I was in town. I am glad to find, by your letter of July 26th, your style, that you are both in health; but wonder you should think me so negligent as to forget to give you an account of the ship in which your parcel is to come. I have written to you two or three letters concerning it, which I have sent by safe hands, as I told poet; that quality without which judgment is cold and knowledge is inert; that energy which collects, combines, amplifies, and animates;" is, "with some hesitation," attributed to Dryden. "He professed to have learned his poetry from Dryden, whom, whenever an opportunity was presented, he praised through his whole life with unvaried liberality; and perhaps his character may receive some illustration, if he be compared with his master. "Integrity of understanding and nicety of discernment were not allotted in a less proportion to Dryden than to Pope. The rectitude of Dryden's mind was sufficiently shown by the dismission of his poetical prejudices, and the rejection of unnatural thoughts and rugged numbers. But Dryden never desired to apply all the judgment that he had. He wrote, and professed to write, merely for the people; and when he pleased others, he contented himself. He spent no time in struggles to rouse latent powers; he never attempted to make that better which was already good, nor often to mend what he must have known to be faulty. He wrote, as he tells us, with very little consideration; when occasion or necessity called upon him, he poured out what the present moment happened to supply, and, when once it had passed the press, ejected it from his mind; for, when he had no pecuniary interest, he had no further solicitude. "Pope was not content to satisfy; he desired to excel, and therefore always endeavoured to do his best; he did not court the candour, but dared the judgment of his reader, and, expecting no indulgence from others, he showed none to himself. He examined lines and words with minute and punctilious observation, and retouched every part with indefatigable diligence, till he had left nothing to be forgiven. "For this reason he kept his pieces very long in his hands, while he considered and reconsidered them. The only poems which can be supposed to have been written with such regard to the times as might hasten their publication, were the satires of 'Thirty-eight;' of which Dodsley told me that they were brought to him by the author, that they might be fairly copied. Almost every line,' he said, 'was then written twice over; I gave him a clean transcript, which he sent some time afterwards to me for the press, with almost every line written twice over a second time.' "His declaration, that his care for his works ceased at their publication, was not strictly true. His parental attention never abandoned them: what he found amiss in the first edition, he silently corrected in those that followed. He appears to have revised the 'Iliad,' and freed it from some of its imperfections; and the Essay on Criticism' received many improvements after its first appearance. It will seldom be found that he altered without adding clearness, elegance, or vigour. Pope had perhaps the judgment of Dryden; but Dryden certainly wanted the diligence of Pope. "In acquired knowledge, the superiority must be allowed to Dryden, whose education was more scholastic, and who before he became an author had been allowed more time for study, with better means of information. His mind has a larger range, and he collects his images and illustrations from a more extensive circumference of science. Dryden knew more of man in his general nature, and Pope in his local manners. The notions of Dryden were formed by comprehensive speculation, and those of Pope by minute attention. There is more dignity in the knowledge of Dryden, and more certainty in that of Pope. "Poetry was not the sole praise of either; for both excelled likewise in prose; but Pope did not borrow his prose from his predecessor. The style of Dryden is capricious and varied; that of Pope is cautious and uniform. Dryden observes the motions of his own mind; Pope constrains his mind to his own rules of composition. Dryden is sometimes vehement and rapid; Pope is always smooth, uniform, and gentle. Dryden's page is a natural field, rising into inequalities, and diversified by the varied exuberance of abundant vegetation; Pope's is a velvet lawn, shaven by the scythe, and levelled by the roller. "Of genius, that power which constitutes a poet; that quality without which judgment is cold, and knowledge is inert; that energy which collects, combines, amplifies, and animates; the superiority must, with some hesitation, be allowed to Dryden. It is not to be inferred, that of this poetical vigour Pope had only a little, because Dryden had more; for every other writer since Milton must give place to Pope; and even of Dryden it must be said, that, if he has brighter paragraphs, he has not better poems. Dryden's performances were always hasty, either excited by some external occasion, or extorted by domestic necessity; he composed without consideration, and published without correction. What his mind could supply at call, or gather in one excursion, was all that he sought, and all that he gave. The dilatory caution of Pope enabled him to condense his sentiments, to multiply his images, and to accumulate all that study might produce, or chance might supply. If the flights of Dryden, therefore, are higher, Pope continues longer on the wing. If of Dryden's fire the blaze is brighter, of Pope's the heat is more regular and constant. Dryden often surpasses expectation, and Pope never falls below it. Dryden is read with frequent astonishment, and Pope with perpetual delight. "This parallel will, I hope, when it is well considered, be found just; and if the reader should suspect me, as I suspect myself, of some partial fondness for the memory of Dryden, let him not too hastily condemn me; for meditation and enquiry may, perhaps, show him the reasonableness of my determination." To this fine parallel may be added, from a work of great merit, entitled, the Progress of Satire, the following acute estimate of Dryden's satirical powers. "Nearly at the same period (with Boileau) after some momentary gleams, and strong flashes in the horizon, Satire arose in England. When I name Dryden, I comprehend every varied excellence of our poetry. In harmony, strength, modulation, rhythm, energy, he first displayed the full power of the English language. My business with him, at present, is only as a Satirist. I will be brief: I speak to the intelligent. He was the first poet who brought to perfection what I would term, the Allegory of Satire.' Fables, indeed, and apologues, and romances, have always been the most ancient modes of reproof and censure. It was the peculiar happiness of Dryden, to give an eternal sense and interest to subjects which are transitory. He placed his scene on the ground of actual history. The reader of every age has an interest in the delineation of characters and names which have been familiar to him from his earliest years. He is already prepared and feels a predilection for the subject. This accommodation of ancient characters to existing persons, has a peculiar force in the age to which it is addressed; and posterity reads with delight, a poem founded on pristine story, and illustrated by the records of modern times. Dryden's power of satire has been generally acknowledged in his Mac-Flecnoe; but his masterpiece is that wonderful and unequalled performance, Absalom and Achitophel. He presents to us an heroic subject, in heroic numbers a well-constructed allegory, and a forcible appeal to our best feelings and passions. He paints the horrors of anarchy, sedition, rebellion, and democracy, with the pencil of Dante, or of Michael Angelo; and he gives the you, and doubt not but you have them before this can arrive to you. Being out of town, I have forgotten the ship's name, which your mother will enquire, and put it into her letter, which is joined with mine. But the master's name I remember: he is called Mr. Ralph Thorp; the ship is bound to Leghorn, consigned to Mr. Peter and Mr. Thomas Ball, merchants. I am of your opinion, that by Tonson's means almost all our letters have miscarried for this last year. But, however, he has missed of his design in the Dedication, though he had prepared the book for it: for, in every figure of Eneas he has caused him to be drawn like King William, with a hooked nose. After my return to town, I intend to alter a play of Sir Robert Howard's written long since, and lately put into my hands; 'tis called The Conquest of China by the Tartars. It will cost me six weeks study, with the probable benefit of an hundred pounds. In the meantime I am writing a song for St. Cecilia's Feast, who, you know, is the patroness of music. This is troublesome, and no way beneficial; but I could not deny the Stewards of the Feast, who came in a body to me to desire that kindness, one of them being Mr. Bridgeman, whose parents are your mother's friends. I hope to send you thirty guineas between Michaelmas and Christmas, of which I will give you an account when I come to town. I remember the council you give me in your letter; but dissembling, though lawful in some cases, is not my talent; yet, for your sake, I will struggle with the plain openness of my nature, and keep in my just resentments against that degenerate order. In the mean time, I flatter not myself with any manner of hopes, but do my duty, and suffer for God's sake; being assured, before hand, never to be rewarded, though the times should alter. Towards the latter end of this month, September, Charles will begin to recover his perfect health, according to his nativity which, casting it myself, I am sure is true, and all things hitherto have happened accordingly to the very time that I predicted them; I hope at the same time to recover more health, according to my age. Remember me to poor Harry, whose prayers I earnestly desire. My Virgil succeeds in the world beyond its desert or my expectation. You know the profits might have been more; but neither my conscience nor my honour would suffer me to take them but I never can repent of my constancy, since I am thoroughly persuaded of the justice of the cause for which I suffer. It has pleased God to raise up many friends to me amongst my enemies, though they who ought to have been my friends are negligent of I am called to dinner, and cannot go on with this letter, which I desire you to excuse : and am me. "Your most affectionate father, "JOHN DRYDEN." speeches of his heroes, with the strength, propriety, and correctness of Virgil. It is Satire in its highest form; but it is Satire addressed to the few. It is not adapted to the general effect of this species of poetry. In my opinion, Dryden has | not the style and manner of Horace, or Juvenal, or Persius, or Boileau. Pope called him 'unhappy,' from the looseness of the age in which he lived. He has enthusiasm, majesty, severity, gravity, strength of conception, and boldness of imagery. But sprightliness, gaiety, and easy badinage, an occasional playfulness, so necessary to the general effect of satirical poetry, were all wanting to him. Perhaps his genius was too sublime. He could not, or he would not, descend to the minutia which are often required, the anecdotes, and the passing traits of the time. His satire had an original character. It was the strain of Archilochus, sounding from the lyre of Alcæus." T. UPON THE DEATH OF LORD HASTINGS.* MUST noble Hastings immaturely die, The honour of his ancient family, *There is some fancy in this Poem, but many of the lines are very bad, and the images too gross, both in design and expression, to have escaped our author in his riper years. However, he was not quite eighteen when he wrote it; and, by reprinting it, the reader may trace the progress of that genius which afterwards arrived at such sublimity. The nobleman herein lamented, was styled Henry Lord Hastings, son to Ferdinand, Earl of Huntingdon. He died before his father, in 1649, being then in his twentieth year. He had, from nature and education, a most amiable disposition, a strong judgment, and so refined a taste, that, according to Collins's Peerage, not less than ninety-eight elegies were composed on his death. DERRICK. Derrick should have added, that Collins expressly mentions these elegies as printed in "Lachryma Musarum, the Tears of the Muses, expressed in elegies written by divers persons of nobility and worth, upon the death of the most hopeful Henry, Lord Hastings, eldest [only] son of the Right Honourable Ferdinando, Earl of Huntingdon, heirgeneral of the high-born Prince George, Duke of Clarence, brother to King Edward IV." [Collected and set forth by R. B. But as the Lachrymæ Musarum contains only thirtysix elegies, it is clear that the figures 98 in Collins are erroneous, and a mere error of the press. MALONE. On examining the Lachryma Musarum, it should seem that Mr. Collins was led into an error concerning the aumber of elegies on the death of Lord Hastings, by glancing his eye on the Table of Contents, in which the last elegy has a reference to p. 98; which he hastily supposed was the number of elegies in the book. Ver. 1. Must noble Hastings] It is a mortifying circumstance to be compelled to begin these notes with a censure of the very first piece of our admired poet. But it is impossible not to be hurt by the false, unnatural thoughts, by the forced and far-sought conceits, by the rugged and inharmonious numbers, and the perpetual aim and desire to be witty, with which this Elegy so much abounds, that we wonder he could ever rise so high after so unpromising a beginning. One well-known sentence characterises his works: "Ubi benè nemo melius, ubi malè nemo pejus." The person he lamented was Henry Lord Hastings, son to Ferdinand, Earl of Huntingdon, who died before his father, 1649. He was ancestor of the last Earl of Huntingdon, to whom Dr. Akenside addressed an Ode, of a very different cast from the verses before us, full of true Grecian spirit and sentiments, and in a style of peculiar force and energy. This nobleman will be long lamented by all his friends and acquaintance, of whom I had the honour to be one, for the elegance of his manners, his pleasing affability, his extensive knowledge of men and things, the variety and vigour of his wit and conversation, enlivened by many enrious facts and anecdotes, his accurate taste in all parts of polite literature, and his universal candour and benevolence. The character of Aspasia, written by Congreve, in the Tatler No. 72 is meant for Lady E. Hastings. She was Ver. 4. a winding for a wedding sheet ?] In this line, as also in verse 93, the poet alludes to the melancholy circumstance of Lord Hastings's death having taken place on the day preceding that which, previously to his illness, had been appointed for the celebration of his marriage. The lady to whom he was betrothed was the daughter of a very celebrated physician, Sir Theodore Mayerne, whose skill was in vain exerted to save his intended son-in-law from that malignant disorder, the smallpox. "Pridie sponsalium (proh Hymenæe!) funere luit immaturo," says his epitaph. See also the following verses of Andrew Marvel, in the collection already quoted: "The gods themselves cannot their joy conceal, * But what could he, good man, although he mix'd All herbs, and them a thousand ways infused," &c. The elegy in which these verses occur, is by far the best in the collection, if we except that of our author. MALONE. Ver. 15. Rare linguist,] On this topic Sir Aston Cokayne, in his elegy on Lord Hastings, thus expatiates :— "His few, but well-spent years, had master'd all B Than whom great Alexander may seem less; His native soil was the four parts o' the earth; 20 25 31 Did move on virtue's and on learning's pole: Into the ancient dialects; dispense Lachrymæ Musarum, &c., 1650. 40 All these attainments were made at an early age; for Lord Hastings died in his nineteenth (not, as Derrick has it, his twentieth) year, on the 23rd of June, 1649, after an illness of only seven days' duration. MALONE. Ver. 17. Than whom great Alexander may seem less; Who conquer'd men, but not their languages.] Yet from his letter to his master Aristotle, recorded by Plutarch and Aulus Gellius, we are led to conclude that the love of conquest was but the second ambition in Alexander's soul. The letter, as translated by Addison in his Guardian, No. 111, is as follows: "Alexander to Aristotle greeting, "You have not done well to publish your books of select knowledge; for what is there now in which I can surpass others, if those things which I have been instructed in are communicated to everybody? For my own part, I declare to you, I would rather excel others in knowledge than power. Farewell." A living author, who excels in clear and vigorous composition, will, I trust, forgive me. if I transcribe a passage in defence of the hero of Macedon, from a letter addressed by him to the late Dr. Joseph Warton. "In truth I am happy in knowing that you think as well of the Macedonian as I do. I am no favourer of paradoxes, nor would I write a Richard III. up into a good character; but surely it is time that the world should learn to distinguish between the conquests of an intelligent being and the ravages of a Tartar, between an Alexander and a Zingis, a Timour or a Buonaparte. Alexander was a builder, and these only demolishers. How small is the proportion of the former to the latter, in the history of the world!" Rev. JOHN WARTON. Ver. 27. his sublime soul] Dr. Newton has placed the accent on the first syllable of sublime in Milton's Mask of Comus, as the accent may seem to be in the present instance, ver. 785. "The sublime notion and high mystery-" The word in Milton's and Dryden's lines may, however, be read more gracefully without it. Rev. H. J. TODD. Ver. 35. Were fix'd, conglobate in his soul;] This word is used in the second book of Lucretius, ver. 153, in the same sense. "Sed complexa meant inter se conque globata." JOHN WARTON. Ver. 36. sweet influence;] Canst thou bind the sweet influences of the Pleiades? Job xxxviii. 31. JOHN WARTON. Ver. 53. the small-pox,] An obvious occasion is here offered of paying a small tribute to Dr. Jenner, whose able researches have so essentially contributed to check the ravages of this dreadful disease, the small-pox. To him, therefore, we may apply the words of the poet: "O! qui secundo natus Apolline More novo prohibere morbum, Vixi superstes, quot veneno Foeta gravi, maculisque tetris, Narrare, quid debes supremo Te medico superata cessit.- Sint memori sine labe mala." See the late Christopher Anstey's "Ad Edvardum Jenner, M.D. Carmen Alcaicum." JOHN WARTON. Ver. 58. Like rose-buds, stuck the lily skin about.] “Of his school performances," (says the great Johnson, in his Life of Dryden,) "has appeared only a poem on the death of Lord Hastings, composed with great ambition of such conceits as, notwithstanding the reformation begun by Waller and Denham, the example of Cowley still kept in reputation. Lord Hastings died of the small-pox, and his poet has made of the pustules, first, rose-buds, and then | gems; at last exalts them into stars; and says, 'No comet need foretel his change drew on, Whose corpse might seem a constellation.'" Perhaps it may appear at first sight surprising, that Dr. Busby should patiently bear such thoughts as pervade the whole of this poem on Lord Hastings; but our surprise ceases when we read the following judicious observation of Quintilian, which could not escape the penetration of that great master, who consequently showed the indulgence here recommended to the exuberant imagination of a youthful poet. "Ne illud quidem quod admonemus indignum est, ingenia puerorum nimiâ interim emendationis severitate deficere. Nam et desperant, et dolent, et novissimè oderunt: et, quod maximè nocet, dum omnia timent, nihil conantur. Quod etiam rusticis notum est, qui frondibus teneris non putant adhibendam esse falcem, quia reformidare ferrum videntur, et cicatricem nondum pati posse. Jucundus ergo tum maximè debet esse præceptor, ut quæ alioqui naturâ sunt aspera, molli manu leniantur: laudare aliqua, ferre quædam, mutare etiam, redditâ cur id fiat ratione; illuminare interponendo aliquid sui." —Quintilian, Inst. Orat. lib. ii. JOHN WARTON. 60 Each little pimple had a tear in it, 65 91 95 The tongue may fail; but overflowing eyes Who should, by one rich draught, become what- Hastings o' the better part so shall he live In 's nobler half; and the great grandsire be An issue, which to eternity shall last, 100 100 Ver. 92. streams of elegies.] In a very scarce little volume, entitled Lachryma Musarum, London, printed by T. N., 1650, communicated to me by Mr. Reed, of Staple Inn, are thirty-six Elegies, in Greek, Latin, and English, on the death of this nobleman. Of these, twenty-six are in English, two in Greek, and eight in Latin. The concluding copies are this by Dryden, and the Latin copies by Cyril Wyche, Edward Campion, Thomas Adams, Ralph Montague, all Westminster scholars. The Greek copies are signed Joannes Harmarus, Oxoniensis, íargos, and C. W. M. Morens posuit. Most of these are written with the same false taste which pervades the poem now before us. J. WARTON. Ver. 93. But thou, O virgin-widow,] So in another elegy on Lord Hastings, by "Jo. Benyon, Hosp. Lincoln." "Thy love writes maid, yet is half widow too." MALONE. * The verses on Lord Hastings in the "Lachrymæ Musarum," are subscribed "Johannes Dryden. Schole Westm. alumnus."-It appears, from a note of the editor's, that they were sent at a late period in the year (1649), after a great part of the book was printed off, and when it was just ready for publication. MALONE. TO HIS FRIEND THE AUTHOR, JOHN HODDESDON, ON HIS DIVINE EPIGRAMS." THOU hast inspired me with thy soul, and I A line in commendation of my friend. • Mr. Hoddesdon's poetical effusions were published in 8vo, 1650, under the title of "Sion and Parnassus; or, Epigrams on several texts of the Old and New Testament." To this book is prefixed the author's engraved portrait, "Etat. 18." by which it appears that he and Dryden were nearly of the same age. MALONE. These commendatory verses, which are subscribed "J. Dryden, of Trin. C.," are here printed from the origi nal edition, which was obligingly communicated by Mr. Malone. JOHN WARTON. Enliven'd by these sparks divine, their rays Reader, I've done, nor longer will withhold |