pino. Philological Quarterly. Iowa City:
Winter 2005. Vol. 84, Iss. 1; pg. 49, 28 pgs
|
Thus Dryden, who two decades earlier had
fashioned Charles II as the Godlike David' and closed one of the most powerful
political satires in history with the (too) hopeful projection, Henceforth a
Series of new time began / The mighty Years in long Procession ran, commences
his final preface by subtly figuring himself as David's son, aligning himself
one last time with the waning Jacobite cause.5 Enveloped in the apparent
modesty topos of Dryden's poetic house as mere accident is a mellowed
sincerity; one senses Dryden making peace with his own failure to author a Work
which wou'd have taken up my Life in the performance of it. (228-33) As it had
always been Dryden's duty "to promote the Honour of my Native
Country," he resolved to commend Chaucer, a "perpetual Fountain of
good sense" who "must have been a Man of a most wonderful
comprehensive Nature," to the English people.60 While engaged in pursuing
Chaucer's literary "Delights of Truth," Dryden came to find out that
he was not the only one burning incense at Chaucer's altar.
Copyright University of Iowa Winter 2005
"When I was a child, I spake as a child, I
understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put
away childish things." (1 Corinthians 13:11)
Of all John Dryden's prefatorial disclosures, it
would be difficult to find a better example of the poet's genius and
temperament than his last opening sally, made in his Preface to Fables Ancient
and Modern (1700): "I have built a House, where I intended but a
lodge."1 This statement, as so many others, embodies the best and the
worst of Dryden. Those fond of his wit will have already been taken with the
inspired comparison of a miscellany to a construction project gone over
budget-"[The poet] alters his Mind as the Work proceeds, and will have
this or that Convenience more, of which he had not thought when he
began"-and will relish the deft resolution of the conceit. Those quick to
tire of his pride will wince at the tone of self-satisfaction. Many readers
will experience both of these sentiments at once.2
Complicated as this reaction is, it distracts
from the remarkable complexity of Dryden's statement. Today's readers in
particular will be more likely than Dryden's contemporaries to accept the
construction metaphor at "face" value, not being attuned to the
theological underpinnings more evident at the turn of the eighteenth century.
For most readers of that time, Dryden's comparison of building a house rather
than a lodge would have connoted Solomon's temple, a reference in perfect
harmony with Dryden's play on improvements. A "lodge" connotes a
small temporary dwelling; the OED suggests "a hut or booth; a tent,
arbour, or the like"-in other words, a temporary sanctuary, as was the
tabernacle, a word whose Latin root means "tent." According to the
well-known Biblical tale, David was forbidden by God from replacing the
tabernacle with what was intended to be a permanent structure: "Thus saith
the LORD, Shalt thou build me an house for me to dwell in? Whereas I have not
dwelt in any house since the time that I brought up the children of Israel out
of Egypt, even to this day, but have walked in a tent and in a tabernacle"
(2 Sam. 7:5, 6, AV). God then tells David that it will be his "seed"
who "shall build an house for my name, and I will establish the throne of
his kingdom for ever" (13). Thus David sets out accordingly, making plans
for the structure and collecting materials-"an hundred thousand talents of
gold, and a thousand thousand talents of silver; and of brass and iron without
weight"-to be used by his son, Solomon (1 Chron. 22:14). The original plan
of the Temple was to reproduce, in larger order, the dimensions of the
tabernacle.3 During the seven years of construction, Solomon "overlaid the
house within with pure gold; and he made a partition by the chains of gold
before the oracle; and he overlaid it with gold. And the whole house he
overlaid with gold . . . also the whole altar that was by the oracle he
overlaid with gold," and he later enlarged it-surely the sacramental
equivalent of "this or that Convenience more."4
Thus Dryden, who two decades earlier had
fashioned Charles II as the "Godlike David' and closed one of the most
powerful political satires in history with the (too) hopeful projection,
"Henceforth a Series of new time began / The mighty Years in long
Procession ran," commences his final preface by subtly figuring himself as
David's son, aligning himself one last time with the waning Jacobite cause.5
Enveloped in the apparent modesty topos of Dryden's poetic "house" as
mere accident is a mellowed sincerity; one senses Dryden making peace with his
own failure to author "a Work which wou'd have taken up my Life in the
performance of it."6 If Solomon's house could be twice destroyed, there
was no guarantee that Dryden's poetical edifice would endure, particularly
since he had fallen out of favor and been stripped of his laureateship after
the Glorious Revolution. Always concerned with posterity, his confidence had
publicly dipped to its nadir in his dedication of the Examen Poeticum, the
Third Miscellany (1693). "'Tis a vanity common to all writers," he
admitted to Lord Radcliffe and his audience, "to overvalue their own
Productions; and 'tis better for me to own this failing in my self, than the
World to do it for me" (4:363). Moreover, there was question of the
suitability of the translative mode for ensuring his legacy. In James Winn's
remark that "For a poet hoping to avoid offense, but not willing to give
up wit, translation might offer a degree of protection," he suggests that
translation had been an escape hatch for Dryden;7 and artistic escapes of this
kind often carry with them the stigma of a compromise of intellectual freedom
or creative capacity.
The degree to which this is true, however, depends
on the nature of the escape. Continuing his self-estimation in the dedication
of the Third Miscellany, Dryden asks, "For what other Reason have I spent
my Life in so unprofitable a Study? Why am I grown Old, in seeking so barren a
Reward as Fame?" (4:363). The "Reason," or cause, Dryden speaks
of is self-value, and thus "so unprofitable a Study" is not only a
somewhat embittered reference to his past work and the insufficient reward he
had received for it but also a chastened allusion to navel-gazing. Saint
Stephen, the first Christian martyr whom Dryden aligned with Titus Oates's
victims in Absalom and Achitophel, was stoned because he inveighed against the
worldly obsession with house-building-"[David] found favor before God, and
desired to find a tabernacle for the God of Jacob. But Solomon built him an
house"-and admonished the council, "Heaven is my throne, and earth is
my footstool: what house will ye build me? saith the LORD" (Acts 7:46-7,
49).
Dryden had been thinking of poetry-making as
house-building since at least the time of An Essay of Dramatick Poesie (1668),
in which Eugenius "condemn[s] the ancients . . . because they have not
confin'd themselves to one certain number [of acts in a play]," and claims
" 'tis building an House without a Modell" (their plots suffered from
a construction problem of a different kind, being built on "the Italian
Mode of Houses," that is, you "see thorow them all at once").8
Dryden the entertainer later complained in his Prologue spoken at the opening
of the pauperized and "Plain Built House" of the Theatre Royal (1674)
that if audiences continued to "over-rate" the "vain Shows and
Scenes" of French companies "who Build, and Treat with such
Magnificence," then "'Tis to be fear'd- / That as a Fire the former
House o'rethrew, / Machines and Tempests will destroy the new."9 Dryden
the mentor praised Congreve for having finally "obscure [d] the past"
with his play The Double-Dealer, the lone triumph of a secondbest age in which
the "Builders were, with want of Genius, curst" and "The second
Temple was not like the first."10 Dryden the translator, in his dedication
of the Æneis (1697), entreated, "Is Versailles the less a New Building,
because the Architect of that Palace has imitated others which were built
before it?" and answered, "Walls, Doors and Windows, Apartments,
Offices, Rooms of convenience and Magnificence, are in all great Houses. So
Descriptions, Figures, Fables, and the rest, must be in all Heroick Poems
(5:304). What kind of a house, then, did Dryden aspire to have assembled-and
escaped to-with the Fables?
The answer to that question is one as much in
accordance with the soteriological prophecies of Saint Stephen as with the
formal concerns of Eugenius, the material worries of a playwright, or the
absolute grandeur that was the aim of Mansart. Certainly, Dryden was still
interested in aesthetic issues when he penned what would be his last preface;
scrolling through the well-thumbed rolodex of the classical authors he had
translated, he provides a final comparative analysis of their genius, and, as
always, decides that the poet he had conversed with most recently is his
favorite. Of Chaucer's unparalleled characterization, Dryden famously declares,
" Tis sufficient to say according to the Proverb, that here is God's
Plenty"-although it was, of course, unfortunate that Chaucer did not do a
bit better job of organizing his plenty, and Dryden regrets that "he
writes not always of a piece; but sometimes mingles trivial Things, with those
of greater Moment" (thus harking back over thirty years to the discussion
of the mixed matter occasioned by English "under-plots" in An Essay
of Dramatick Poesie)." But such opinions are set forth in a tone more
pondering and less promulgatory than the tone to which Dryden accustoms us as
we scan his long career as the first English literary critic. Musing on his
method, he describes his lines and sentences as if they provided the comfort of
old friends, explaining of his rushing thoughts that he could either "run
them into Verse, or ... give them the other Harmony of Prose. I have so long
studied and practic'd both, that they are grown into a Habit, and become
familiar to me," a poignant and honest statement that probably provides
the most truthful explanation of why Dryden insisted on rhymed rather than
blank verse, and implicitly laying that long and hotly-debated controversy
gently to rest (7:27). As George Watson put it, "he was lonely and out of
favour, but he had won the honest knowledge of what he could and could not do."12
Dryden still had material concerns in mind, as
well, far more of them than those he had faced in writing the dedicatory
prologue to a barebones playhouse. That he lived the last years of his life in
penury is one of the worst injustices in the history of English letters. The
indignation in his Dedication of The Works of Virgil was legitimate-"What
I now offer to your Lordship [Hugh Clifford, Baron Clifford of Chudleigh] is
the wretched remainder of a sickly Age, worn out with Study, and oppress'd by
Fortune: without other support than the Constancy and Patience of a
Christian" (5:3). Yet, by the time of his dedication to the Fables, the
tone of indignation is replaced with a panegyric of charity, and in the
description of his "Misfortune" as "a powerful Recommendation"
and of his "Want" as "a powerful Mediator . . . next to
Merit," we hear notjust resignation but the acceptance of his fate that
kept his biography from reading like a tragedy.13
In addition to these aesthetic and material
concerns were the lingering remnants of Dryden's addiction to grandiosity;
predictably, he was not entirely successful in stifling the ambition for
accolades that he had lamented in the dedication of the Third Miscellany,
boasting of his translation of Chaucer in the Preface to the Fables, "what
Beauties I lose in some Places, I give to others which had them not
originally," and calling him a "rough Diamond, [who] must first be
polish'd e'er he shines."14 Fundamentally, however, Dryden's final
aspiration for his translations aimed higher than poetic beauty, worldly gain,
or even popular acclaim: Dryden ultimately came to view the translative act as
a spiritual one, a near-sacred obligation that was intimately connected with
his Christian faith and Catholic practice, his own salvation, and his
continuing belief in his suitability to act as poet-prophet for the English
people.
This argument, and the essay as a whole, operate
on the premises that Dryden was sincere in his conversion to Catholicism and
that his conversion was a result, at least in part, of his growing seriousness
concerning matters of religion. Obviously, many critics have disagreed with
these premises. On the question of Dryden's seriousness, it is not terribly
remarkable that a man in his later years should be more earnest about religious
matters that were occasionally mere fodder for polemical satire during that
man's youth. On the subject of his conversion, Earl Miner reminds us that
simply by declaring himself Catholic, "[Dryden] was legally guilty of
treason, the punishment for which was hanging drawing, and quartering."15
James's accession was never a surety against harm. William Frost states a fact
that has not been obvious to many of Dryden's critics, "It was a risk to
convert to Catholicism in 1685, however much it might have seemed to a
convert's immediate advantage";16 and Dryden himself made his unease with
James's precarious policies evident throughout The Hind and the Panther (1687).
After he had lost everything as a result of his conversion, he wrote in a letter
to John Dennis, "If I thought my self in an Error, I would retract it; I
am sure that I suffer for [the "Dictates . . . of my Conscience"] ;
and Milton makes even the Devil say, That no Creature is in love with
Pain."17 Later, he openly affirmed what was, for him, the necessity of his
conversion: "if I see one thing, and practice the contrary, I must be
Disingenuous, not to acknowledge a clear Truth, and Base to Act against the
light of my own Conscience."18 If the stridently Anglican Samuel Johnson,
with his keen nose for pious hypocrisy, was not successful in his defense of
Dryden's Catholicism against the charges of gross opportunism, it is doubtful
that this essay will alter the opinion of those who will not be convinced.
Nonetheless, I hope that it will cast a different angle of light on Dryden's
religious thought and make plain its increasing correspondence with his
theories of translation.
Dryden never shied away from employing metaphors
of religious practice when speaking about his craft. At the beginning of his
career, he begged pardon of Sir Robert Howard for the attentions he had
received from him, and offered him the consolation that "since you are to
bear this persecution, I will at least give you the encouragement of a Martyr,
you could never suffer in a nobler cause," jokingly treating his poetry as
a faith and positioning himself as that faith's evangelist.19 In other works, Dryden
aligned poetry and priesthood in a negative capacity; speaking of the
Conventicle Act of 1664, Crites asserts that "ill Poets should be as well
silenc'd as seditious Preachers," and in The second Part of Absalom and
Achitophel "Priests without Grace, and Poets without Wit" are accused
of fomenting rebellion for personal gain.20 Toward the end of his career,
Dryden's tone was even more severe when, in a passionate invective against
"a sort of Insects" who valorized the ancients in order to detract
from living English poets, he accused them of "manifestly aim [ing] at the
destruction of our Poetical Church and State. "21 While the phrase
"Poetical Church and State" satirically awards supremacy to poetry,
its thematic union of poetry, religion, and government is actually an inversion
of Dryden's later Erastianism, in which-in the ideal state-ecclesiastical
affairs and poetic practice cooperated under the umbrella of monarchical
government.
On the middle of the timeline between the
smiling poet-evangelist and the railing poet-churchman-statesman, Dryden
employed an audacious conceit in a fawning dedication of The State of Innocence
(1677) that figured the Duchess of York as a goddess and Dryden as her priest.
Here we find a parodie version of poetic inspiration that, despite
exaggeration, incorporates what were in reality important elements in Dryden's
understanding of the translative act:
[W]ith whatsoever Vanity this new Honour of
being your Poet has fill'd my mind, I confess my self too weak for the
Inspiration; the Priest was always unequal to the Oracle: The God within him
was too mighty for his Breast: He labour'd with the Sacred Revelation, and
there was more of the Mystery left behind than Divinity it self could inable
him to express. (12:81)
This is the worst of Dryden, without the best.22
But let us leave matters of taste aside to focus on the elements of Dryden's
mock ravishment: the oracular poet's embodiment of the divine source; his
capacity to channel the "Inspiration" emanating from it; and the
struggle to interpret and reveal the "Mystery." The note to this
passage in the California edition points out that it might echo Book 6 of the
Æneid, in which the priestess Deiphobe is transformed into the mouthpiece of
Apollo while Æneas looks on, and Dryden may very well have had this passage in
mind.23 Compare, however, Dryden's "oracle" conceit with the
following passage from Wentworth Dillon, the Earl of Roscommon's An Essay on
Translated Verse (1684), for which Dryden provided a commendatory poem:24
How many Ages since has Virgil writ?
How few are they who understand him yet?
Approach his Altars with religious Fear,
No vulgar Deity inhabits there:
Heav'n shakes not more at Jove's imperial Nod,
Then Poets shou'd before their Mantuan God.
Hail mighty MARO! may that Sacred Name,
Kindle my Breast with thy caslestial Flame;
Sublime Ideas, and apt Words infuse.
The Muse instruct my Voice, and Thou inspire the
Muse!
(167-76)25
Dryden had praised Roscommon in his preface to
Ovid's Epistles (1680), and in his preface to Sylva; (1685), he announced that
for a half year he had been "troubled" with the "disease"
of translation, a malady that had him suffering with cold and hot "Prose
fits"-or "Paroxism"-citing Roscommon's Essay as the agent that
made him "uneasie till I try'd whether or no I was capable of following
his Rules, and of reducing the speculation into practice" (1:115; 3:3).
I certainly do not mean to suggest that
Roscommon was also the source for Dryden's priest-playing in his adulation of
the Duchess. Instead, I mean to demonstrate that-in the "oracle"
passage and many others-Dryden makes use of a time-honored metaphor for poetic
creativity, a metaphor that graduated to "method" in contemporary
translation theory.26 "Translation begins with rapture," writes Thomas
R. Steiner, explaining the Renaissance poet George Chapman's legacy to a
two-hundred year period of translation that is arguably the finest that the
English language has ever known.27 "[W]hat Chapman ultimately envisioned
was spiritual commerce between the translator and original author," he
continues, "an empathetic act in which the translator goes both beyond and
before the text." By "beyond," Steiner means that "there is
an attempt to reproduce the poetic state and expenditure of creative energy
which made the original"; by "before," the translator's attempt
"to inhabit the consciousness capable of this particular work" (58).
Benjonson, among many others including Dryden, followed Chapman's lead; Steiner
describes Jonson's particular aim as "metempsychosis" or "reborn
creation," a process that remains, in the end, a "mystery" (60).
Dryden's word for this process was
"transfusion," a term he borrowed from John Denham and employed in
his discussion of the three types of translation-Metaphrase ("turning an
Authour word by word"), Paraphrase ("Translation with
Latitude"), and Imitation ("run[ning]" division on the
ground-work, as [one] pleases")-in his Preface to Ovid.28 None of these
ideas or terms were original to Dryden. But with Dryden's particular approach,
we find an interesting variation on the neoclassical ideal of communion between
the translator and the original author, a variation apparent even in this early
excursion into Ovid: Dryden uses the rhetoric of religious controversy and
biblical metaphor to illustrate his translation theory. When Dryden asserts
that "The sence of an Authour ... is to be Sacred and inviolable,"
the phrase "Sacred and inviolable" ripples with multiple meanings, as
it has always done, in whatever context. As early as Caesar it had invested
authority with the nature of divinity; it was a centuries-old rhetorical
bulwark for the sanctity of the Catholic liturgy and the pope's infallibility;
Protestants were quick to appropriate it in their arguments for a return to
true Christianity; and it was deeply rooted in Neoplatonic notions of matter
and British beliefs about property rights. It was also part and parcel of the
translation theory current at that moment, which witnessed a reaction against
the increasing liberty taken in translating classical authors, and thus
Dryden's use of this particular phrase is not indicative of a specifically
Christian context.29
In his discussion of translative
"Metaphrase," however, Dryden veers into sectarian rhetoric. Citing
Horace and Roscommon as authorities, he argues that "Too faithfully is
indeed pedantically; 'tis a faith like that which proceeds from Superstition,
blind and zealous" (1:155). Superstition, blindness, and zealotry were of
course barbs hurled from one persuasion at another; while
"superstition" was typically used as shorthand for Catholicism and
"zealotry" was a common charge against sectarians, polemicists
employed the tried and true stratagem of appropriating a term to hurl back at
the opponent. Dryden applied such terms loosely, sometimes adhering to their
primary connotations but more often manipulating them in a manner to nuance the
given context. In the second Part of Absalom and Achitophel, published a year
after the Epistles, the still-Anglican Dryden scoffs at the opposition party's
hypocrisy in capitalizing on anti-Papist sentiment in order to rationalize
disloyalty to the Duke of York, sniffing "Religious Fears their Argument
are made, / Religious Fears his Sacred Rights invade! / Of future Superstition
They complain, / And Jebusitick Worship in His Reign"; although he uses
"Superstition" as a short-hand for Catholicism, he offsets it with
the more dangerous practice of what he sees as false prophecy in the service of
anti-royalism (649-52). A year later in Religio Laid, a ratiocinative analysis
of deism, Catholicism, and nonconformist Protestantism meant to lead readers to
the truth of Anglicanism, Dryden imputes deism for its paganistic practice,
"That Impious, Idle, Superstitious Ware, / Of Kites, Lustrations, Offerings,"
commiserates with the ancient philosophers, who "blindly grop'd . . . for
a future State," and criticizes the damnatory clauses of the Athanasian
creed by attributing it to the bishop's "Zeal."30 Whatever particular
faith or faiths Dryden at this point had in mind when comparing word-for-word
translation with "Superstition, blind and zealous," it is clear that
he considered it a false one, proceeding from a too-strict adherence to the
letter of the original author.
In hashing over Ovid's tendency to outwit
himself in his "Description of the Passions," Dryden uses an
explicitly biblical metaphor. "[H]e never knew how to give over, when he
had done well," Dryden regrets, "but continually varying the same
sence an hundred waies, and taking up in another place, what he had more than
enough inculcated before, he sometimes cloys his Readers instead of satisfying
them: and gives occasion to his Translators, who dare not Cover him, to blush
at the nakedness of the Father" (2:111, 112). An overt reference to the
story of Noah, who had become drunk on his first-fruit and lay exposed in his
tent, Dryden's metaphor cleverly shields him from Noah's curse upon Canaan, a
curse associated with perversity (Gen. 9:20-27). Dryden paints Ovid's stylistic
exuberance as sopho moric fixation, assuring the reader of his absolute
identification with the source by owning Ovid's stylistic defects-"Yet he
seems to have found out this imperfection in his riper age: for why else should
he complain that his Metamorphoses-was left unfinish'd?" (1:112).
Titillating the reader, he exposes his "father" at the same time he
would have us believe that he blushes at his manifest sensuality.
Dryden's allusion to Noah's nakedness would seem
here nothing more than a passing similitude, were he not to return to it in The
second Part of Absalom and Achitophel, in which Dryden imprecates Whig divine
Samuel Johnson-"Let Hebron, nay let Hell produce a Man / So made for
Mischief as Ben-Jochanan'-a "Prose-Prophet" who undertook to write "A
wondrous Work to prove the Jewish Nation, / In every Age a Murmuring
Generation; / To trace 'em from their Infancy of Sinning, / And shew 'em
Factious from their First Beginning."31 Dryden excoriates Johnson's
efforts, urging "But, tell me, did the Drunken Patriarch Bless / The Son
that shew'd his Father's Nakedness?" (In the following line, Dryden
equates the "present Church" with the "Drunken
Patriarch.")32 Tell me: did Dryden conveniently disregard the fact that he
had, in the poem's first part, famously represented the English people as
"a Headstrong, Moody, Murmuring race, / As ever try'd th'extent and
stretch of grace" (45-46), wantonly pillaging his own past triumph to
shore up a mediocre poem?
In the more self-satisfied moments of his early
career, Dryden perhaps felt that the curse of Canaan could not possibly stick
to him, as he was no "Prose-Prophet" like Johnson, but instead the
poet of Annus Mirabilis, who had assured the English people in the dedication
of that poem that it was at once a "History of your destruction" and
a "Prophecy of your restoration" (1:49). Dryden finishes off Johnson
by declaring, "Levi, thou art a load / I'll lay thee down, / And shew
Rebellion bare, without a Gown; / Poor Slaves in metre, dull and adle-pated, /
Who Rhime below ev'n David's Psalms translated" (4003). This brilliant and
complex passage glimpses what might be called Dryden's cosmology, in which the
world is a miscellany of competing poems, and its players composers with
varying degrees of skill. The exclusionists are "Poor Slaves in
metre" whose output and consequence is of a kind with the "word by
word" turning of metaphrastic translators; everyone must couple in their
own fashion, and so do they, with a poorer result than even the authors of a
popular rhymed version of the Psalms.
It is likely, though, that Dryden, who was more
self-aware than he is often given credit for, keenly felt the similarity
between Johnson's position and his own. His opponent "By Trade a Levite
though of Low Degree" who was through his "Want. . . made a Factious
Tool," himself an underappreciated poet for the court, Dryden would later
ponder whether his talent would have been better served in "the
gown," regret his service to "timeservers and blockheads," and
realize that "Blood and money will be lavish'd in all ages, only for the
preferment of new faces, with old consciences."33 As Winn has pointed out,
in Absalom and Achitophel Dryden boldly compares his poetic potential with
Titus Oates's powerful mendacity, two different ways of "inventing a pointed
version of history."34 It is questionable that anyone short of sociopathy
(or Titus Oates's mental instability) could compartmentalize this comparison in
a manner that afforded himself the power of such inventiveness without the
culpability for it. And even if Dryden was at one point able to perform such
mental acrobatics, he would soon learn the artistic lesson that "a
concentration on narrowly partisan argument was unlikely to lead to poetry or
drama at a high aesthetic level."35 Dryden could "shew Rebellion
bare, without a Gown"; he made "dull and adle-pated" substance a
foil for the resplendent wit that exposed it. Yet he knew that while many were
equipped to compile the Miscellany of the World, only the rare few can truly
reveal the totality of its wonder and beauty.
Beyond the linkage of poetry, prophecy, and
politics, what is most interesting about Dryden's references to Noah is their
connection to his firm belief in the supreme power of revelation. He describes
the diminution of revelation over succeeding ages in the preface to Religio
Laid. "Truly I am apt to think," he avows, "that the revealed
Religion which was taught by Noah to all his Sons, might continue for some Ages
in the whole Posterity." Nonetheless, "when the Progenies of Cham
andjaphet swarm'd into Colonies, and those Colonies were subdivided into many
others; in process of time their Descendants lost by little and little the
Primitive and Purer Rites of Divine Worship, retaining onely the notion of one
Deity; to which succeeding Generations added others"; therefore man had to
find recompense for this lost connection with God, and "Revelation being
thus Eclipsed to almost all Mankind, the light of Nature as the next in Dignity
was substituted." If this is true, "then the consequence which I have
assum'd in my Poem may be also true; namely, that Deism, or the Principles of
Natural Worship, are onely the faint remnants or dying flames of reveal'd
Religion in the Posterity of Noah" (2:99-100). Thus the exquisite opening
of the poem illuminates the superior power of revelation over the power of
reason lauded by naturalists; just "as those nightly Tapers disappear /
When Day's bright Lord ascends our Hemisphere; / So pale grows Reason at
Religions sight; / So dyes, and so dissolves in Supernatural Light." If
one desires escape from a place in which "anxious Thoughts in endless
Circles roul, / Without a Centre where to fix the SOM/," the only choice
is to "Look humbly upward, see his Will disclose."36
The posterity of which Dryden speaks was enabled
by God's revelation of the covenant to Noah, and has little to do with the
biblical passage in which Noah is revealed in his drunkenness. Dryden, however,
seems to imaginatively conflate the two, treating the translator's task of
revealing the authorial father-figure as a sort of metonym for the process of
"transfusion," the spiritual revelation of the original author. To
practice "blind" and "superstitious" metaphrase reveals
nothing; as Dryden quoted John Denham in his preface to Ovid, those who follow
the practice "preserve the Ashes, [not] the Flame" of the original
work (1:115). This reduction is similar to the "faint remnants or dying
flames of reveal'd Religion" in Religio Laicfs preface and the reason that
"dissolvesin Supernatural Light" in its opening. The inverse error
occurs when the translator is more concerned with revealing his own powers than
the spirit of the original author; "To state it fairly," Dryden
attests, "Imitation of an Authour is the most advantagious way for a
Translator to shew himself, but the greatest wrong which can be done to the
Memory and Reputation of the dead," a statement that accorded with his
sense at that time of an author's word as "Sacred and inviolable." To
Dryden's mind, "Imitation and verbal Version ["Metaphrase"]"
were "two Extreams, which ought to be avoided." Thus by practicing
the via media of Paraphrase, "the Spirit of an Authour may be transfus'd,
and yet not lost" (1:117-18).
In theory, at any rate. Dryden was the first to
admit that he had, in translating Ovid, "transgress'd the Rules which [he]
had given; and taken more liberty than a just Translation will allow"
(1:119), slipping that bit of information into the penultimate sentence of his
preface. Such moves on Dryden's part can be maddening for the critic
endeavoring to interpret his theories. Judith Sloman thought that
"Dryden's own comments on translation do little enough to explain his
practice in his collective translations, or indeed any of them." Of his
tripartite theory of the translative options, "[h]is most famous
statement," she found that they "lead only to pointless questions
about whether an exceptionally independent version is a paraphrase or an
imitation, and one must conclude that the two concepts were essentially flexible,
both for Dryden and for others."37 Although this may be true of other
authors, Dryden's evolving theory of translation is inexplicable and
self-contradictory only when studied in isolation from a broader context that
includes his evolving religious thought.
In the preface to Ovid, Dryden did not claim to
adhere to one method while following another; instead, he went to great pains
to praise one method and then admitted that he had not followed it, and therein
lies the confusion. Why did he do so? It must be remembered that the complete
tide of the work for which Dryden wrote what we have come to think of simply as
his "preface to Ovid" was Ovid's Epistks, Translated by Several
Hands. These were the first of Dryden's translations to appear in print, and he
was engaged by Tonson to write a preface for a volume that included
translations by Thomas Rhymer, Thomas Otway, John Caryll, Samuel Butler, and
John Sheffield, Earl of Mulgrave.38 It is therefore not surprising that Dryden
would take the opportunity to set out the current consensus on translation
theory for the reader of this multi-author volume and display his conversance
with that theory, even if he himself has not followed that consensus. If the
concepts of metaphrase and imitation had been entirely flexible for Dryden and
others, there would have been no reason for Dryden's awkward and abrupt closing
paragraph, in which he admits he has strayed from the beaten path and
recommends to the reader the authors who have supposedly followed it (1:119).
By his preface to Sylvae in 1685, in which
Dryden identifies Roscommon's 1684 Essay as his incentive to try "his
Rules," Dryden is more comfortable in identifying himself as an imitator
rather than a paraphraser. He does claim that he has "generally observ'd [Roscommon's]
instructions," but his word-choice in assessing their efficacy is telling:
"I am sure my reason is sufficiently convinc'd both of their truth and
usefulness" (my emphasis). His gloss on this statement, "which, in
other words, is to confess no less a vanity than to pretend that I have at
least in some places made Examples to his Rules," is similar to his
"I have built a House" statement, in that the semi-serious vaunt
distracts the reader from what Dryden is really saying. For Dryden hasn't followed
the rules at all. "I must acknowledge," he says, "that I have
many times exceeded my Commission; for I have both added and omitted, and even
sometimes very boldly made such expositions of my Authors, as no Dutch
commentator will forgive me" (3:34). "Commission" connotes
"authority," but it also means "orders," a charge that has
been entrusted to someone. Critics have identified Dryden's Dutch
"authorities" as Daniel Heinsius and Borchard Cnipping, two renowned
Renaissance scholars and translators, and there is evidence that Dryden was
using Heinsius's edition of Horace while he was working on his translations for
Sylvae.39 Such "Dutch Commentateurs" make a later appearance, in
Dryden's preface to the third Miscellany, in which he deems them "heavy
gross-witted Fellows; fit only to gloss on their own dull Poets" (4:371).
In the seventeenth century, however, "Dutch
commentary" carried with it an importance beyond the realm of letters. In
1617, the Synod of Dort convened to discuss a serious controversy that had
arisen in the Dutch Reformed Church over the rise of Arminianism (an
international synod, it included several English representatives), and it was
decided that a new Dutch Bible was necessary for the goal of unifying the Dutch
Church. The new authorized version that the synod commissioned, the
States-General Bible (Slatenvertaling or Stalenbybel), was published in
Dordrecht between 1626 and 1637; its English version, backed by members of the
Westminster Assembly and Oliver Cromwell, was translated by Theodore Haak and
appeared in 1657.40 The Dutch Bible followed the Genevan model of copious
annotation, and it was particularly celebrated or castigated, depending upon
one's viewpoint, for its meticulously strict adherence to the original Hebrew,
even when this resulted in an awkward-or confusing-rendering. It was not a practice
that Dryden the translator or Dryden the Catholic convert would have found
particularly appealing.41
In other words, Dryden's evolving ideas of
translation theory were intimately bound to his changing religious beliefs.
When he translated Ovid's Epistles in 1680, he toed the critical line in
claiming the original author's sense to be "Sacred and inviolable";
in the 1685 preface to Sylvae, he has "added and omitted" in his
"bold" expositions of his authorial father-figures, and jokes that in
translating some passages of Virgil too literally, he has paradoxically
committed a "sacrilege" (3:8). This change of heart is not
surprising, if one reads Dryden's translation theory against his differing
views of the biblical word in his two important religious poems: the
judiciously Anglican Religio Laid, published two years after the Epistles, and
the moderately Catholic The Hind and the Panther, which Dryden began composing
the year after Sylvaes publication. Defending the Bible from natural religion
in Religio Laid, Dryden argues that "This onely Doctrine does our Lusts
oppose"; wonders that "It thrives through pain; its own Tormentours
tires; / And with a stubborn patience still aspires"; and declares it
"[sufficient" and "clear" for determining divine law.42
The Bible itself, then, is not only
indestructible and triumphant but also sufficient for salvation-until we humans
get our hands on it. For when the human element enters the picture, the Bible's
true nature is corrupted: "we may see what Errours have been made / Both
in the Copiers and Translaters Trade. / How Jewish, Popish, Interests have
prevail'd, / And where Infallibility husfaU'd' (248-51). And that's not all:
If Scripture, though deriv'd from heav'nly
birth,
Has been but carelesly preserv'd on Earth;
If God's own People, who of God before
Knew what we know, and had been promis'd more,
In fuller Terms, of Heaven's assisting Care,
And who did neither Time, nor Study spare,
To keep this Book untainted, unperplext,
Let in gross Errours to corrupt the Text
Omitted paragraphs, embroyl'd the Sense,
With vain Traditions stopt the gaping Fence,
Which every common hand pull'd up with ease:
What Safety from such brushwood-helps as these?
If written words from time are not secur'd,
How can we think have oral Sounds endur'd?
Which thus transmitted, if one Mouth has fail'd,
Immortal Lyes on Ages are intail'd:
And that some such have been, is prov'd too
plain;
If we consider Interest, Church, and Gain.
(258-75)
This is Dryden at the height of his poetic
powers: engaged, lucid, and aesthetically riveting. I quote this passage in its
entirety for two reasons. First, I believe it demonstrates that Dryden, who
always wrote best when his blood was fired, was profoundly troubled by the
practical problems on which the passage expounds. second, these words could
equally apply to Dryden's fervent belief in the need to rekindle the spirit of
ancient genius with equally inspired translation (of which I will say more
momentarily). At this point, however, Dryden has found himself in a trap. The
"brushwood-helps' he refers to are the "Pope, and Councils, and
Traditions force" (255). It is a strange sufficiency indeed that can be
assailed so powerfully by inadequate caretakers, and Dryden has effectively
written off tradition, council, study, translation, and thus, effectively, the
Bible itself-in its accessible form-as the path to enlightenment.
We come to realize that Dryden has predicted his
own predicament in the poem's opening, where "anxious Thoughts in endless
Circles roul" (36), and he himself is moved to allow that an
"Omniscient Church" would be worth "Both Testaments" and
the "Creed' together, were one to exist (282-83). Since none does,
however, Dryden limps lamely to the finish of his poem, making due with the
equivocation, "In doubtfull questions 'tis the safest way / To learn what
unsuspected Ancients say" and with the recommendation to stifle
"private Reason," for "Common quiet is Mankind's concern."
Ultimately, his ironically feeble assertion that "Truth by its own Sinews
will prevail" is an unsupported stop-gap that is as ineffective as the
brushwood-helps. Not only did Solomon's house twice fall, but the Bible itself
has been despoiled at the hands of the "Rabble": "While Crouds
unlearn'd, with rude Devotion warm, / About the Sacred Viands buz and swarm, /
The Fly-blown Text creates a crawling Brood; / And turns to Maggots what was
meant for Food."*3 Critics have argued that Religio Laid sufficiently
indicates Dryden's allegiance to Anglicanism in 1682, often in an attempt to
demonstrate the opportunism of his "hasty" conversion. No doubt
Dryden felt that his poem adequately demonstrated such an allegiance, but as
the editors of the California edition point out, Religio Laid clearly
illustrates that its author was not in a state of "intellectual
equilibrium" when he wrote it.44 In his essay "John Dryden as
Comparatist," Calvin S. Brown emphasizes that "[Dryden's] normal
approach to almost anything was to compare it with something similar enough to
make the comparison valid, but different enough to make it
illuminating."45 Dryden has performed just such an operation with his
comparison of Anglicanism and Catholicism, and concludes that "'tis not
likely we shou'd higher Soar / In search of Heav'n, than all the Church
before" (437-38). I believe that, far from illuminating the truth of
Anglicanism, as a result of the terms as he set them forth, Dryden
inadvertently steered toward the idea of a primitive Church as he charted man's
spiritual journey: "And still the nearer to the Spring we go / More
limpid, more unsoyl'd the Waters flow" (340-41).
Not surprisingly, the hind in The Hind and the
Panther, who as the symbol for the Catholic church was Dryden's
"Centrev/here to fix [his] Soul," comes to some very different
conclusions about the "Pope, and Councils, and Traditions for ce."
What she has to say about the authority of the written word, however, is the
logical extenuation of the line of thinking begun in Religio Laid. In trying to
convince the panther (the Anglican church) of the error of her ways and the
danger of her flirtations with the wolf (nonconformism), the hind endeavors to
prove that by casting off the authority of the true church, the panther has
left herself with no recourse to sacred authority. If the panther tries to
"reform by Text," that will only be precedent for "her own
Rebels to reform again":
As long as words a difFrent sense will bear,
And each may be his own Interpreter,
Our ai'ry faith will no foundation find:
The word's a weathercock for ev'ry wind . . . 46
As a poet who was now having his own Protestant
words turned against him in the wake of his conversion, Dryden had gained a lot
of insight into the never-ending spin. Worse than the inherent instability of
language, the Protestant argument that the "sacred books" are
"full and plain / And ev'ry needfull point of truth contain" is
treacherous, for "All who can read, Interpreters may be" (2.108-10).
Thus no written word is sufficient for salvation, but Dryden is confident he
has reached the unspoiled waters that he had sought in Religio Laid,
instructing the panther, "Despair at our foundations then to strike / Til
you can prove your faith Apostolick; / A limpid stream drawn from the native
source; / Succession lawfull in a lineal course" (2.612-15).
Faith in the tradition of Catholicism is, for
Dryden, the only antidote against misunderstanding the written word. If Jesus
had not realized that "No written laws can be so plain, so pure, / But wit
may gloss, and malice may obscure," he would have "writ himself the
New Testament (a play on Jesus as logos, who as the embodiment of the Word
according to the Johannine tradition, did indeed write himself).47 Not even the
words "indited by [God's] first command," text that "A Prophet
grav'd" while "an Angel held his hand," are sufficient, because
"[t]he sense is intricate," and the only thing clear to a reader so
far removed from the primal spring is "What vowels and what consonants are
there."48 As Dryden has represented it, aspiring to salvation by minutely
focusing on this disorderly array of letters looks a lot like metaphrastically
"turning an Authour word by word," a method in which the translator
must not only take into consideration "the thought of his Author,"
"his words," and their foreign "Counterpart" but also
confine himself to the "compass of Numbers." In the end he finds
himself "incumber'd with so many difficulties at once, that he can never
disintangle himself from all."49 Nor will Roscommon's "rule" of
paraphrase suffice, however much it stands to reason: like the panther's
arbitrary biblical interpretation, the via media of translation is merely
"To take up half on trust, and half to try."50
Given the impossibility of transmitting the
written word without error, how can Dryden justify any translation, let alone
his "Imitations"? The answer is quite simple: for good or bad, Dryden
represented himself as an inspired caretaker, and probably believed himself to
be one. Dryden seems to have felt that his powers of "transfusion"
were the result of direct communion with the ancient authors he revealed for
the English people, in a manner far beyond what contemporary translation theory
demanded or condoned; where Dryden has enlarged on his authors' work, he thinks
that he has "fairly deduc'd" the enlargements from his source, and
"desire [s] the false Criticks wou'd not always think that these thoughts
are wholly mine, but that . . . they are secretly in the Poet."51 This
belief arose partially from a Neoplatonic vision of emanation that Dryden had
always cherished. As far back as his "account" of Annus Mirabilis,
Dryden had understood poetry to partake in a principle of perfect being that is
eternally present; Virgil has such power because "we see the objects he
represents us with in their native figures, in their proper motions; but we so
see them, as our own eyes could never have beheld them so beautiful in
themselves. We see the Soul of the Poet, like that universal one of which he
speaks, informing and moving through all his Pictures" (1:54).
Dryden's discussion of classical dramatists in
his dedication to the /Ends-"from [Homer], their great Creator, they have
each of them Divinae particulum Aurae. They flow'd from him at first, and are
at last resolv'd into him"-offers an excellent example of his belief and
investment in the Neoplatonic ideal (5:269). Even in Dryden's more bitter
moments, when his belief in the beauty of the world was stretched thin, the
Neoplatonic underpinnings persist, as when he remarks on Ovid's words and
thought, "I cannot say [they] are inimitable, because I have Copyed them:
and so may others, if they use the same diligence."52 After his
conversion, this Neoplatonism at moments takes on decidedly Catholic tone. In
the Discourse . . . of Satire, he reiterates, "A Noble Authour wou'd not
be persu'd too close by a Translator." This time, his explanation
appropriates the language of eucharistie controversy. "We lose his
Spirit," Dryden insists, "when we think to take his Body. The grosser
Part remains with us, but the Soul is flown away (4:87). One who translates by
the letter thus partakes in a type of consubstantiation, rather than
participating in transubstantiation. Given that this remarkable passage appears
soon after Dryden has pled with the reader, in language reminiscent of Biblical
misfortune, to let the "Excellencies" of the volume's other
translators "attone for my Imperfections, and those of my Sons," its
significance could not have been lost on Dryden's contemporaries."
In his final front matter, Dryden speaks of the
house he has built out of his Fables, but it is in the preface itself that we
find him constructing for himself an eternal place in English letters.
"There is nothing in literary criticism more satisfactory," thought
W. P. Ker, "merely as a display of literary strength and skill, than the
essay in which Dryden's mind is expatiating freely, as in ... the Preface to
the Fables, where he faces his adversaries, personal and impersonal, with the
security of a man who has confidence in his own powers, and in the set
clearness of his eye."54 And he was right. Yet in his preface to the
Fables, Dryden has done more than utilize his full arsenal of astonishing
rhetorical powers: he resurrects a dead author, inserts himself in the line of
an apostolic succession of poetic masters, confesses past sins, and styles
himself the unshakeable poet-prophet of the English nation.55 Dryden's subtle
allusion to David's line is far more than a glimmer of allegiance to the
Jacobite cause, for in alluding to the house of Solomon, the "author"
of the Proverbs and the Song of Songs, Dryden accords himself a part of that
poet's wisdom, spiritual inspiration, and foresight.
Following his standard practice, Dryden allows
himself the necessary imitative leeway required to breathe new life into
Chaucer. "I have not ty'd my self to a Literal Translation," comes
the familiar refrain. In this instance, though, he has exercised notjust his
literary but his moral judgment, in having "often omitted what [he] judg'd
unnecessary, or not of Dignity enough to appear in the Company of better
thoughts." Moreover, he owns the largest degree of translative latitude he
has yet taken, unrepentantly stating, "I have presum'd farther in some
Places, and added somewhat of my own where I thought my Author was deficient,
and had not given his Thoughts their true Lustre, for want of Words in the
Beginning of our Language" (7:40). On the subject of Chaucer's language,
Dryden once again states his belief in the transitory nature of words, and the
necessity of regenerating an author's original genius with correlating
translative inspiration. "[T] here are . . .Judges who think I ought not
to have translated Chaucer into English," he grants, for "[t]hey
suppose there is a certain Veneration due to his old Language; and that it is
little less than Profanation and Sacrilege to alter it." Dryden adamantly
disagrees. When a word "deserves to be reviv'd," then Dryden has
"that reasonable Veneration for Antiquity, to restore it." Slyly
playing on the prejudices that many of his anti-Papist readers held, he turns
the tables on them, decreeing that "All beyond this is Superstition"
(7:41).
For Dryden, his "Tranfusion" of
Chaucer is successful, like so many before it, because he was in communion with
his original poet: "I found I had a Soul congenial to his" (7:40). As
with Ovid, the congenerous nature of the poets meant that Dryden understood
Chaucer's faults as well as his strengths, and he concludes his discussion of
what he understood to be Chaucer's imperfect meter with the empathetic
conviction that "We can only say, that he liv'd in the Infancy of our
Poetry, and that nothing is brought to Perfection at the first. We must be
Children before we grow Men" (7:34). Vincent Dearing glosses this
statement as proverbial, noting that the "formula closest to
Dryden's" in Tilley's Dictionary of the Proverbs is "a man must creep
before he can go."56 No doubt Dryden's sense is proverbial, but his
language is far different from this particular saying, and the gloss fails to
strike at the heart of what such a proverb might have meant for Dryden, who had
just coined the term "boyism" two paragraphs before in reference to
Ovid's inappropriate witticisms. Dryden's use of the metaphors of infancy and
childhood, and their corresponding toys and trifles, was perennial. When he
himself was in the adolescence of his career, he notoriously declared that
during the age of Shakespeare "Poetry was then, if not in its infancy
among us, at least not arriv'd to its vigor and maturity"57; in his preface
to Sylvae, he laments "our ingenious young Men" who "take up
some cry'd up English Poet for their Model, adore him, and imitate him as they
think, without knowing wherein he is defective, where he is Boyish and
trifling" (3:5). In later years, he applies these metaphors to the subject
of religious practice, and the hind facetiously disparages the nonconforming
wolf by accusing him of setting "those toys traditions quite aside"
(2.247).
Thus his use of the maxim "We must be
Children before we grow Men" is the culmination of all that has gone
before before it, including numerous usages from the same preface, such as his
condemnation of Cowley, whose conceits were "whole Pyramids of
Sweet-meats, for Boys and women; but little of solid Meat, for Men," and his
employment of Horace's "nugaeque canoree" to illustrate any verse
that "shocks Religion, or Good Manners" (7:33, 28). Dryden's concern
with the puerile led Paul Fry to the conclusion, "As a creature of his age
he of course takes a condescending view of everything childish."58 The
real source of Dryden's interest was, in the end, spiritual as well as
discriminative, and his later concern with "boyisms," while in tune
with his early literary cares, strikes a religious chord in its correspondence
with the biblical verse that proceeds this essay: "When I was a child, I
spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I
became a man, I put away childish things" (1 Cor. 13:11). Surely the
diction of this verse is closer to Dryden's "We must be Children before we
grow Men" than that of the proverbial "a man must creep before he can
go." But Dryden's sentiment is indeed in line with the proverb; while
recalling the Pauline necessity of casting off one's childhood to embrace the
obligations of manhood, he at the same time recognizes the necessity of the
child who gives birth to that man.
Dryden had come to believe that he, too, had
experienced a literary and spiritual childhood-however precocious-and
represented himself as having reached his literary manhood and achieved his
spiritual potential in his late-life translations. He would not suffer the same
fate as Cowley, to whom Dryden delivers a taste of his own medicine by applying
to him a bawdery attributed to Rochester: "Not being of God, he could not
stand' (7:34). Dryden is sincere in this sentiment. "I will no more offend
against Good Manners," he vows. "I am sensible as I ought to be of
the Scandal I have given by my loose Writings; and make what Reparation I am
able, by this Publick Acknowledgment" (7:38). In response to Jeremy
Collier's attacks on Dryden's earlier profane plays, Dryden humbles himself,
admitting the bishop "has tax'd me justly," retracting "all
Thoughts and Expressions of mine, which can be truly argu'd of Obscenity,
Profaneness, or Immorality," and concluding, "If he be my Enemy, let
him triumph; if he be my Friend ... he will be glad of my Repentance."59
In hindsight, Dryden had recognized his future
path far before he realized it, when he had wistfully acknowledged Henry
Dickinson's efforts in translating Father Simon's history of the Old Testament,
the work that prompted Dryden to write Religio Laid:
. . . thou, my Friend,
By well translating better dost commend:
Those youthfull hours which, of thy Equals most
In Toys have squander'd, or in Vice have lost,
Those hours hast thou to Nobler use emply'd;
And the severe Delights of Truth enjoy'd.
(228-33)
As it had always been Dryden's duty "to
promote the Honour of my Native Country," he resolved to commend Chaucer,
a "perpetual Fountain of good sense" who "must have been a Man
of a most wonderful comprehensive Nature," to the English people.60 While
engaged in pursuing Chaucer's literary "Delights of Truth," Dryden
came to find out that he was not the only one burning incense at Chaucer's
altar. "Mademoiselle de Scudéry," he had learned, "who is as old
as Sibyl, and inspir'd like her by the same God of Poetry, is at this time
translating Chaucer'mto modern French." For Dryden the Neoplatonist,
"there is something in it like Fatality; that after certain Periods of
Time, the Fame and Memory of Great Wits should be renew'd." Dryden the
Catholic convert remarks that "If this be wholly Chance, 'tis
extraordinary; and I dare not call it more, for fear of being tax'd with
Superstition" (7:42). But it is Dryden the poet-prophet who has foreseen
the cyclical return to the eternal principle of genius, and Dryden the
translator who was able to revivify that genius in order to make it available
to the present. "Another Poet, in another Age," projected Dryden,
"may take the same Liberty with my Writings; if at least they live long
enough to deserve Correction" (7:40). Perhaps. In the meantime, Dryden's
poetic house stands firm while it waits.
Harvard University
[Footnote]
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NOTES
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1 The Works of John
Dryden, ed. Edward Niles Hooker and H. T. Swendenberg, Jr., 20 vols. (U.
California Press, 1956-2002), 7:24. All citations of Dryden are from the
California edition, hereafter indicated by volume number followed by page
number.
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2 I use the word
"miscellany" because Dryden himself described the Fables as "a
Book of Miscellanyes" in a letter to Mrs. Steward ( The letters of John
Drydtn, ed. Charles E. Ward [Duke U. Press, 1942], 113), and Dryden's
"building" statement is strengthened in force and in irony set
against the typically cobbled nature of a miscellany. It is not my intention
to enter the debate over the Fables' "epic" or "organic"
characteristics versus their composition as a medley of free-standing works.
While Dealing's remark that "Observations of [the] connection and
contrasts [between the individual poems] and speculation about them can give
hours of harmless pleasure" is surely too dismissive of the
possibilities of a unifying principle or coherent organization (7:580), arguments
for such possibilities have not yet been successful in demonstrating them to
be anything more. Earl Miner's Dry den's Poetry (Indiana U. Press, 1967) is
still a good place to begin research on this topic; see also Judith Sloman's
Dryden: The Poetics of Translation (U. Toronto Press, 1985) for some of the
most cogent and thoughtful criticism on the Fables I have encountered. see
also James D. Garrison's essay "The Universe of Dryden's Fables"
for the argument that where Dryden has not found "in his chosen texts
recurrent patterns of correspondence that provide a context for understanding
narrative change," he "add[s] them in the process of
translation" (in SEL 21 [1981]: 413). see George Watson, however, for
his assessment that Dryden's "house" statement "is sufficient
comment upon an achievement at once untidy and magnificent" (John
Dryden: Of Dramatic Poesy and Other Critical Essays. [New York: Dutton,
1962J).
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Nor do I wish to
exercise my vote on whether Dryden's satire or his translation best exhibits
his genius. "A Poet's 'World'?", David Hopkins's review of James
Winn's authoritative biography John Dryden and His WOrW(YaIe U. Press, 1987),
in which he takes Winn to task for what he feels to be his scant mention of
the Fables and his "reinforce [ment] . . . [of] the view of Dryden as a
limitedly Occasional' poet" sufficiently attests to the intensity of the
debate (Cambridge (Quarterly 19 [199O]: 68). For the purposes of my essay, it
should at least be mentioned here that serious consideration of the Fables
has only in recent years returned to the position of honor that it held in
the eighteenth and early nineteenth century. The introductory chapter to
Cedric D. Reverand II's Dryden's Final Poetic Mode: The Fables,
"Dryden's Most Memorable and Least Remembered Work," weighs in on
the side of translation, supporting the claim by citing the many examples of
discerning past readers who considered the Fables Dryden's finest hour ([U.
of Pennsylvania Press], 1988, 1-7). Unfortunately, many readers will not come
away from Reverand's treatment of the poems with an understanding of why they
should agree with him. Dearing's assessment of this work is, unfortunately,
right on the mark this time: "Reverand's survey of preceding criticism
is remarkably full and correspondingly helpful, but he does nothing to
resolve the differences of opinion he finds there; rather he sees grounds for
all of them, his own grounds for so seeing being his sense, as he says
repeatedly, that Dryden undercuts himself on every subject" (7:606).
More unfortunate are the moments when it is Reverand's deconstructive method
veering into carelessness that undercuts Dryden's brilliance, such as when,
speaking of the fable of the Cock and the Fox, Reverand claims that
"[Chanticleer] is perfectly safe up in that tree, until Reynard the Fox
flatters him" (apparently confusing it with another popular fable, the
Fox and the Crow, and thus revealing that Reverand might not have fully
grasped the sparkling satire of Dryden's "If ought from fearful Dreams
may be divin'd They signify a Cock of Dunghill-kind," which plays off of
one tradition in which the cock perches on a dung heap in the barnyard as he
"sings" for the fox).
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3 See William Sanford
LaSor's entry on "Temple" in The Oxford Companion to the Bible, ed.
Bruce M. Metzger and Michael D. Coogan. (Oxford U. Press, 1993), 732.
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4 Kings 6: 21-2. In
1789, Philip Neve, Esq. alluded to Solomon's temple when he pronounced,
"[Paradise Lost] 'Tis a temple, constructed to [Milton's] own immortal
fame, of the cedar of Lebanon, the gold of Ophir, and the marble of
Paws" [Cursory remarks on some of the Ancient English Poets,
Particularly Milton. (London: priv. print., 1789), 146].
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5 Absalom and
Achitophel, 1030, 1028-29.
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6 Discourse concerning
the Original and Progress of Satire, 4:22. He speaks, of course, of his
frustrated ambition to write an epic.
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7 Dryden and His
World, 447.
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8 17:24,25.
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9 1:1,50,20,51-53.
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10 "To my Dear
Friend Mr. Congreve, On His Comedy, call'd, The Double-Dealer" (4:2,
13,14). I am grateful to James Engell for pointing out this connection.
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11 7:37, 40. For
debate over subplots in Dramatick Poesie, see 17: 19, 34-35, 45-47.
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12 Of Dramatick Poesy
17.
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13 Works 7:18. In his
edition of John Dryden's Works, Walter Scott commented on the similar
hardship and fortitude of Milton and Dryden: "it is to hours of
seclusion, neglect, and even penury, that we owe the Paradise Lost, the
Virgil, and the Fables" [rev. by George Saintsbury (Edinburgh: Paterson,
1882-1893), 345]. And, one might add, everything that Scott wrote during the
last seven years of his life.
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14 7:42, 39-40. It
should be noted that however boastful the first statement, it is true, and
however mistaken the second, it was the common opinion at the time that
Chaucer was not worth the work of reading. As many scholars have pointed out,
it was one of Dryden's lasting achievements as a critic to resuscitate
Chaucer's reputation. When Mark Van Doren claimed, "It must be sheer
affectation to insist that Chaucer's Nun's Priest's Talehas suffered in the
hands of Dryden," he might have said the same of any of Dryden's
"translations" of Chaucer [John Dryden, á study of his poetry, 3d
ed. (NY: H. Holt and Co., 1946; orig. The poetry of John Dryden, Har'court,
Brace and Howe, 1920), 226].
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15 Introduction,
Selected Poetry and Prose of John Dryden, ed. Earl Miner (New York: Modern
Library, 1985; orig. pub. New York: Random House, 1969), 20.
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16 "Dryden's
Conversion and Dryden's Chaucer," Essays in CriticismSS no. 1 (1988):
278-94, 285.
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17 Letters, 73.
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18 Dedication to the
Examen Poeticum, 4: 364.
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19 "An account of
the ensuing Poem [Annus Mirabilis], in a Letter to the Honorable, Sir Robert
Howard" (1667), 1:50.
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20 An Essay of
Dramatick Poesie, 17:10; 2:71,1. 319.
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21 Dedication to Examen
Poeticum, 4:366.
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22 The seventeenth
century was of course far more comfortable with the rhetoric of praising
one's superiors than the present one. As Ralph Cohen pointed out, however,
"parts of [Dryden's prefaces] appear as distasteful to us as they did to
some of Dryden's contemporaries" ("John Dryden's Literary
Criticism," in New Homage to John Dryden, Phillip Harth, Alan Fisher,
and Ralph Cohen [Los Angeles: William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, 1983],
63).
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23 12:344. Dryden
published his translation, the /Eneis, 20 years later: "Her colour
chang'd, her Face was not the same,/ And hollow Groans from her deep Spirit
came./ Her Hair stood up; convulsive Rage possess'd / Her trembling Limbs,
and heav'd her lab'ring Breast" (5:72-75).
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24 "To the Earl
of Roscommon, on his Excellent Essay on Translated Verse," Works 2. see
Wmn, John Dryden andHis World, 387-88, for discussion of Dryden's
participation in and patronage from Dillon's literary circle.
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25 An Essay on
Translated Verse, 1685 and Horace's Art of Poetry: Made English, 1684
(Menston, England: Scolar Press), 1971.
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26 In this context, it
is possible that Dryden approached adapting Milton's epic in much the same
spirit as he approached translating other authors.
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27 "Precursors to
Dryden: English and French Theories of Translation in the Seventeenth
Century," Comparative Literature Studies! (1970): 50-81, 57.
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28 1:114-15. Denham
had borrowed the term "transfusion" from George Fanshawe before him
(Steiner 74). see Steiner for a brief but most helpful discussion of the
complex development in translation theory from Fanshawe to Dryden.
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29 On this reaction,
see Flora Ross Amos, Early Theories of Translation (Columbia U. Press, 1920),
151.
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30 127-28, 23, 216.
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31 352-53, 368,
374-75.
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32 384-86.
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33 356, 362;
Dedication of the Examen Poeticum, 4:363.
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34 Winn, Dryden and
His World, 359.
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35 Ibid., 363.
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36 8-11, 36-37, 101.
Swedenberg's assertions that "In setting out to write a poem in which he
proposed to reason his readers 'into Truth,' Dryden could hardly have meant
at the very outset to reject out of hand the faculty of reason" and that
Dryden's position was that "Reason of itself cannot lead us to eternal
truth, but it can support us in our quest" are important ones (2: n. 344).
In his defense of the virtuous heathen, Dryden cites reason as the only means
to salvation available in the heathen's condition: "a Rulereveal'd / Is
none to Those, from whom it was conceal'd. / Then those who follw'd Reason's
Dictates right; / Liv'd up, and lifted high their Natural Light, / With
Socrates may see their Maker's Face, / While Thousand Rubnck-Martyrs want a
place" (206-11).
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37 Dryden: The Poetics
of Translation, 8.
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38 see Works 1: n. 337
for the full list of contributors.
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39 see Works 3: n.
273; Works 4: n. 702.
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40 The Dutch
annotations upon the whole Bible, or, All the holy canonical scriptures of
the Old and New Testament together with, and according to their own
translation of all the text: as both the one and the other were ordered and
appointed by the Synod of Dort, 1618 and published by authority, 1637. Now
faithfully communicated to the use of Great Britain, in English. Whereunto is
prefixed an exact narrative touching the whole work, and this translation
(London : Printed by Henry Hills, for John Rothwell, Joshua Kirton, and
Richard Tomlins, 1657).
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41 As James Winn
states, "No one will ever know just what combination of events opened
Dryden's eyes or exactly when he embraced Catholicism as truth" (Dryden
and His World, 414). By 1685, however, the year Dryden wrote his preface to
Sylvae, his conversion was no doubt well underway, although not yet public
knowledge. (see Winn 414-423 for detailed discussion of the period leading up
to the publication of The Hind and the Panther. )
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42 158, 162-63, 167.
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43 435-36, 450, 349.
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44 2: n. 346.
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45 Comparative
Literature Studies 10 (1973), 112-24, 118.
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46 1.460-65.
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47 2.318-19,314.
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48 2.320-21,385-86.
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49 Preface to Ovid's
Epistles, 1:115-16.
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50 The Hind and the
Panther, 1.141.
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51 Preface to Sylvae, 3:4.
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52 Dedication of
Examen Poeticum, 4:371.
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53 Translations by
Dryden's sons Charles and John, who had also converted to Catholicism, were
included in The Satires of Decimus JuniusJuvenalis, which Dryden's Discourse
prefaced.
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54 Essays of John
Dryden (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1900), 14.
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55 This line of poets
is found in a famous passage in which Dryden positions himself as the
inheritor of the English poetic legacy by translating Chaucer, who was
"transfus'd into the Body" of Spenser, who was in turn the poetical
father of Milton (7:25).
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56 7: n. 622.
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57 Defense of the
Epilogue, Or, An Essay on the Dramatique Poetry of the last Age, 11:206.
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58 "The Other
Harmony of Dryden's 'Preface to Fables'," m John Dryden, ed. Harold
Bloom (New Haven: Chelsea House Publishers, 1987), 121-60, 150.
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59 7:46. In a note on
"To my Friend, the Author [Peter Motteux]," Dealing addresses
Dryden's response to Collier in that poem: "[Dryden's] motive might be
thought to be disinterested, since he had announced four years previously
that Love Triumphant was his last work for the stage and had returned to
translating, which now gave him most of his income. On the other hand, any
attack on his morals, whether he had exhibited them in his plays or his
poems, was still an attack on his livelihood and might be thought to need a
reply" (7: n. 570). This balanced view is true enough; it is nonetheless
my hope that my essay has helped to demonstrate that in his later years
Dryden had more on his mind than money, the easiest recourse to which would
have been to simply take the Oath of Allegiance and adhere to the Test Act,
as many of his fellow converts had upon the revolution of 1688.
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60 7:25, 33, 37. It
should be noted that Dryden, along with everyone else in the seventeenth
century, believed Chaucer to have "some little Byas toward the Opinions
of Wycliff" and therefore he might have considered this particular
translative task as ecumenical in nature (35).
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