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7-1-1947
Dryden's basic religious concept
Anne J. Barlone Simons
Atlanta University
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7-
DRYDEN'S BASIC RELIGIOUS CONCEPT
A THESIS
SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OP ATLANTA UNIVERSITY
IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR
THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS
BY
ANNE J. BARLOWE SIMONS
DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH
ATLANTA,
GEORGIA
JULY 1947
v/
3 C
PREFECE
The purpose of this study is to investigate Dryden's religious views and
their background in the seventeenth century.
considered briefly his life and his works,
In making this investigation, I
I drew heavily upon his two re
ligious poems,, "Religio Laici" and "The Hind and the Panther," together with
their accompanying prefaces, as main expressions of his religious convictions.
But, whenever pertinent, material from his other works was used.
In the study
of Dryden's life, I tried to view the facts of that life impartially in order
(l) to arrive at a just estimate of the man's temperament, development and
bent; and (2) to relate all this to his religious experiences and convictions.
As is well known, Dryden has received wide recognition as a brilliant
poet, a versatile dramatist, a pioneer in literary criticism, and "the father
of English prose."
Often he is branded, however, as a political and religious
opportunist and has been superfieially dealt with as one without stable and
serious convictions in these two areas which,
so clearly related.
in the seventeenth century, were
It is now time, I think, to remove the prejudice against
the generalissimo of Restoration literatures and to explore the large spirit
beneath the hard, metallic surface which Dryden presented to posterity.
must be taught to see in
political squabbles of
We
him a permanent interest, outside the religious and
;his time, which is important to us today.
In fact, the spirit of our century compares in certain respects with
that of the seventeenth century—a century of dissecting,
questioning
iii
and probing—when the new physics, psychology, and philosophy were mak
ing inroads upon established modes of faith and behavior.
scholastic habit of thinking and discoursing was dying.
In short, the
We, too, are liv
ing in an atomic, materialistic, mechanical age in which we are to test
all things with scientific reasoning,
stable and
and in which we seem to be without
satisfying religious end moral convictions.
We must,
however,
endeavor to find for ourselves a significance in the strange and incom
prehensible world that environs us.
Dryden,
I now believe, discovered in
a similar, highly materialistic^© this significance, this inner meaning
of life so central in religious experience and conviction.
Therefore, in order to give a fair and just estimate of John Dryden,
I have, in the first chapter, taken a retrospective view of the seven
teenth century background, with emphasis on the Restoration sra.
The second chapter is a brief study of Dryden1s work, his character,
his east of mind, and his intellectual equipment in an effort to determ
ine just how much these influences affect our author.
In the third ohapter, a brief summary of Dryden1s religious history
is given, in order to link his chain of religious experiences with his
natural bent.
And in the final chapter, I have evaluated our poet's religious
mutations on the basis of facts previously presented in the thesis, in
an attempt to modify and classify the charges of time-server, turncoat,
and opportunist so often hurled against him- andioestablish him in his right
ful
place along with Milton, Browne, Newman, and others who have had re
ligious convictions not thoroughly understood or inadequately treated.
Now a writer on Dryden's religion is more especially bound to ac
knowledge his indebtedness to predecessors, because, so far as matters
fv
of fact are concerned, that indebtedness must be greater than in most
cases.
I therefore
mable value:
admit that the following books proved to be of inesti
Dryden:A Study of His Poetry by Mark Van Dorenj The Intellec
tual Milieu of John Dryden by Louis I.Bredvold, The Age of Dryden by Rich-
ard Garnett, John Dryden,Poet, Dramatist .Critic by 'i'hoiras S. Eliot, and
The Works of Dryden by George Saintsbury,
and Sir lelter Scott.
I am also
deeply indebted to the following periodical contributions: Robert K. Root,
"Dryden's Conversion to the Roman Catholic Faith," FMLA,1907; Thomas J.
Treadway, "The Religious Sincerity of John Dryden," The Ecclesiastical
Review, September,
Catholic World,
Finally,
1931; and to Brother Leo,
June,
"How Dryden Became a Catholic,"
1917.
it is a pleasure to acknowledge my indebtedness to my friend
and advisor, Mr. G. Lewis Chandler,
of the Department of English, Morehouse
College, who has not only .riven searching criticism of the manuscript,
suggesting many things of value, but has also kindly allowed the use of
helpful books on the subject.
I also wish to acknowledge my indebtedness
to Mrs. Gaynelle Barksdale for her assistance in obtaining needed books;
and to Mrs. Thelma Archer
thesis.
for cooperation and efficiency in typing this
TABLE OF CONTEEITS
CHAPTER
PAGE
Preface
I,
The Age of Dryden.
II,
Dryden the Man.
13
III,
Dryden*s Religious Views
37
IV,
An Overall Interpretation of Dryden'a Religious Views.
54
Bibliography.,
1
71
CHAPTER
I
THE AGE OP DRYDEN
The Age in which a man lives inevitably plays a large part in shaping
his philosophy of life.
The individual himself must determine whether or
not he will "be helped or hindered by his environment, whether he will face
its problems or attempt to escape them in some "ivory tower",--in short
1
what shall be his attitude toward the age and environment.
John Dryden is preeminently a product of his times.
The political
strife, the religious embroilments, and scientific developments placed
an indelible impression upon his life and works.
Consequently before un
dertaking a discussion of his religious views, we should deal briefly with
the century in which Dryden lived with special emphasis, however, on the
2
Restoration
era, since that is the period of his greatest accomplishments.
The seventeenth century was a many-sided period in the history of
English literature.
It was the century of Shakespeare's greatest plays,
of the King James version of the Bible, of Bacon's Advancement
and of Milton's Paradise Lost.
of Learning,
It saw the English colonization of America,
the temporary overthrow of the Stuarts, which resulted in the execution
Sir Leslie Stephens, English Thought
(London, 1902), p. 19.
in the Eighteenth Century
2
Dryden, according to Bredvold and McKillop, was among those who wel
comed the restoration of Charles II with poetical tributes.
Louis I.
Bredvold, Alan D. McKillop, Lois Whitney, Eighteenth Century Poetry and
Prose (New York, 1946), p. 34.
1
of Charles I, the subsequent restoration of the Stuarts and, as Lieder says
toward the end-
The introduction of genuine parliamentary government through
the Declaration of Eights with William of Orange as king,
Ishered in when the imagination of tha glorious Elizabethan
Age was at its heights, it closed with reason and rule domi
nating literature and life.2
The political life of the century may be briefly summarized; Upon the
death of Queen Elizabeth, the crown went to the son of the ill-starred Mary
Queen of Scotts, James VI of Scotland, who became James I of England.
His
reign was marked by religious disturbances during the rise of the Puritans.
In 1625, his son, Charles 1,. came to the throne and followed his father's
belief in the divine rights of kings.
agree to the Petition of Eights.
3
But in 1628, Charles was forced to
In 1642, he refused to obey Parliament,
and civil war broke out; in 1649, Charles I, declared guilty of treason,
was beheaded.
Prom 1649 to 1653, Parliament relinquished its power to
Cromwell, who was made Lord Protector under the Protectorate.
Upon his
death in 1658, the power of the Puritans broke up; and in 1660, Charles II
was restored to his father's throne.
Hence, the seventeenth century was
one of great change in political life and thought of the English people.
These changing conditions of the times were all reflected in the
literature of the period.
In place of the frank and free interest in all
I
.
The execution of Charles I and the establishment of ths Common
wealth profoundly affected the course of both English history and English
literature. Brother Leo, English Literature (Boston, 1927), p. 131.
Paul R. Lieder, Robert M. Lovett, Robert K. Root (eds.), British
Poetry and Prose, Part I. (Boston, 1927), p. 297.
3
In elaborating upon this point, Pooley further states:
The first two Stuarts, James I and Charles I, assumed
that the king could do no wrong. "God makes tte kings,"
they said, "and the king makes the laws," Robert C. Pooley,
Literature and Life in England (Chicago, 1941), p. 92.
things human that had marked the
searching of conscience.
previous century was substituted intense
The problem of sin, predestination, end atone
ment was studied with a passion unknown in Europe since the time of Dante.
An English Dante recording in a great epic a view of God's dealing with
men sums up an Age.
Milton's Paradise Lost is, therefore, more than an
epic of Puritanism;
for it, perhaps, could not have been conceived and
written except for the
movement that had been gaining headway throughout
Europe sinca the Reformation,
a movement
of which Puritanism was one
pha se.
But the Puritan force was not destined to last always; therefore
when Cromwell died, and the Puritans lost power, a great political change
not only influenced the
ideals of writing, but it also influenced the
types of writing that arose
and the lives that successful authors led.
The change, however, was not an abrupt one, but unfolded itself
gradually like the changes in the season.
was summer; today it is winter."
We do not say, "Yesterday it
But after a time cf almost impercepti
ble or unnoticed alteration in nature, we at length look upon a world
that has been transformed.
in May, 1S60.
So it was in England after the Restoration
English life and society made a gradual but decided change
1
with the return of the Royalist from exile..
Since these changes pene
trated almost every phase of life—the political, religious, scientific,
philosophical, literary, and social—they warrant brief examination; for
these influences had a profound effect on Dryden.
j—
_
When Charles II was called to England in
France with new moral ideas. This new code of
ity, bribery and lack of religious principles.
flaunting themselves in public without fear or
,
1660, he returned from
ethics encouraged immoral
All these existed, often
shame. Ralph Boas, Social
Backgrounds of English Literature (Boston, 1909), p. 133.
4
As is well known, the Restoration Age (1660-1700) was in general an
era of turmoil and change.
In politics, it was an age, as Saintsbury
states, of great confusion and party strife with a continual shift in
political power.
England, he points out, witnessed a change of the widest
and deepest kind that passed over not merely, but through English life
entirely.
This change, according to Boas, took place because men desired
to return to the "old times" of free living, little government, and few
2
taxations.
Thus, having experienced strict military dictatorship and
Puritan theocracy under Cromwell, the English welcomed, in 1660, the re
turn of ^harles II, whose reign has become synonymous with laxity and
depravity-moral and political.
For, under the rule of Charles II,the
court had become a place of political and social intrigue.
3
Since the king
and the clergy had apparently lacked high seriousness and stability, the
government of England became a political football.
ter battles between the %igs and the Tories
This resulted in bit
and in subsequent civil wars
and revolutions, bloodless though some were, during the period.
Tte Moni-
mouth Uprising, the Popish Plot, the return of Catholicism in the ill-
fated reign of James II, the Revolution of 1688, in which Parliament won
§
the right
to make and unmake kings—are but a few instances of political
George Saintsbury, A Htstory of English Literature (Hew York, 1904),
p. 471.
—""
2
3
fi. Boas,
op.
cit., p.
1.
Charles II was dissolute and selfish. He surrounded himself with men
and women who rivaled him in these qualities. In the court circles there
was little regard for decency. The theaters, which received their license
from the king, naturally responded to the tastes of tte court. Ibid.,, p. 179.
4
'"
This Declaration of Rights declared upon the king was to safeguard
the liberty of English people. For the future it prepared the way for a con
stitutional government.
Ibid,, p. 79.
and religious disturbances during the period.
There is no doubt as to the
grievous faults and laxities in England during the Restoration.
In fact,
as pointed out by Pepys in his diary (April 29, 1668 entry), the govern
ment was bad, defunct.
The kingdom is in an ill state through poverty; the fleet
going out, and no money to maintain it or set it outj sea
men yet unpaid, and mutinous when pressed to go out again*
our office able «o do little, nobody trusting us, and yet
we have not money for anything...0» we are all poor, and
in pieces—God help us.1
In addition, it is significant thet England in a span of forty ye§rs
had three monarchs—a cavalier, a catholic, and a protestant.
The country
passed through days of political racketeering, bigotry, and disunity to
parliamentary control and order under the rule of a foreigner
Englishmen were inclined to treat with contempt.
2
whom many
Confusion in government
means confusion in other phases of life.
Closely allied with the political confusion of the age was the religi
ous strife.
Indeed, the tie was so close between them that a man's relig
ion was thought of in terms of his government.
Since, as Boas states, the
politics of the times were the overwhelming interest of the men who were
thinking, in fact the religion of the ruler in power determined the form
of religious worship.
3
Consequently, along with the political changes
J*m"el PeHl Diary and Correspondence, ed, R. L. Braybrook (London,
2
Defoe defended William of Orange as followss
Who is the true-born Englishman? If we trace the ancestry
of the English, we find they have no pure stock of descendancy but a mixed one.
under Heaven.
They are derived from all nations
3
Ralph Boas, op. cit., p. 334.
fluctuated the power of the Anglican, Puritan, and Catholic parties; thus,
England under the rule of Charles II, was Anglican; under the rule of James
II,.Catholic;
and under the rule of William I, Anglican again.
Because
religion and politics, a constantly changing institution at that time, were
so closely related, men often changed their religious faith to harmonize
with the political situation.
Literary men took advantage of these conditions and made bitter at
tacks upon religious faiths and political parties, and continually kept
alive the struggles between Cavaliers and Puritans; between Whigs and
Tories.
Oldham's "Judgement" is an attack on the Jesuits; Butler's'^udi-
bras," a ridieule of Presbyterianism; and Dryden's "Absalom and Achitophel,"
an attack upon the Whig party.
of
As a result of this mixture and confusion
Anglioan, Puritan and Catholic, our modern liberal ideas of Democracy
grew* for the constant battle between the old and the new gave rise to ad
vancement
and progress,
Not only was this true, but English writers were trying to justify
orthodox Christianity, Bredvold says, not on the ground that it was di3
vinely revealed, but on the grounds that it was reasonable.
_
_
This in-
.
England at this time under the Stuart family was experiencing ty
rannical powers again under James II. The religious sects and men who
spoke freely against him were persecuted.
Many of the persecuted sects
fled to America for refuge.
Ibid>tp. 370.
2
Bredvold, McKillop and Whitney say;
All through the Civil Wars Butler viewed morosely the
extravagances of the Puritan factions, and finally
vented his spleen against pedantry and fanaticism in
"Hudibras," Bredvold, McKillop, Whitney, op. cit., p. 1.
3
Louis I. Bredvold,
op. cit., p. 32.
1
sistenee on reason was the characteristic of English theology from the time
of Locke to that of Joseph Butler in the middle of the eighteenth century.
In the Restoration, this theory was developed by the thinkers known as
2
latitude men or latitudinarians who were university men writing in an aca
demic manner, that was soon to become old-fashioned, arguing with frequent
citations from authorities and with little order or arrangement in their
discourse.
These men took their favorite discourse from Proverbs 3OC, 27.
Another tendency of the Age was toward scientific activity.
For in
the seventeenth century many of the discoveries in mathematics, physics
and other branches of natural science were made.
It was then that the
special activity, which we now call scientific, began to be a leading ele
ment in European thought.
This activity, as Clark says,
...has never been absent from the world,
but at this time it was spreading.
In
England, though the ground had been prepared
for it by a series of workers for a century
or more, it seemed to break into flower just
at the time with which we are concerned.
Groups of scientists had been quietly inves
tigating during the recent civil strife.
T
Clark makes this comment concerning the emphasis on reason in the
Ages "Sir Charles Woolsey, published in 1669, The Unreasonableness of
Atheism Made Manifest, and in 1672, The Reasonableness of Scripture Be
lief which later alarmed his orthodox friendsr" G. N. Clark, The Later
Stuarts (Oxford, 1934), p. 31.
2
Clark throws further light on the Latitudinarians: "These names,
like most such labels, are used differently by different writers, and
they are perhaps more appropriate when applied to the great political
ecclesiastics, tolerant and undogmatic of the time of William II and
Queen Anne."
Ibid., p. 31,
3
Ibid., p.
29
3
One of these groups waa a fore-runner
of the famous Royal Society,*a group
of scientists.2
John Locke followed these scientists.
His "Essay of Human Understand
ing," which is a chart of the human mind and of the origin of ideas, is the
basis upon which English philosophy has since been built.
Richard Sarnett
evaluates and sums up Locke's philosophy in the following manner:
In Locke, as in his predecessor, Hobbes, were united
two endowments rarely combined, the study of prosaic
common sense of the man of the world and the dexterity
and subtlety of the practical logician.... Locke was
the true representative of his Age, and his Treatise was
almost the first investigation of the mind which took note
of facts and was not purely metaphysical.... The central
point of the philosophy is the denial of innate ideas,;§
The mind is to him a tabula rosa, a sheet of blank paper
and all ideas are the result of experience.4
Van Doren makes this comment upon the scientific aspect of the Age:
The seventeenth century from Bacon to Locke, saw many in
roads made by the new physics and the new psychology upon
established modes of faith and behavior.... The unwieldy
amalgam of sixteenth-century natural history was yielding
to the attacks-; of specialists in physics, chemistry and°
anatomy."
1
Long says that "the Royal Society, for the investigation and discus
sion of scientific questions, was founded in 1662,. and soon included prac
tically all the literary and scientific men of the age. It afforded op
portunities for the members to compare ideas; to plan a cooperation, and
to make use of the specific aims of science...." William J. Long, English
Literature (Atlanta, 1937), p. 238.
—s
2
G. N. Clark, op.
cit., p. 36.
3
Garnett further explains:
Although Locke was partly right and partly wrong, it is to his
immortal honor that all real advance in psychology has been af
fected by working in his spirit of observation and deduction.
Richard Garnett, The Age of Dryden (London, 1927), p. 161.
4
""-
Ibid., p.
"~"
'
162.
5
P.
10.
Mark Van Doren, John Dryden, A Study of His Poetry (New York, 1946),
9
The state of society did not escape the changes and disturbances that
were taking place in other phases of life.
For the upper and lower strata
of English society at the restoration of Charles II were at a low ebb
morally and socially.
Mscaulay says that
Those passions and tastes which under the rule of the
Puritans had been sternly repressed... broke forth with
ungovernable violence as
soon as the check was withdrawn.
This description of the society of the England, which Charles II
governed,
does not,
however, touoh the great body of the people,
who held the plows, who tended the oxen, who toiled at the
wich,
and squared the Portland
stone.
In those days,
of those
looms of Nor
says Macaulay,
Philanthropists did not regard it a sacred duty, nor had
demagogues yet found it a lucrative trade, to talk and
write about the distress of the laborer.
History was too
much occupied with courts and camps to spare a line for the
hut of the peasant, or the garret of the peasant.3
These facts are in perfect accordance with another fact which deserves consideration.
j_
.
,
The practice
.
—
of setting children to work prevailed,
,
.
_
The Restoration jperiod, according to Inglis and Benet,
... was the most profligate and pleasure-mad that England
ever saw.... Moral
standards in England were low,
Remey B. Englis and Filliam Rose Benlt, Adventures in English Literature
(New York, 1941), p. 180.
"
2
Thomas B. Kacaulay, The History of England (Philadelphia, /n,
pp.
164-70.
S
Ibid.,
p.
375.
4
Macaulay tells us that
At Norwich, the chief seat of the clothing trade,
little creature of six was thought fit for labor.
Ibid., p.
379.
a
10
according to Boas, in the seventeenth century to an extent which, when compared with the extent of the manufacturing system, seems almost incredible.
Together with the foregoing facts, unhygienic conditions, poor means
of travel, and unsually heavy taxation resulted in a low standard of liv
ing—a standard which "produced a society possessed with barbarism and de»
pravity irrespective to social progress".
2
In literature, likewise, a certain amount of progress, change and
decadence is noted.
The literary efforts of the age were greatly affected
by religious conditions. The literature, as Noyes points out, was clearly
connected with the conditions, fashions, and whims of contemporary life.
Such a literature, then, would naturally favor controversy and satire.
3
These literary efforts also bowed to various standards of literary tradi
tions and tastes—the classical, the French and the English^ and in spite
4
of controversial and satiric literature, the influence of the Ancients
and the Classics during th3s period was very strong,
Aristotle's Poetics,
as the compendium of literary thoughts for poets, became the accepted
standard.
The French, as well as the Ancients, influended Restoration literature.
Just as the Ancients gave decorum and propriety, so did the French give
;
Ralph Boas, op. pit., p. 220.
2
Ibid.,
p. 241.
3
George R. Noyes (ed.), Selected Dramas ofl John Dryden (Chicago, 1910),
4
Bredvold says:
... Dryden represents in many ways the vehemence, the com
plexity, the sweep of the seventeenth century, as well as
the effort towards... which we cail the Classical Movement.
Bredvold, McKillop, Whitney, op. cit., p. 35.
1
11
law, dress and manners, says Macaulay.
1
When Charles II was restored to
England in 1660, French fashions returned with him to his court} and his
2
restoration meant the introduction of French influence in literature.
Th® literature of this period, not only reflected Ancient aad French
influences, but also the English or Elisabethan traditions.
As th© dra
matist turned to the Preach for Preach extra wganoes, in like manner he
sought the expression of timul»,o«-us Elizabethan passion in restrained eso-
tlons.
3
Hanee, Dryden produced All for Love, The Temp_gat_ and Trpllus and
Cressida imitating Sheksspesre.
In these influences, ther., we may find, according to Allardyoe licoll,
"the key to !:;he age'; an age, dependent or? the old, bat with new conditions
aad new idealsj an age intent on its own wit, on its own ideas, on its own
conceptions, eble dimly to appreciate the work of the past,11
4
Pint©
describes it as
The gulf that lies between th© ground of
the Middle Ages, which crumbled beneath
the blows of Baoon and his eontsinporari©®
end of the firm ground of th® Enlightsnent
established by Newton and Locke at the be
ginning of the eighteenth century.
Hence, th© Age in which Dryden lived was on® in which significant and
far-roaehing changes were being made.
It is evident, first, that the Age
1
Ibid., Oedipus, VI,
p..
a""—".
121.
Hbyes gjives valuable infonnation on this French influence.
France at
the time of Louis XIV was the most powerful net Ion in Europe, politically,
socially,
intellectually,
G. Woyes,
op. eit«, p. 11.
5
Ibid., p.
14.
4
A. licoll, Restoration Drama, 1660-1720 (Cambridge 1928), p. 62.
6
,
Vivian DeSoto Pinto, Rochester (London, 1935),
xvii.
12
was a brilliant one,
historically olaiming the Restoration of Charles II
to the throne of England after a period of exile in France} second, that
the Age was a chaos of political intrigue,
especially between the Ihigs
and the Tories} thirdly, that fervid religious strife among Anglican,
Catholic and Puritan maintained an unbalanced equilibrium in the churfchj
fourthly, that the rise of new scientific discoveries and philosophies by
such men as Newton, Boyle, Locke, and Hobbes stimulated new thought con
cerning the art of living} fifthly,
that the literature was affected by
three crossing streams of culture—the ancient, the French, and the Eng
lish.
Lastly, it is evident that the Restoration was an age pregnant with
such intellectual distractions as Hobbism, materialism, Deism, skepticism,
atheism, and other unorthodox elements, each of which for a season exer
cised its fascination upon the intelligence of John Dryden.
This background material and summary have been presented not only to
serve as a foundation on which to build a clear and solid understanding of
Dryden1s religious views, but also to show how the age affected him.
The
extent of these influences upon John Dryden will be seen in an examination
of the man.
CHAPTER II
DHYDEH THE MM
It is difficult to appraise Dryden the man.
was both highly praised and venomously attacked.
character suffered the same fate,
By his contemporaries he
By later critics his
so that today we are somewhat confused as
to the true moral and intellectual status of the man.
For the purpose of
this study, let us, therefore, consider some of the outstanding critical
estimates (favorable and unfavorable, past and present,) of John Dryden$ let
us weigh the facts* let us hear the poet in his own defense through his
worksj let us arrive at a clear and just concept of our author with his
faults and virtues properly pieced together to form the whole man.
In making this investigation,
let us also keep before us the fact that
there is an unpleasant assumption underlying much of the criticism for and
against him: that he was a sophist; that, with the possible exception of
his literary criticism, his literary efforts reflect an insincere,
nificant
and
insig
banal personality.
Bredvold sums up the unfavorable critical estimation in the following
manner:
The depreciation of Dryden's mind
is in a large measure
due to certain preconceptions--long current regarding his in
tellectual
character.
ceptions which the
proach to Dryden:
and religious
sions | that
above the
There are at
least three
student encounters as
such precon
obstacles
that Dryden was a hireling,
in his ap
whose political
affiliations were determined by bribes and pen
in his most
level
serious works he rose intellectually
of ephemeral journalisms
and that the incon-
sistence and contradictions with which his works abound are
conclusive evidence of a lack of intellectual character and
significance.1
I
Louis I. Bredvold, The Intellectual Milieu of John Dryden (Ann Arbor,
Michigan, 1934), p. 5.
13
14
On these three points, which Bredvold enumerates in the foregoing,
Dryden has been vigorously assailed by his contemporaries as well as by
modern critics.
Among his most vicious contemporary assailants was Thomas
Shadwell, who, as Noyes points out, rebuffed Dryden of having served as a
hack to Herringraan, the bookseller, during his first few years in London,
writing "prefaces to books for meat and drink."
means without company.
passages on Dryden.
1
But Shadwell was by no
Pamphleteers, poets, dramatists wrote humiliating
The Rehearsal
ace" to the Empress of Iforrooo
by the Duke of Buckingham and the "Pref
by Elkanah Settle are but two of the innumer
able attempts to caricature Dryden as a hireling, plagiarist, and prevari
cator.
Why I have designed a conquest that cannot possibly,
•Y gad be acted in less than a week; and i'il speak
a bold word, it shall drum, trumpet, shout and battle
fY god wit| any war like tragedy we have, either anoient
or modern.
This passage from The Rehearsal is a hit at the length of the two-part
Conquest of Granada, and of Dryden's frequent use of drums, trumpets, and
clash of arms.
Besides, many of Dryden's couplets are directly parodied,
while the grand manner of heroic drama is burlesqued in plot and character,
as well as in bombastic speech.
For example, in the same play the Duke
parodies Dryden's hero, Alamanso;
... pray, Mr. Bayes, who is that Draweansir?
Why, sir, a fierce hero that frights his mistress,
snubs up kings... and does what he will.3
1
xx.
George R. Noyes (ed.), The Poetical Works of John Dryden (Boston, 1909),
All quotations from Dryden's poetical works will be taken from this
edition and will be entered by title only.
p
The Duke of Buckingham "The Rehearsal," English Drama of the Restora
tion and Eighteenth Century., ed. George H. Nettleton ^New York, 1S14), p. 58.
3
Ibid.,
pi
59.
16
Later critics have not been milder in their criticisms,
discovered new faults.
Emerson, for example,
nor have they
threw all of Dryden overboard
in his essay "Poetry end Imaginations'1
Much that we call poetry is but polite verses A little
less or more skill in whistling is of no account.
See
those weary pentameter tales of Dryden and others.
Matthew Arnold
in a less harsh tone observes
in the introduction to
Ward's English Poets that:
The difference in genuine poetry and the poetry of Dryden
and Pope is briefly this: their poetry is conoeived and
composed in their wits; genuine poetry is conceived and
composed in the soul.2
But Dryden,
it
seems, did not write to oonsole or sustain a bewildered
generation; but he wrote to please hard-headed men of the world; he had
labored to satisfy critics of poetry,
not critics of souls.
Alan Lubbock makes the following comment on Drydens
He is an expert craftsman with an uninteresting mind whose
whole body of works can be explained as the child of deep en
thusiasm.®
Van Doren sums up the unfavorable criticism of Dryden in both the
eighteenth and nineteenth century as follows:
Mo important detailed criticism of Dryden appeared in
the eighteenth century outside of Dr.
Remarks were made,
Johnson's Lives....
eulogies were delivered,
commonplaces
were handed along, but little was said that penetrated.
1
Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Poetry and Imagination" A Book of Amerioan
Literature, ed. P.B. and E. D. Snyder (New York, 1927) p. 318.
2
Thomas H. Ward, "Introduction," The English Poets (London, 1890),
p.
30.
3
Allan Lubbock, "The Character of Dryden," Hogarth Essays (London,
1925), p. 6.
Swift was always contemptuous though never long or elab
orately so.
Spence quotes Touson as sayings
"Addison was
so eager to be the first name, that he and Steele used to
run down even Dryden's character".... At one time it was
believed of Pope that, far from coming to Dryden1s aid,
he was conspiring against his remains.*
Of the nineteenth century critics. Van Doren writes:
The editor of Selections in 1852 began his preface thuss
"The merits of Dryden are not sufficiently acknowledged
The reviewer of Bell's edition of 1954,
at present.11
enumerated four reasons for "the oblivion into which the
works of Dryden have so singularly fallen"s inability
to distinguish between Dryden and his unworthy imitators}
failure to see that Dryden himself was not another Pope;
monstrous ignorance on the part of Keats, Wordsworth,
and the new schools and a heretical notion that Dryden
was not a poet.
"He had not written one line that is
pathetic and a very few that could be called sublime,"
decided Jeffrey in his review for the Edinburgh Review
in 1811, Add of Dryden that it was generally believed he
had written little that was ineffably beautiful, and the
oentral portion of early nineteenth century Dryden
criticism is established.2
But in spite of this unfavorable criticism, our author was not without
praise*
The tradition of Dryden1s "genius" survived in one form or another.
Coleridge writes that,
"if Pope was a poet as Byron swears, then Dryden ..•
S
was a very great poet."
Chief, however, among these apologists was Johnson, who expresses great
admiration for Dryden*s intellectual capacity and strength:
Every page disoovers a mind very widely acquainted both
with art and nature,
al wealth.*
"l
and in full possession of intellectu
'
Mark Van Doren,
op. olt.,
p.
245.
2
Ibid.,
p.
244.
3
Samuel Taylor Coleridge,
Dent (London, 1908), p. 14.
"Biographia Literaria", Works, ed. J. M.
4
Samuel Johnson, "Essay on Dryden," Lives of the Poets, ed. Birbeck
Hill, (London, 1905), I, 417.
17
Next to Johnson the most laudatory criticism of the poet in English,
according to Mark Van Doren,
is found in Lowell's Critical Essays,
in which
Lowell says:
You feel that the whole of him is better than any
random specimen, though... there is single unanimity
in allowing him a certain claim to greatness which would
be denied men as famous or more read,I to Pope or Swift
for example....
And posterity has applied to him one
of his own rules of criticism, judging him "by the best
rather than5 by the, average .2;
Robert K. Hoot has this to say concerning Dryden's intellect:
He was the literary dictator of an age that worshipped
reason and craftsmanship, but he can still be read with
pleasure and profit by a modern reader who is willing
and able to make the intellectual adjustment necessary.3
Not only may we note that Pope, Johnson and Gray sang his praise in
the eighteenth century? Byron and Scott, over a century ago, and Van Doren,
Eliot and Niooll, in our own day.,have augmented the chorus.
Wordsworth
recognized his greatness, and even the hostile Maoaulay acknowledged that,
"of lyric poets he is, if not the most sublime, the most brilliant."
Low
ell's comment we have already noted.
Now that we have noted what literary critics have to say for and
against Dryden, let us see what the poet has to say in his own defense.
"Al
though he was not egotistical, he often spoke incidentally about his work
and himself, without false modesty or false pride."4 His statement of the
1
Eliot says that Dryden has a kind of importance that neither Shake
speare nor Milton has—the importance of his influence.
T. S. Eliot,
Dryden, The Poet, The Dramatist, The CMtio (New York, 1930), p. 318.
2
James R. Lowell, Critical Essays ed. Franklin B, Snyder (New York,
1930), p. 318.
3
Robert R. Root, op.
cit., p. 38.
4
T.
S. Eliot,
op.
oit., p.
40.
qualifications necessary for the practice of poetry alone should be a fair
estimate of his intellectual qualities.
In the "Defense of an Essay on Dramatic Poetry^ Dryden says a poet
should first of all have judgement and understanding:
False reasonings and colours of speech are the
certain marks of one who does not understand the
stage.1
To Dryden, fanciful poetry and music are like wine, which is likely
to debauch the understanding and make men drunk.
But, he says
a poet should have a reasonable, philosophical, and,
in some measure a mathematical head; he should know
human nature*
Bredvold describes the poet as
... a man, who, being conversant in the philosophy
of Plato, as it is now accommodated to Christian use
... who has joined the knowledge of the liberal arts
and sciences... and with all these qualifications is
born a poet; knows and can praotioe the variety of
numbers, and is master of the language in which he
writes.3
These qualifications typical of seventeenth century poetic theory,
Dryden, heir to scholarly tradition, endeavored to live up to.
Bredvold, in further commenting upon Dryden1 s intellectual qualities,
says that
Though Dryden did not try to keep up with the mathe
matical and scientific discoveries of the century, Dry
den knew of the century, he knew of the learning neces
sary to a poet, and his intellectual, interests were both
wide and genuine.*
1
John Dryden, Essays, ed. W. P. Ker (Oxford, 1900), I, 121. All quo
tations from Dryden1s prose will be taken from this edition and will be
entered by title and appropriate volume only.
2
Ibid., p. 406-407.
3
Louis I Bredvold, op.
4
Ibid.,
p. 36.
cit., p.
10.
19
Let us not suppose, however, that his intellectual interests were
confined to matters of language alone.
Johnson tells us that:
His compositions are the effects of a vigorous genius^"
operating upon large material.2
Eliot commenting upon "The Hind and the Panther", remarks:
Anyone who today could make such an exact statement in
vsrse of such nobility and elegance and with such origi
nality of versification and language, might well look
down upon his contemporaries.3
The purpose of this study is not only to inquire into the intellectual
traits of Dryden's genius, "but into the nature of the materials up8n which
it operated.
Our purpose is to discover to what extent and in what ways
Dryden was intellectually representative of his Age; to ascertain what his
essential temperament was; and to find out what currents of thought in his
time were especially congenial to him.
In our own investigation we note that changeableness is,
pute, one of the dominant characteristics of his mind.
beyond dis
But Bredvold says:
We must not conclude hastily that this
itself a moral appraisal.
observation is in
We shall understand better the
nature of his mind if, to begin with, we consider some less
important
episode...
a passage in Aureng Zeb© may serve.
Some of the ladies had criticized the unnatural conduct
of Indomora and Melisinde in the last act.
Dryden... an
swers them by saying it is not impossible for him to alter
the conclusion of the play.^
Treadway reminds us that the undeniable inconsistency which is manifest
in Drydens character is sometimes only another word for progress of opinion.
Bredvold says that Dryden's work is so diversified that his full genius
is not appreciated in any single genere. Ibid.,
2
Samuel Johnson, op.
cit.,
p# 57.
3
T.
S, Eliot,
op.
4
Op.
cit., p. 16,
cit.,
p.
12.
p.
32.
20
Dryden changed often but only when he realized that he had been in a false
position.
Whenever experience opened his eyes,
he was ready to lay aside
his favorite errors and acknowledged freely and candidly that he had been
1
wrong.
we
This trait of character,
shall see,
so important in his
in a later chapter,
literary development,
in his religious development*
Another characteristic of Dryden was a love for debate.
He
ornamented
his plays with sketches of argument and, as Moyes says, "sustained each
with such impartiality that we are often puzzled which side is intended to
2
receive the palm of victory,"
For example, there is an argument in the
"Essay of Dramatic Poesy" among Neander, Crites, Lisedeius,
and Eugenius,
in which Dryden makes each argue his case with almost equal strength*
The
political ideas in "Absalom and Achitophel" are also expressed by debate.
In "The Hind and the Panther," Dryden argues both the Anglican and Catholic
side.
And one might add the''R«liK* Le5ei, which, even though not a formal
debate,
is a balancing of conflicting ideas.
Dryden often admitted, himself, his inconsistency. When he abandoned
the heroic play he admitted his change.
In the prologue to Aureng Zebe,
he admits that he
...
has now another taste of wit:
And, to confess truth, (though out of time,)^
Grows weary of his long-lov'd mistress Rhyme"5
Passions too firece to be in fetters bound,
And nature flies him like enchanted ground.^
1
Thomas J. Treadway, "The Religious Sincerity of John Dryden,"
Ecclesiastical Review, LXXXX (September, 1931), 277.
2
George **. Noyes, op. cit., xx.
3
Treadway says:
Dryden wrote in rhyme and defended it for many years but
was not ashamed to let the world know when he had changed
his opinion. Thomas J. Treadway, op. oit., p. 278.
4
"Prologue" to Aureng Zebe,
p. 301
The
21
This ability to change, to argue and to balance conflicting ideas shows
Dryden's skeptical temper to be the opposite of that of the dogmatic magis
terial Hobbes and of that of Lucretius, from whom he carefully distinguishes
himself in the "Preface11 to Sylvae.
If I am not mistaken, the distinguishing character of
Lucretius is a certain kind of noble pride and positive
assertion of opinions. He is everywhere confident of his
own reason..., and accordingly,
I
laid by my natural
diffidence and scepticism... ijo take up that dogmatic
way of his.l
2
Dryden repeatedly claimed kinship with skeptical tendencies in ancient
and modern thought.
Regarding the "Essay on Dramatic Poesy", he declares:
My whole discourse was sceptical according to that way of
reasoning which was used by Socrates, Plato, and all the
academics of old, which Tully and the best of the Ancients
followed.3
Such was his skepticism in 1688.
In 1682,
in the "Preface'* to'fteligio
4
Laici," he tells us that he was naturally inclined to skepticism in philoso
phy.
Therefore, the skeptical bent was constant in a man who frequently
changed his religious affiliations, his political views, and his literary
style.
-—
"Preface" to Sylvae, I, 259.
2
Bredvold offers this explanation regarding skepticism:
Skepticism is not the same as "religious unbelief". But in
asmuch as it advanced a theory regarding the possibility or
impossibility of knowledge,
it had its application to all
realms of thought... as well as to the theory of Christian
evidence, Louis I Bredvold,
op.
oit.,
p.
16.
3
4
Ibid., p. 124.
'
Grierson has this comment on skepticism:
Skepticism in the seventeenth century cannot be appreciated
as an historical force if it is defined narrowly as a phi
losophical system.
It was protean in nature, as much a group
of tendencies as a system.
Herbert Grierson, Seventeenth Century Studies (Oxford, 1938), p. 30.
22
We must not conclude this study of Dryden's intellectual qualities
until we have said something of his connection with the Royal Society and
of his attitude toward the scientific movement.
In 1682, according to Saintsbury, Dryden was elected a member of the
newly founded Royal Society,
To be elected a member of this august body
was not only evidence of the esteem with which Dryden was held by some of
his scholarly contemporaries but also an attestation of his synoptic in1
terest in a knowledge of the arts and sciences.
Dryden had no accurate knowledge of science.
2
Christi declares that
Whereas, Scott more generous
ly says that Dryden, wfco through life was attached to experimental philoso-
phy, speedily associated with those who took interest in its progress.
3
Bred
vold believes that he was deeply interested in the philosophy of Hobbes,"and
over a long period puzzled on the perplexing problem of materialism.
his own temper allied him with the enemies of Hobbes.
4
But
The consequence was
5
a profound and personal stimulas to the skeptical tendency of his nature.
Such was the intellectual cast of Dryden.
His contact with philosophi
cal skepticism enabled him to rationalize, according to Bredvold, his natural
diffidence of temper.
"Though he has no claim to originality as a thinker,
1
—
George Saintsbury, The Life of Dryden (London, 1902), p. 187.
2
W. D. Christi (ed.) Dryden's Poetical Works (London, 1895), xxv.
3
Sir Walter Scott (ed), Dryden's Works (London, 1808), p. 46-47.
4
Louis I. Bredvold,
op.
cit., p.
122.
5
Van Doren makes the following statement regarding his nature:
He had an Olympian indifference to principles and although
Hobbes and Lucretius both made powerful, permanent impres
sions on his imagination, he never altogether capitulated
to any system of politics, morals, or aesthetics,
op. cit., p. 16.
23
he did possess a loose group of ideas and philosophical doctrines which he
understood."
They constitute an essential part of his personality, both
as a man and as a writer; to them Dryden was attracted by his "genius", and
through them his intellectual character was formed.
"They drew him quite
naturally into certain currents of thought of the century, a century of
philosophical and scientfio skepticism"*
2
He was, therefore,interested in
the Royal Society and understood its spirit; he understood the new philoso
phy of motion; and he rejected the dogmatio theory of Hobbes and Lucretius.
From this, we may see that his ideas underwent no very violent change, but
merely a clarification, as he added gradually to his stock of ideas in phi
losophy,
religion and politics,
as Grierson declares,
If from one point of view,
the history of his mind is a
clarification of his ideas and a reduction of them to
some sort of order, from another, it appears to be the
triumph of his instincts and his temperament over the
multitude of intellectual distractions, such as Hobbism, Deism, and other temptations of the time, each of
which for a season exercised its fascination upon his
intelligence.^
The foregoing indicates that Dryden was not a discoverer of new ideas,
but that his whole intellectual make-up consists of his ardent and curious
examination and testing of those ideas which were current in his age.
We
must, therefore, appraise him with those ideas which he could make peculiar
ly his own; nevertheless, the offerings of his age were no simpler than those
of any other; and his consistency in his intellectual life testifies to the
strength of his mind.
Louis I. Bredvold,
op. cit.,
p.
15.
2
Ibid.
Ibid.
4
Herbert Grierson, op.
cit., p.
26.
24
If such considerations as these are sound, Dryden is even on the in
tellectual side a significant and imposing figure.
portant aspect of the seventeenth oentury.
He represents an im
The next value in our study of
Dryden the man lies in an understanding of the poet's moral qualities.
Maoaulay's brilliant but doctrinaire essay* of 1828, branded Dryden as
the turncoat, the flatterer, and the writer of indecent plays.2 Besides
Macaulay's charge, Dryden has been accused of being an opportunist in poli
tics, religion and literary artj he is accused of being a materialist striv
ing to satisfy his personal self under pressure of the new standard of lifej
he is accused of being unstable.
Before investigating these charges, it is well to know that Dryden
lived in an age when political or literary enemies were not satisfied with
attacking the opinion of an opponent, but thought it also necessary to
blacken his character and attack his person.
Johnson states:
A critic of that time never deemed he had so effectually
refuted the reasoning of his adversary as when he had said
something disrespectful about his talent, person or charac
ter.3
Dryden seldom troubled to make denial of these virulent charges brought
against him.
So eminent was his acknowledged literary superiority that li
bels did small damage to his reputation.
Furthermore, public opinions con
cerning morals since the overthrow of the Puritans underwent a change, and
as Hotson says,,
j
■
■
■
—
According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, Macaulay's essays were
freighted with the spoil's of the age.
He was a Whig, and Dryden was a Tory.
When he is praising his friends and criticizing his enemies, "his pen knows
no moderation," "Maoaulay's Life" Encyclopedia Britannica, 7th edition, XIV,
548
2
T. B. Macaulay,
op.
cit., p.
72.
S
Samuel Johnson, op. cit., p. 481.
25
It was part of this change that there should be an affec
tation,
even, where there was not the reality of lax morals.
According to the sarcasm of the time,
it was necessary for
those who wished to escape the risk of being thought Puri
tans to contract the habit of swearing or pretend to be a
great rake.1
In other words,
it seems to have been fashionable during the period to
be or pretend to be morally lax.
Dryden's private life
life.
suffered the
According to Treadway,
same vicious attacks as his public
the first event which brought forth attacks
2
upon his personal conduct was his marriage,
Howard,
3
in 1663 to Lady Elizabeth
daughter of the Earl of Berkshire.
Critics have accused Dryden
of being a libertine, and have maintained that the marriage to a woman of
fashion, who was more dissolute than himself,
debaucheries.
only gave a new spur to his
4
The accusation against Lady Elizabeth rests upon the single document
ary evidence of a letter she once wrote to the Earl of Chesterfield.
Tread-
way tells us that
Dryden's own conjugal fidelity is questioned also by one
documentary evidence, the statement of an anonymous writer
forty-five years after Dryden's death,
-
,
in which the author
,
,
—
Leslie J. Hotson, The Commonwealth and Protectorate Stage (Cambridge,
1927), p. 40.
2
Saintsbury writes:
This marriage, like most of Dryden's life, has been made the
occasion of much and unnecessary controversy.
bury op.
oit.,
p.
George Saints-
25.
3
Saintsbury further states;
The libellers of the Popish Plot disturbances twenty years
later declared that the character of the bride was doubtful,
and that her brothers had acted toward Dryden in the same
manner as the Hamilton's did toward Grammont.
Ibid., p. 26.
4
Thomas J. Treadway,
op.
cit.,
p.
230.
26
maintains:
MI have eaten tarts with him at the Mulberry
Gardens".
Except for these few bits of uncertain evidence,
the charges against Dryden's marriage are based on gossip
and conjecture.*-
Eliot observes that after Dryden1s marriage, his conduct as a father,
husband, and master of a family was affectionate, faithful, and, so far as
his circumstances admitted, liberal and benevolent.
And as a husband, he
was never upbraided by any of his critics.2
When we turn, however, from the personal conduct of our author to the
morality of his writings, we find a defense more difficult.
cacy is to be found in his dramas.
We cannot deny this fact.
Gross indeli
But, says
Haveman,
The example of his fellow-playwrights, the vulgar taste of
his audiences—all these may be mentioned in palliation of
his guilt, but his proper defense is the fact, that he learned
to repent.3
When the celebrated Jeremy Collier descended in righteous wrath upon
writers in general, and upon Dryden in particular, there were many wits who
looked for a crushing rejoinder; but Dryden disappointed them by admitting
his faults.
He states soon after Collier's attack in a poem addressed to
Mr. Motteux;
What I have loosely or profanely writ,
Let them to fires, (their due dessert) commit.4
And again in his "Preface" to the "Fables," he says5
If there happen to be found an irreverent expression, or a
thought too wanton, they are crept into my verses through
1
"———
—~
Ibid., p. 241.
2
3
T. S. Eliot,
op.
"
cit., p. 48,
John B. Havemen, "Dryden After Two Centuries," Sewanee Review, IX
(June, 1906), 38.
'
4
"Poem Addressed to Mr. Motteux," p. 735.
27
inadvertency* if the searchers find any An the cargo, let
them be staved or forfeited, like counter-branded goodsj
and not of my own manufacture.
He criticizes the indecencies of the stage in the "Ode to Mrs. Anne
Killigrew" thus:
0 gracious Godl how for have we
Profan'd thy heavenly gift of poesy,
Made profligate and prostitute th® muse
Debased to each obsoene and impious use,
Whose harmony was first ordained above...
This lubric and adulterate age, ...
T1 increase the steaming ordures of the
Stage?2
Dryden also regarded himself as a man of greater moral dignity than
some critics have allowed him.
illustrate this point.
Two passages from his works may suffice to
In "A Discourse Concerning the Origin and Progress
of Satire," addressed to the Earl of Dorset, Dryden questions the legiti
macy of the lampoon which he terms as a dangerous sort of weapon and for hhe
most part unlawful:
... and this condition has made me tremble, when I was
saying my Saviour's prayers: for the plain condition of
forgiveness of others the offences which they havo done to us:
for which reason I have many times avoided the commision
of that fault.3
In the second passage, Dryden defends his sincerity in the matter of
party loyalty.
of Guise."
He had been accused of having been hired to write "The Duke
He replies in his n?indieation" (1863):
... I am no mercenary scribbler, the Lord's Commission of
the Treasury best know: I am sure they have found no im
portunate solicter: for I know myself, I deserve little, and
therefore have never desired much,...
I am resolved to stand
or fall with the cause of my God, my king and my country.^
"1
■
■
■
"Preface" to the Fables, p. 741.
2
"Ode to Mrs. Anne Killigrew," p. 212.
3
4
"A Discourse Concerning the Origin and Progress of Satire," p. 181.
"Vindication," p, 174,
■
28
Now these public acknowledgements that Dryden made of his breach of
good taste and decency do not acquit him of his offenses, but they at least
serve to remind us that he regretted his professional short-comings.
It is quite obvious, from the foregoing facts, that Dryden's character
is a subject on which there can be much diversity of opinion*
However
Noyes gives this assurances
His prime characteristics were receptivity, kindliness,
and a sort of modest honesty.
His mind was so hospitable
to hew ideas, and so ready to adopt its utterance to the
moment... we are apt to think him a mere hypocrite and
timeserver.
Saintsbury defends Dryden in this manner:
Dryden, no doubt, was not austerely virtuous, and pos
sessed certain faults.
But the faults were the way of
the world; and though he was no saint, there were not so
many better men living than
^
This brief account of Dryden1s character may well close with Congreve's
portrait
of his friends
He was of a nature exceedingly humane and compassionate,
easily forgiving injuries and capable of a prompt and
sincere reconciliation with them.S
How we arrive at the final value of Dryden~the man—his literary
qualities.
Dryden1s position in literature might be considered as unique.
MIt is far below that of Shakespeare as well as below that of Milton."4
Yet,
says Eliot,
1
Op.
oit., p,
735,
2
George Saintsbury,
op. oit.,
p. 187.
3
George fi. Noyes, "Preface," op. cit., xxxviii
4
J. Dennis, The Age of Pope (London, 1988), "Introduction", p. 1.
so
is a playhouse into which fashionably dressed folk are thronging.
entrance is a signboard naming the play they are about to see.
Over the
It is All
For Love or The World Well Lost, which was published the same year that
Pilgrim's Progress was published.
greatest successes,
To us, however,
bub,
Although the play was one of Dryden's
it was represented by "Beelzebub.11
as we look back,
Dryden does not seem a wicked Beelze
He was a creature of his times, just as Bunyan was,
was plying the tinkers trade,
"While Bunyan
Dryden was at the famouns old Westminister
school studying the classics and getting well birched by Dr. Busby?
p
From
Westminister, Dryden went to Cambridge, but we know little about his uni
versity life.
Wo do know that when Dryden left Cambridge in 1657, Cromwell had only
one year to live,
and the Restoration was only three years away.
Dryden's lot to be in at the disastrous finish.
was Cromwell's Lord Chamberlain.
Gilbert's secretary.
It was
His cousin, Sir Gilbert,
According to Gardiner, Dryden became Sir
As such he found himself a part of the machinery of
Puritan government, but he was neither the Milton nor the Bunyan kind of
Puritan.
"Puritanism, according to Bunyan and Milton, was a cause to
fight for and,
if necessary, to die for."
To Dryden it was probably only
an existing form of government, providing a convenient opening for a young
man looking for something to do.
Since Dryden was interested in writing
1
Edmund K.
Broadus,
op.
cit., p.
251,
2
Ibid.,
p. 222.
S
Samuel Gardiner, History of the Commonwealth and Protectorate (New
York, 1903), p. 102,
29
He has by reason of his precise degree of inferiority
a kind of importance1 which neither Shakespeare nor Milton
has--the
importance of influence.
We have already noted the forces at work at this time--a time of bat
tle in criticism between French rules of order,
the apparent
regularity,
lawlessness of the English practice.
works reflect Aristotelian precept,
Renaissance thought.
symmetry,
As a result,
Shakesperian practice,
and
Dryden's
French rule,
and
To choose, to separate the old from the new—this was
Dryden's problem.
And as we briefly review his works, we will clearly see that Dryden,
living in an age of political intrigue, religious strife, moral depravity,
and superficial refinement,
his age.
4
sought to adjust himself to the requirement of
Thus, he became apparently a materialist, and seemingly a clever
opportunist in literature and politics.
Broadus explains that in an old edition of Pilgram's Progress, there
is an old picture depicting Vanity Fair.
In the middle distanoe are Chris
tian and Faithful in the cage surrounded by scoffers.
In the foreground
I
Saintsbury assertss
This influence lies in his critical works, the most original
of his works.
2
T. Eliot, op.
cit.,
p.
5.
3
Barnett ¥tfendell, The Temper of Seventeenth Century English Literature
(New York, 1914), p. 23.
4
Noyes avers:
He is so thoroughly representative of his age, that he
is the poet especially mentioned by critics and literary
historians....
He was interested in everything which en
gages the attention of his generation—science, politics,
the church, the theater.
In -thorough sympathy with his
age,
he grew with it.
He not only represented his age
but helped to conduct it, along the way it wished to
travel.
Op. oit., p. 600.
31
poetry, the sudden death of Cromwell provided a theme.
Dryden1s poem, "On
the Death of His Late Highness Lord Protector of England, Scotland, and Ire
land," is a just tribute to a great man.
It praises his disinterestedness.
No borrowed days his temples did adorn.
But to our crown he did fresh jewels bring,
Nor was his virtue poisoned, soon as born
.
With the too early thought of being king.1
It recounts his virtues, and rightly emphasizes his success in forcing the
European monarchies to treat republican England with respect.
It closes
nobly.
His ashes in a peaceful urn shall rest,
His name a great example stand to show
How strangely high endeavors may be blessed
Where piety and valour jointly go.*
Likewise, when Charles II entered London, Dryden characteristically
rose to the occasion.
Saintsbury says that by the twenty-first day after
the king's entrance, Dryden had finished and published "Astraea Redux",
a poem on the "Happy Restoration and Return of His ©acred Majesty Charles
II.tsS
"Astraea Redux'!* Strahan tells us.
••• was not so good a poem as the tribute to Cromwell*
Cromwell was a Carlylean hero.
wart character much less a hero.
Charles was not a stal
He was only a king,
and
I
"On the Death of His Late Highness Lord Protector of England, Scot
land and Ireland" p. 4
2
Ibid., p. 7.
3
George Saintsbury, op. oit.,
p.
28.
4
"Astraea" was the name of the Goddess of Justice who lived on the
earth during the golden age.
The title "Astraea Redux" means, therefore,
the return of Justice.
E. K. Broadus,
op.
cit., p.
227.
32
to write a
long poem in praise of him was more of a
matter of ingenuity than inspiration.1
"Astraea Redux" is at least a fervent tribute, and it served to give Dryden prominence both as a poet and a supporter of the crown.
Yet he still had his way to make.
ity.
The theater gave him his opportun
After the death of Shakespeare, the drama had slowly, but surely,
deteriorated.
theaters.
Ihen the Puritans became strong enough, they closed the
With the restoration of Charles, the pendulum swftng to the
other extreme; the restraints of Puritanism were thrown offj theaters
started full blast, and the pleasure loving king led the way in attending
them.
Two kinds of plays became the fashion—comedies,
in some of the
worst elements of the dying drama of the earlier period, were n#vived; the
heroic play which provided a sort of set-off to the comedies by represent
ing the hero as a man of prodigious valor and prodigious virtue, making
love to a virtuous heroine in a court full of enemies and villains.
Dryden tried his hands at both kinds, the immoral comedies, and the
impossible heroic plays.
And although Drydan did not possess arc
out-
standing dramatic ability, he rapidly became famous as a playwright*
1
Speer Strahan, "A Wreath For John Dryden," The Commonweal X (August,
1931), 62.
2
Eliot makes this comment on Dryden1s dramatic effort;
Dryden's effort in the drama is important in the following
ways; first it strengthened his command for his verse medi
um for other works, and enlarged his interests; then, be
cause of the importance of the theater of his times, it
helped to consolidate his influence upon his contemporaries
and successors; it is an essential body of his works...; and
lastly, because it gave him the knowledge and opportunity
for some of his best critical writings.
Op. oit., p. 45.
33
Nevertheless, he was not content, Eliot says, to let his plays take their
course upon the stage,
"He wanted to think of them as dramatic experiments,
to defend his methods to analyze his art."
Therefore with eaoh play as it
appeared in print, he published a preliminary essay.
inevitably into the field of literary criticism.
These essays led him
The most important of his
essays are "An Essay on Dramatic Poesy11 (1688), the 'fessay on Satire" (1693),
and the "Preface" to the Fables (1700),
In these essays, Dryden not only
set a model for simple practical prose style,
Lovett, he is our first great critic.
2
but, according to Moody and
By his adoption of the modern sen-
tence in place of the long sentences used by Raleigh and Milton,
4
he did
for modern proses^ what he did for poetry: he reduced it to manageable size
and set an example for correctness.
So, with his adroitness in catching the popular taste in his plays,
with his skill in verse, and his genius in what is called "the harmony of
I
Ibid.,
p. 36.
2
Breadus makes this comment on Dryden1s styles
Dryden's genius wrought this crisp prose of his into a
style that is intimate and easy without ever being cheapj
a style full of figure and fancy without being artificial
or ornatet a style simple and plain but never dull. Op cit.,
261.
3
Op. "Bit., p.
170.
4
Eliot
says?
We observe that they are the first serious literary
criticism... because there was the contemporary
criticism of Thomas Rymer.
Op. cit., p. 55.
5
While Inglis and Benet comment thus:
He has been called "The Father of English Prose"... be
cause in his critical works he introduced a simple, direct
style, in marked oontrast to the flowery phrases of the Eliz
abethans and the p8nderous sentences of Milton.
Remey Belle
Inglis and William R. Benet, English Literature (New York, 1941), p. 201.
34
prose," Dryden soon found himself on the highroad to suocess.
When Dave-
nant died in 1668, the quasi-official laureateship became a salaried of
fice of the crown with the appointment of Dryden.
To Dryden this appointment meant more than an excuse for continuing
his panegyrics; but,
as MacDonald
says,
His power as a poet could be used to mold public
opinions in behalf of his royal master.
Many people,
today, think of poetry, if they think of it at all, as
the nosegay for a leisure hour. Especially, they don't
expect a poet to meddle seriously with politics.
That
is the business of the newspaper.
But in Dryden1s day
the man who could turn a witty rhyme on a political
issue caould count on being read.*
Dryden's ability as a panegyrist was known.
The opportunity to show
what he could do as a satirist soon presented itself when the leading
Protestant spirits opposed the succession of James II
to the English
throne.
At the psychological moment, Dryden published his "Absalom and Achi-
tophel#"
It is a dramatic retelling of the Biblical story (II Samuel, XV
--xviii) of how the wicked counsellor Achitophel beguiled Absalom to revolt
against his father,
David. But the allegory is transparent.
Absalom unmistakably Monmouth,
but everyone of the
Not only was
and Achitophel Unmistakably Shaftesbury,
Biblical characters was made
some prominent
contemporary
enemy or conspirator against the king.
1
W. L. MacDonald, "John Dryden 1631-1931," Bookman, VIII (January,
1931), 486.
2
According to Garnett/
The heir to the throne was James II, the king's brother.
But James was a Catholic, and the Protestant party opposed
him.
The Esrl of Shaftsbury headed a party whose purpose
was to declare Charles1 illegitimate son heir to the throne.
The plan failed and Shaftesbury was thrown into prison.
Op. cit., p. 286.
35
If"Absalom and Achitophel"1 did not succeed in serving the purpose
for which Dryden had designed it, it served to make him the best known
and the most admired—although the most hated--man in London.
Now this was the heyday of "Glorious John," as his admirers called
him.
It was a brave time while it lasted, a tSroe of tireless activity.
Heroic plays, operas, comedies and a great tragedy, the title of which we
have already encountered adorning a signboard in Vanity Pair, and in which
Dryden challenged his beloved Shakespeare by dramatizing once again the
story of Antony and Cleopatra.
It is worth remembering, tho, that in the
same All for Love, Dryden abandoned rhymed couplets, which he had used
regularly, for blank verse.
Dryden entered a new field in the "Religio Laici" and "The Hind and
the Panther," twin expositions of his religious views in
shall examine in the next chapter.
verse, which we
"St. Cecelia's Day" and "Alexander's
Feast" are usually cited as the best examples of Dryden1s poetic powers.
It is pleasant to find dated close to the time of his conversion a poem,
one of his finest by universal consent, the "Elegy to the Memory of Anne
Killigrew."
There remains Dryden1s translations.
The beautiful Georgics and the
majestic Aeneid have elicited this comment from the pen of Eliots
Their importance, however, in considering Dryden's place
then and now is this* that it was by his translations al
most as by his original poems, that Dryden helped to form
our English tongue.2
"""J—
■
—
.
Saintsbury asserts:
The main object, the overthrowing of Shaftesbury, was not
2
accomplished.
Shaftesbury felt that he had won a victory
over Dryden, when he was not prosecuted.
The subsequent
striking of a medal with the legend of Laetmur caused Dry
den to write "The Medal," Op. cit., p. 84.
T. S. Eliot. Op. cit., p. 20.
36
And now our author's heyday comes abruptly to an end.
For after a
brief reign of four years, James was driven from the throne, and the Prot
estant William of Orange and his wife Mary ascended the throne.
Dryden
lost his laureateship, found no further favor at court and retired quietly
into private life.
He died on May 1,
1700,
and was nobly buried in the
"Poet's Corner" of Westminister Abbey.
Dryden lives as one of the great writers of literature.
one of supreme stature, he is,
giants.
his age.
nevertheless,
Though not
one of the race of literary
He possessed many qualities which raised him above the level of
Strength and
solidity of mind,
accuracy and comprehensiveness
of scholarship, astonishing fluency and versatility, masterly skill as a
literary workman,
brilliant wit, a vivid imagination, a poetic sense,
real
if not profound—these are some of the qualities that make Dryden great.
As an accomplished poet,
balanced literary critic,
an effective satirist,
a master
of English prose.
is worthy of thorough understanding,
a
John Dryden, the man
if not of high praise.
With this portrait of Dryden before us,
religious history*
a skillful dramatist,
let us now investigate his
CHAPTER
III
DRYDEN'S RELIGIOUS VIEWS
In the year 1686, John Dryden, then fifty-seven years of age, with
drew from the Church of England and entered the Roman Catholic Communion,
In his young manhood, he had been sufficiently attached to the Puritan
position to write a poem on the death of Oliver Cromwell; and subsequent
ly he was attached to the fashionable skepticism of the Restoration period.
After middle-age, however, Dryden turned seriously to religion, as we see
from his "Religio Laici," which is a layman's defense of the Church of
England, and from his metrical fable of "The Hind and the Panther," which,
written after his conversion to Catholicism, is a tribute to the excel
lence of his new found faith.
He lived a Catholic during the troublesome
days of the Catholic King James II, as well as during the Protestant monarchs, William and Mary; and a Catholic he died in the last year of the
seventeenth century.
Such, in brief, are the obvious facts concerning the religious his
tory of John Dryden.
His youthful adherence to Puritanism was natural.
The Pickerings, his mother's family, were Puritans; and his uncle, Sir
John Dryden, was among the most enthusiastic supporters of Cromwell,
The
poet's grandfather, Sir Erasmus Dryden, was regarded as a martyr to the
Puritan oause, having been sent to prison a few years before his death
in 1632 for refusing to pay loan money to King Charles I.
The poets fami
ly traditions were Puritan, and his early environment was a Puritan one.
37
38
Nevertheless Dryden1s temperament and cast of mind was not that of a
1
Puritan.
He did not show the fervid devotion to Puritanism shared by his
uncle and grandfather,
Dryden, in short, was a Puritan by virtue of family and training but
not through conviction,
Puritanism was the garment in which his infant
body had been swathed, but this garment failed to grow with its wearer.
As a form of religion, it did not seem to appeal to him,
le may safely
say, as Treadway affirms, that "as a Puritan Dryden had no
religious
views at all,"
In fact his religious convictions, like his literary theory, de
veloped slowly.
According to Saintsbury, while many of his contemporaries
were out of college before they were out of their teens, Dryden was twenty-
three before he received his bachelor's degree.
a man of letters
He achieved prominence as
when in the thirties, and his best work was not done un
til two decades later,4 He required nearly a lifetime to formulate his
1
'
■
■
Leo makes this comment:
As a political faction, Puritanism was in the ascendancy
during his young manhoodj its leading figure had assumed
the proportions of a national; so expediency, if nothing
else, would lead Dryden to respect the power of Puritan
ism and to entertain a dutiful regard toward the Lord
Protector,.,,
Catholic,"
At the time the "Heroic Stanzas" was writ
ten and for some years afterward, Dryden had no definite
religious views at all. Brother Leo, "How Dryden Became a
2
Catholic World (July, 1917), p. 485,
™
Thomas J. Treadway, op. cit., p. 279,
3
According to Pooley, he became widely known in 1667, by his "Annus
Mirabilis," which described, in quatrains, the naval victory over the
Dutch, the great fire in London, and the great plague all events occurr
ing in 1666.
Op. oit., p. 87,
4
George Saintsbury,
op. cit., p. 96.
39
theory of literature; likewise he took a correspondingly long time to
orient himself in religious matters,
was a thing more
especially since religion, with him,
of the head than of the heart.
Thus, we .find
little evidence of his religious opinions until we come
to his two poems published in 1682 and 1687.
"Religio Laici" and "The
Hind and the Panther11 are so closely allied in their philosophy that they
may be conveniently treated together in our analysis.
Now,
it was inevitable, as Van Doren says,
... that Dryden, who was not only in his aje but of it,
should absorb the principles of polite skepticism.
As we have already seen,
one of the most engaging characteristics of Dry-
den's mind is his readiness to understand the other side of the question.
"And like most vigorous and independent minds, he gradually selected out
of the mass of his own knowledge a set of convictions in harmony with his
own nature," Bredvold says.
3
Bredvoid further states that
This assimilation was complete by 1682, and the skeptical
tendency which Dryden betrayed only casually in his com
ments on Hobbes and dogmatic materialism he expresses ful
ly and explicitly in "Religio Laioi,"4
■
1
Leo gives valuable information on this points
■—
An investigation of Dryden1s religious mutations will
show that the poet laureates conversion to Catholicism
was not only sincere and consistent, but, when his type
of mind is taken into account, almost inevitable; and
that the steps which led him from Puritanism to Cathol
icism constitute an interesting contribution to the psy
chology of religious belief.
Op. cit., p. 484.
2
Mark Van Doren, op.
3
Op.
oit., p,
4
Ibid.,
p. 45.
32.
cit., p. 48.
40
For example Dryden writes:
Dim as the borrowed beams of moon and stars
To lonely, weary, wandering travellers
Is Reason to the Soul, and as on high
Those Rowdy fires discover the sky.
A similar thought is expressed in "The Hind and the Panther:11
... and after that trust my imperfect sense calls in
question his omnipotence,2
In "Religio Laici" Dryden askss
How can the less the Greater comprehend?
Or finite Reason reach infinity?*
Again in "The Hind and the Panther":
Let reason
4
then at her
own quarry fly.
But how can finite 5 grasp infinity?**
Thus we see that Dryden never showed himself out cfsympathy with his
age. But in spite of his skepticism Dryden was a rationalist.
In all of
his xTOrks we have evidence that he gave reason full play in both the re
ligious and the political realm.
Moreover, as Bredvold declares, "ra-
I
"Religio Laici." p. 732.
2
"The Hind and the Panther," p. 526.
3
"Religio Laici," p. 490.
4
In the "Preface" to "Religio Laici" Dryden states:
Man's reason can and does gain certain knowledge.
But in our knowledge of the eternal world and of minds,
reason if harmful by the fact that no intuition of real
existence is possible. "Preface" to "Religio Laici," p. 720
o
Dryden lends this thought to Almanzor in the Conquest of Granada:
By reason, man a godhead may discern,
But how he would be worshipped cannot learn,
Conquest of Granada, Part II, p. 190.
6
"The Hind and the Panther," p. 526.
41
tionalism was more than an abstract theory to himj it was a way of life."!
Herbert Grierson affirms that,
Dryden was a rationalist and a skeptic at one and the
same time.
And it is possible to argue that he was
both without being inconsistent.
icism limits his rationalism.2
However, his skept
Another tendency of the age, which Dryden encountered, was Deism.3
John Orr says
... that Deism grew to be an important element in the
thought of the seventeenth century and the dominant
form of theological liberalism in England during the
first half of the eighteenth century.4
Some modern students of Dryden have advanoed the theory that Dryden
was a Deist during his life in London up to his conversion to Catholicism.
1
—
Op.
oit.,
p.
—
39.
2
Op. cit., p. 181. Grierson further states:
His oontact with philosophical skepticism enabled him
to rationalize his natural diffidence of temper. He
lived in an age of philosophical skepticism; every
reader of any pretensions to cultivation knew Montaigne
and Charon intimately^ and almost every scholar had read
Sextus Empiricus.
Neither Dryden nor his age can be fully
understood apart from this Pyrrhonism, diffused in every
department, lending itself to the most diverse purposes,
appearing sometimes in strange guises and in the most un
expected places.
Ibid., p.
197.
3
John Orr gives this explanation of the Deists:
... they agreed that God is personal and distinct from
the world. The Deist maintained that God endowed the
world at creation with self sustaining and self acting
powers and then abandoned it to the operation of these
powsrs acting as second causes.
John Orr, English Deism: Its
Roots and Its Fruits (Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1934), p. 13.
4
Ibid'., P» 59«« See, also, A. H. Strong, Systematic Theology
(Philadelphia Press, 1912), p. 412; Robert Flint, Anti-Theistic Theories
(Edinburgh, 1879), p. 442.
~~
42
In other words, some writers, like Verall, attempt to show us that Dryden
was really a Deist from 1660 to 1686.* But Dryden wrote "Religio Laici"
in 1662, and in it he rejects the Cardinal principles of Deism both in the
prefaoe and in the poem.
For example, in the "Preface" he sayss
They who would prove Religion by Reason,2 do but weaken
the cause which they endeavor to supports tis to take
away the Pillars from our faith, and to prop it only
with a twig,,.» Let us be content to know God by his
own methods: at least as much of him as he is pleased
to reveal in the sacred Scriptures.2
Therefore, according to Bredvold, "Vmat he was before 1682 is hard
to sayj but, evidently, Dryden was not a DAist in 1682, although some of
his works may indicate this fact."
Certainly the argument of Montezuma
in the Indian Emperor sounds Deistic.
Christian Priest,
Montezuma.
For example,
If ir. this middle way you still pretend
To stay, your journey never will end.
However, tis better in the midst to stay.
Than wander far in uncertain way.*
But it would be unwarranted to affirm on the strength of this debate
that Dryden, like Montezuma, rejected Christian revelation.
It might be well assumed that we are on surer ground in the discussion
of Tyrannic Love. Dryden here represents Saint Catharine disputing among
the pagans.
The Saint converts Appolonius, a heathen philosopher, by dem
onstrating the rational and ethical superiority of Christianity.
I
—
A. W. Verrall, Lectures on Bryden (London, 1914), p. 150.
2
Orr makes this comment on reason and religion:
The Reformation itself, by its rejection of much of the
formalism, ritualism and mystery of the Roman Catholic Church,
by its teaching that, in matters of religion, each individual
should use his reason... was a movement in the same direction
as diism. Op. cit., p. 59.
3
4
"Religio Laici," Preface, p. 72-4.
The Indian Emperor, p. 397.
43
Saint Catherine,
Nor pride, nor frenzy but a settled mind,
Enlightened from above, my way does mark.
... but where our reason with our faith does go.
We are both above enlightened and below,
But Reason with your fond religion fights*
Appolonius.
Where truth prevails all arguments are weak
To that convincing power I must give placej
And with that truth that faith I will
,.. for many Gods are many infinites.
embrace I^
Here Appolonious announces his conversion without hearing a word about
Christ
n
or the sacraments.
Nevertheless, Bredvold reminds us:
We must beware of regarding Saint Catherines argument as
an exact reflection of Dryden's thoughtj we must remem
ber the exigencies not to say the properties of the theaters,
which certainly forbade a disquisition on every part of the
Catechism.
Therefore, while we agree that rationalism made a strong appeal to John
Dryden, he was not an atheist,
For Dryden believed in a supreme Being,
perhaps not in an anthropomorphic one.
He says this in the "Preface"
to "Religio Laici."
I have even thought, that the wise men in all ag©s have
not much differed in their opinions of religion; I mean
as it is grounded on human reason.... Thus it is not to
be doubted that the religion of Socrates, Plato, and Plu
tarch was not different in the main: who doubtless be
lieved in one Supreme Intellectual Being.
That such, at all events, was Dryden1s idea of God, we have more
than mere conjecture.
1
In his poem "The Hind and the Panther" Dryden re-
—
"
'
'
Tyrannic Love, p. 403.
2
Bredvold
sayss
Furthermore, Appolonious was a philosopher, to be
appealed to in that character.
Op. cit., p. 114.
3
Op. cit.,
4
p.
114.
"Preface" to "Religio laici1/ p. 406.
~
44
veals his attitude toward the Church. After a bitter attack on the va
rious sects under the figure of the several beasts of prey, the Panther
is introduced, and the history of the English Church is reviewed with
slighting allusion to the part played by Henry VIII.
The Church is praised
for her loyality to the throne; but, a rebel herself she cannot effectively
curb rebellion in others.
He says:
Pierce to her foes, yet fears her foes to try,
Because she wants innate authority;
For how can she constrain them to obey,
Who has herself cast of the lawful sway.
Bredvold further explains that
In the second part of the poem, when the
Hind argues that the Anglican Church does not
possess any satisfactory principle of authority,
the Panther is represented as being unable to
"... enlarge."'
With weak defence against
And Dryden shxms himself,
so strong a charge."
even in "Religio Laici," not
Anglicans provided no real ultimate authority.
satisfied that the
For he says:
Such an Ominiscient Church we wish indeed;
'Twere worth both Testaments and cost
in the Creed.^
Likewise in "Religio Laici" we see Dryden1s belief in the spiritual
sense in man.
Leo says, that in the preface to "Religio Laici," there
is an invaluable document to one who would trace the evolution of the au
thor's belief—while maintaining that he is "naturally inclined to skep
ticism in philosophy" Dryden insists that religion is something above
1
"
"The Hind and the Panther," p. 746.
2
Op.
cit., p.
127,
S
"Religio Laici," p. 718.
■
45
philosophy, and "that we have not lifted up ourselves to God1 by the
weak pinions of our reason, but he has been pleased to descend to us."2
Again in "Religio Laici, " Dryden maintains that the greatest have
not been able to find the true source of happiness:
Those Gyant Vfits, in happy Ages born,
(When Arms and Arts did Greece adorn,)
Knew no such systeme.
Nor did Remorse to expiate Sin prescribe;
But slew their fellow creatures for a bribe,3
"Religio Laici,11 then, reveals to us that Dryden's acceptance of
Christianity is based on a humble recognition of the fact that in the
highest things reason is impotent.
He defends this view in the "Preface"
to "Religio Laici" by declaring that unconverted haathens are not neces
sarily lost.
Then coming to his main contention, he says:
By asserting the Scriptures to be the canon of our
faith, I have unavoidably created myself two sorts of
enemies, the Papists, indeed more directly, because they
have kept the Scriptures from us,
.., and the Fanatics
more collaterally, because they have assumed what
amounts to infallibility in the private spirit,4
Th® Papists he thinks less "dangerous" because the penal laws are in
force against them and their number is contemptible.
bitter against the Fanatics of the English Church.
I
'
Op.
But he is much more
He accuses them of us-
'
cit., p. 488.
2
Bredvold observes that in the "Defence of an Essay on Dramatic Poesy,"
Dryden noted that "our divines," when they have proved a
Deity, ought to be worshipped in a manner different from Deism.
In 1672 he loaned this thought to Alamanzor, in the Conquest
of Granada. Op. oit., p. 486.
3
"Religio Laici," p. 486.
4
"Preface" to "Religio Laici," p. 412.
46
ing the translated Bible to the destruction of the government which put
it in their hands.
We may conclude then that
"Religio Laici" is a defense of the Church
of England from the tyranny of the Papistry on one hand, and the Anarchy
of the Fanatic,
on the other.
Hoot
sums up the argument of the poem as
follows:
Though the deist may through reason attain to some knowl
edge of God, he is lost without the doctrine of atonement.
We must fall back on revelation, and take the Bible as the
guide of faith.
But how is the Bible to be interpreted?
Dryden insists that all things necessary to salvation need
no interpretation:
"It speaks itself and what it does contain
in all things needful to be known is
Plain." (338-369).
The Roman Church claims infallibility
in its interpreta
tion of Scripture:
"Such an ominiscient Church we wish indeed.11
But the conscience cannot recognize this claim;
And the Roman Church futhermore, is corrupt.
The Fanatics on the other hand, interpret the scriptures
"The tender page with horny fists were galled,
And he was gifted most that loudest bawled;
And every member of the Company
Was hf his trade Bible free...
Texts were explained by fasting and by prayer."*
From these lines and from the "Preface," it seems clear that Dryden in
"Religio Laici" is not only defending the established Church but is profes
sing both his belief in the existence of the spiritual sense in man and his
recognition of a teaching Church which is the custodian of Divine
revelation.
He answers objections against the fact of a revealed religion; he insists
upon the inspiration of scripture; he is obviously impressed with the ad-
Robert K. Root, "Dryden's Conversion To the Roman Catholic Faith,"
P.M.L.A., XXII(19O7), 304; 305.
47
vantage of the doctrine of Papal infallibility,
Scott makes the follow
ing estimate of "Religio Laici":
In considering Dryden's creed thus analyzed,
I think
it will appear that the author, though still holding
the doctrines of the Church of England, has been biased,
in the course
of his inquiry,
by those of Some.
"Religio Laici" was not the first poem with sign-posts that marked
Dryden's spiritual journey on the road to Home.
In one of his first poems,
Dryden gave a hint of the direction in which his mind was turning, and of
his distrust of the more extreme doctrines of the Reformers.
Thus in
"Annus Mirabilis":
The fugitive flames,
chastised went forth to prey
On pious structures, by our fathers reared-.
By which to heav'n they did affect the way,
Ere faith in churchment without works were heard,**
Even in "Absalom and Achitophol," although the Anglicans were still
his chosen people, he drew a sympathetic picture of the Catholics under
the guise of the Jebusites:
Th1 inhabitants of old Jerusalem
Were Jebusites; the town so call'd from them;
And theirs the native right-But when the chosen people grew more strong.
The rightful cause at length became the wrong}
And every loss the men of Jebus bore,
The still were thought God's enemies the more,3
Finally,
in 1686, four years after the appearance of his "Religio
Laici," Dryden was received into the Catholic Church,
That the Catholic
sovereign, James II., had ascended the throne early in the preceding year
is often emphasized as a significant fact relative to the poet laureate's
1
Scott-Saintsbury,
op. cit., p. S60,
2
"Annus Mirabilis," p. 273,
3
"Absalom and Achitophel," p. 85,
48
change of faithj but the truth appears to be that the accession of the
Catholic king to the throne was not even a minor motive of Dryden1s re
nunciation of Protestantism.
Dryden needed no
such play to win the fav-
1
or of the new king.
Although he had nothing to gain by his conversion to Catholicism, he
had much to lose.Leo declares;
In becoming a Catholic, even were he assured that
Dryden
the new king would be safe from deposition,
exposed himself to serious inconveniences.
The announcement of his conversion was a signal for
a broadside of abuse and ridicule from his enemies....
And its spirit survives to this day in the treatment
accorded Dryden by writers whom we expect to exercise
more discernment*
Dryden gave,
in his own way, a reason for the faith that was in him
by publishing in April, 1687, his second religious poem, "The Hind and the
Panther."
That he already felt and rightly appreciated the personal hos
tility which his conversion to Catholicism brought about is indicated in
the opening paragraph of his preface.
"All men," he tells us, "are en
gaged on this side or thatj... if a writer falls among enemies and cannot
give the marks of their conscience, he is knocked down before he is heard."3
In the poem itself, Dryden provides a reliable key to his conversion in his
insistence on an infallible Church.
But gracious God, how well dost thou provide for
erring judgments an unerring God.4
1
'
'
'
Root states:
He had really nothing to gain.
Long before his conversion,
he had been continued in his offices of poet laureate and
royal historiographer.
2
Op. cit.,
'
Od.
3^
cit.,
p. 490.
"The Hind and the Panther," p. 3.
4
Ibid»,p. 493.
p.
296,
49
And so,
in the course of his extended fable, wherein the Catholic
Church is the "milk-white Hind" and the Established Church the "spotted
Panther," Dryden reviews the religious situation in England in the days of
James II.,
and sets forth for all who care to read with unprejudiced eyes
the motives that
led him to Home.
But the ultimate and unanswerable proof of Dryden1s good faith is his
perseverance in Catholicism.
Shortly after the accession of the Protestant
sovereigns, William and Mary, according to Garnett, he lost his yearly pen1
sion,
his place in the customs, his post as royal historiographer and his
•office of poet laureate; and to make the cup more bitter, he saw his old
enemy Shadwell, whom he had excoriated in "MacPlecknoe," garlanded with
the
laureateship.
2
Prom the evidence at our disposal, these things seem to us clears
Dryden desired an authoritative religion which should compel the acceptance
3
of all.
-
It is in this spirit that he defends the Church of England in
y
■
■
Treadway has this to say about Dryden1s plight:
Thus Dryden, because he was guilty of the unpardonable
crime of being a Catholic , was left destitute when almost
sixty years of Rge. Why, if he had been a time-server and
an opportunist all his life, did he not renouce his new
found faith and curry favor with William of Orange?
But
instead Dryden resumed his pen and eked out what existence
he could by writing more plays and engaging in translations.
Op. cit., p.•288. < *
T~
Richard Garnett, op.
cit.,
p. 92.
3
Dryden makes a pertinent statement regarding this point in his ""Es
say on Chaucer," in which he sayss
As for the religion of our poet, he seems to have some
little bias toward the opinion of Wickliff.
Yet I can not blame him for inveighing against the vices
of the clergy,., their worldly interest deserved the lash
ing,
Essay on Chaucer, p.
28.
50
"Religio Laici."
It is his recognition of the fact that only an infall
ible Church can logically demand and enforce obedience which leads him to
espouse the cause of Rome.
Indeed, he believes that the Bible should be
taken as the guide to faith:
It speaks itself, and what it does contain
In all things needful to be known is plain.*
And in the following lines from "The Hind and the Panther," we are
assured of Drydenfe belief in immortalitys
Why choose we then like bilanders to creep
Along the coast, and land in view to keep
When safely we may launch into the deep
In the same vessel which our Savionr bore;
Himself the pilot let us leave the shore,
And with a better guide a better world explore.
Now that we have examined Dryden's two poems which serve as an index
to his religious sentiments, we arrive at the conclusion that though Dryden changed his church allegiance, he had not changed his fundamental
philosophical and theological convictions.
His criticism of Protestant
principles in 1687," Root maintains,"is only an extended application
against Deism in 1682,?
3
,i
"Religio Laici," as well as its "Preface," is im
bued with bitter feelings against the individualism of English sects "who*1;
as Dryden says in the "Preface," "since the Bible had been translated into
English, have used it as if their business was not to b© saved, but damned
by its contents."
4
Part II of "The Hind and the Panther" enforces this conclusion. Root
further comments:
T~
"
"The Hind and the Panther," p. 533.
2
Ibid., p.
556.
3
Op. cit., p. 306.
4
"Preface" to "Religio Laici" p. 36,
—
—
51
It is a
strong logical argument to prove the impos
sibility of any via media between an infallible and
.
"omniscient" church and absolute liberty of dissent.
Such fundamental identical thought in the two poems, which superfici
ally appear to be of opposite tendencies,
cant accident.
is obviously not an insignifi
Both poems are thoroughly characteristic of Dryden.
Both
spring from the same temper of mind^ the same attitude toward philosophi
cal and ecclesiastical problems.
His shifts in allegiance were all changes
in the same direction toward greater conservatism.
We may here safely compare Dryden1s religious development with his
literary progress.
We know that his poetic taste dominated English verse,
according to Eliot, for a hundred years, and his prose style has not yet
lost its influence.
2
If we analyze the cause of the influence, we find
that what he developed and bequeathed was a respect for law,
the freedom of verse and prose,
"He curbed
but he made both manageable."
His spiritual progress followed a similar channel.
In religion, as
in literature, his temperament gradually led him toward a recognition of
the necessity of authority.
He early saw the need of a supernatural law
giver, and in time he came to recognize also the need of an early, inter
preter speaking without possibility of error,
all of which were only sign
posts on the highway to Rome,
We have seen that Dryden's general character and ideals constitute a
gradual and increasingly forceful development in the direction of Cathol
icism, and that his conversion was very far from being in any sense a
1
Op.
Cit.,
p. 306.
2
T. S. Eliot,
3
Ibid.,
p.
84.
op.
cit.,
p.
83.
52
sudden conversion.
Infallibility had been the note that attracted him to
the Catholic Church,
and it is natural that he devotes a large part of
"The Hind and the Panther" to an elucidation of the mark that had brought
him faith.
But, as Root points out, he speaks also of other controverted
points qi" doctrine; transubstantiation,
the nature and rule of Tradition,
the insufficiency of Scripture,
exhibiting a clear intellectual grasp
of the import of all these dogmas, and defending them with considerable
acumen*
1
Higher, though, than the motive which reasoning gives for credibil
ity,
he places the ultimate rule of faith:
God thus asserted: man is to believe
Beyond what sense and reason can conceive.
And for mysterious thin-s of faith rely
6n the proponents, Heaven's authority.'
It should not astonish us that Dryden at last discovered this truth.
He had seen it dimly years before, when he wrote the beautiful opening
lines of "Religio Laici."
Dim as the borrowed beams of moon and stars
Is Reason to the soul.
s
Reason had led him to know that Truth must speak with authority.
This Truth he found in the Catholic Church, which, as he says, "owns un
failing certainty."
We need look no further for the religious views of
John Dryden.
We have reviewed the .Age of Dryden; summarized his religious his1
■
Op.
cit., p.
■
289.
2
"The Hind and the Panther," p. 762.
a
"Religio Laici," p. 22.
___
53
toryj and examined the abstract ideas that arose out of his meditations
and experience.
Now, in the next chapter, we shall evaluate our findings,
in order to form a just estimate of our poet(s religious motives and char
acter.
CHAPTER IV
AN OVERALL INTERPRETATION OF DRYDEN«S RELIGIOUS VIEWS
On sudden conversions,
either in politics or religion, we do not look
with much favor; and when in Dryden*s career we find two such conversions
both coincident with changes
in the temper
of the court and hence with the
poet's worldly interests, we are apt to have the gravest
so many sources, by his contemporaries and by critics
suspicion.
of recent years, we
hear the refrain that Dryden was a time-server, a hypocrite,
we are loathe to accept this judgment; and
Prom
a trimmer* Yet
although Dryden did display cer
tain inconsistencies, we should make an effort to deal
fairly and
justly with
the great convert of the Restoration period.
It
is true that Dryden professed allegiance to three established re
ligious sects; he was a Puritan under Cromwell,
and a Catholic under James II,
and Anglican under Charles II,
He commemorated in verse the death of Crom
well in 1658; he celebrated Charles II *s accession in 1660,
church in 1682;
but by 1687,
became its apologist.
and Charles IIfs
he had both accepted the church of James II and
Conversions which coincide with political interests
are easily subject to suspicion, but
in Dryden1s
case,
the suspicions are
not founded on solid facts and sound reasoning.
Among Dryden1s contemporaries, as was but natural,
personal jealousies
and party prejudices gave rise to harsh and bitter judgments.
over from
Cromwell to Charles,
conversion stood alone,
Dryden went
as did many of his countrymen..
it would have had but
54
little
significance
Had this
for his
55
later critics.
But
on the announcement
of the
enemies prooeeded to make much of the first.
lishman of his day who,
however,
second conversion.
Dryden's
Yet he was not the only Eng
brought up a Protestant,
became a Catholicj Dryden,
partly by reason of his prominence as a man of letters,
and partly
because of the enthusiasm with which he rushed to the defense of the Church
of St. Peter,
has been singled out
Writers ranging in scholarship,
have represented him as
for harsh and
ill-tempered criticism.
scope, and viewpoint,
insincere and worldly wise,
from Macaulay to Christie,
as a time-server and an
opportunist; they have held up against him the moral laxity of his plays;
they have accused him openly of having gone over for a price,
These charges
Macaulay repeated over a century after the death of Dryden.
Though we know that the renewal of Dryden's pension,
laid so much emphasis, was not a result of his conversion,
charges have been,
cent critics:
in their essential respect,
by W. D. Christie,
on which Macaulay
Macaulay's
reiterated by many more re
editor of the Globe edition; by Churton
Collins; by I. L. Minto and by the late M.
find Samuel Johnson and Walter Scott,
Beljame.
On the other hand, we
in their lives of Dryden, arguing for
his complete sincerity, and George Saintsbury, in his volume on Dryden in the
g
English Men of Letters Series, following brilliantly in their footsteps.
In Macaulay's day, it was erroneously believed that Dryden's salary un
der Charles II had been only two hundred pounds a year, and that James II, so
long as Dryden remained a Protestant, merely confirmed the pension at the same
figure.
It was noticed, however, that James added an extra hundred pounds to
Dryden's salary in the year of the poet's conversion. T. B. Macaulay, op. cit.,
II. 196.
-*
?
Saintsbury offers this challenges
Is Dryden's critic nowadays prepared to question the sincerity
of Cardinal Newman?
If he is, I have no objection to his ques
tioning the sincerity of Dryden,...
The past conversions of
Newman are not less superficially inconsistent with the Traots
56
None of Dryden's hostile critics, we think, teave examined,
cient detail, fundamental tendencies of Dryden's own utterances
in suffi
in the casej
for there is no justification for such an estimate, as these critics make,
of his character and motives.
For example,
"The Heroic Stanzas" on Oliver
Cromwell is an enthusiastic panegyric on the Protector's personal qualities
as a great soldier and
strong ruler.
lo where is there any mention of Crom
well's religion, nor of the Puriten principles for which he fought.
There is
no attempt to justify regicide; there is no attempt to glorify the Puritan
cause.
The poet praises Cromwell for having restored order at home, and for
having made the English name respected abroad.
poem may be illustrated by a few quotations.
The dominant tendency of the
Thus in stanza 16s
Peace was the prize of all his toil and care,
Which war had banished and did not restored
Or again at the close of the poem in stanza 36s
No civil broils have since his death arose,
But faction now by habit does obey.2
We see no trace of enthusiasm for Puritanism in Dryden's "Heroic Stan-
aas."
Dryden had grown up amid the turmoil of civil war.
majority of his countrymen, peace was the
To him, as to the
consummation most to be desired.
Cromwell's government promised peacej and Dryden naturally gave it support.
But Richard Cromwell had not the force to carry on his father's work.
In the restoration of manarchy, Dryden doubtless saw the best form of estab-
for the Times, and the "Oxford Movement than "The Hind and the Panther" is
with Heligio Laioi"..,.
I believe Dryden to have been thoroughly sincere
between the years 1685-87, as for as conscious sincerity went,
Op.
cit.,
p.
103.
1
"Heroic Stanzas," p. 32.
2
Ibid.,
p.
47.
57
lished order; and with perfect
consistency he hailed the return of Charles II,
If we examine "Astrae Redux," and look for its dominant tendency, we shall
find it in entire accord with such an attitude.
There is no word against Crom
well ; there is no talk of divine rights of kings.
deliverer of his country, who shall,
more the golden age of peace and
Charles is welcomed as the
as the very poem suggests, bring back once
justice,
and establish it on firm foundation.
It is with this theme that the poem opens; with the seme theme the poem ends:
At home the hateful parties cease
And factious souls are wearied into peace.
This passion for peace and
order shows itself again in the poem on the
coronation and in the poem which deals with Shaftesbury and the conspiracy
of Monmouth.
Wear the beginning of "Absalom and Achitophel,11 we read:
The sober part of Israel, i'r<m> irom stain,
Well knew the value of a peaceful reign;
And looking backward with a wise affright
Saw seams of wounds dishonest to the sight,
In contemplation of whose ugly scars
The cursed the memory of civil wars.2
If we have dwelt long or; Dryden's earlier change of front,
it is because
we believe that the dominant motive ><<hich actuated him then played a princi
pal part in his later conversion to Romanism.
We find nothing to suggest that Dryden had given much serious thought to
questions of religion before he undertook his "Religio Laici."
The incidental
references to religion which one finds here and there in his writings, when
not merely perfunctory, are admittedly,
contemptuous.
One remembers the
often quoted line from "Absalom and Achitophel" to the effect that "priefcts
of all religion are the same."
Two at least of his comedies, "The Spanish
1
"Astraea Redux," p. 332.
2
"Absalom and Achitophel." Lines 69-75,
p. 76.
56
Friar and the Assignation, or Love in a gunnery, find much of their humor
i
in an expose of corruption in the monastic orders.
It would be a mistake,
however, to regard these plays as serious attacks on the Roman Church;
they have no trace of the moral indignation of the reformer.
for
Indeed, Robert
K, Root writes wisely, when he makes this discriminating and pertinent com
ments
Dryden, like Chaucer, saw in the hypocrisy of unworthy
ecclesiastics a rich source of comic effect, and as a
clever playwright, recognized that the theme would ap
peal to an audience of English Protestants.
The "Religio Laiciw was written in 1682 as a defense of Anglican the
ology against what Dryden considered the two extuemes in religion; the sects
and the Catholics.
But in defending the English Church, Dryden makes some
startling concessions to Catholicism.
Besides this, Dryden makes several other statements in favor of Roman
3
doctrines.
Against the obvious challenge that Rome claims th© mark that he is seek
ing, his argument is so flimsy that he seems himself to put but little faith
Treadway affirms that
He refuses to accept the doctrine, that salvation is im
possible for those "who the written rule had never known."
Instead he maintains his own opinion, which is not at all
un-Catholic.
Op. cit., p. 281.
2
Robert K. Root, 'Dryden's Conversion to the Roman Catholic Faith"
P.M.L.A., XXII (June, 1907), 303.
3
Root maintains that
Despite the fact that in the body of "Religio Laici," as in
the preface, he misreads the bearing of the Athnasion Creed,
scoffs as only Dryden can scoff at the claims of the Roman
communion..., he nevertheless makes a powerful argument in
favor of the Catholic Church. Op. cit., p. 302.
59
in it.
He chooses rather to ignore his doubts and wishes-
bo forget them:
I think (according to my little skill,
To my own Mother ^hurch submitting still)
That many have been sav'd,
and many
1
Iho never heard this question brought to play.
But Dryden had always abandoned false positions as soon as he found them
untenable, and in religion he was soon to do the same.
It would have been ir
reconcilable with every other act of his life had he remained long out of a
communion toward which his mind and heart so clearly led him. Therefore, in
1686, four years after the appearance of his "Religio Laici," Dryden was re
ceived into the Catholic Church.
For yeaxs., it seems, he had been seeking a
guide which should speak without fear of error, and he rejoices to have found
that guide at last in the see of Peters
But gracious God, how well dost though provide
For erring judgments an unerring guide!
... her alone for my director take,
Whom thou has promised never to forsake.
He
acknowledges his past religious errors with the same frankness
wherewith he had often owned his mistakes of literary taste; but now, in ad
dition to his usual candor, there is a touching and prayerful note of humil
ity j
My thoughtles
youth was wing'd with vain disires,
My manhood, long misled by wandering fires,
Followed false lights: and when their glimpse was gone.
My pride struck out new sparkles of her own.
Such was I,
such by nature still I am;
g
Be thine the glory and be min# the shame.
In these lines from "The Hind and the Panther", Dryden summarizes the
1
"Religio Laici," §>.
318.
2
Religio Laici," p. 401.
3
"The Hind and the Panther," Lines 112-118, p. 516.
60
history of his religious experiences from the time when, seeing the neces
sity of a visible Church and a body of definite dogma, he wrote a defense of
the established form of religion in his "Religio Laici."
We must consider that, during his long career as a dramatist and a writ
er of political satire, extending roughly from 1662 to 1682, Dryden was an
exceedingly busy man, a man of affairs.
And the busy man has proverbially
neither time nor inclination to puzzle himself too much over religious matters.
lot only was Dryden a busy man, but he was a creature of his time, a time
when thinkers burnt their incense before the shiine of John Hobbes,1 Hobbes1
theory of the absolute nature of state rights, his doctrine of extreme ma
terialism, his adaptations of many of the principles laid down by Descartes,
his embodiment of down right common sense—all tended to insure his popu
larity.
He had his disciples, "wandering fires," that left their blackened
spots on subsequent English thoughtf Nevertheless, Dryden formulated some
theories of his own.
We have some suggestions of this in the following
line from "The Hind and the Panther"
... "My pride struck out new spangles of her own."
Should we desire more evidence that Dryden had an analytic mind, we
have it in the manner in which he developed his theory of poetry and the
drama.
It is well that we should not forget Dryden's development as a critic
5—
,
_
Mark Van Doren brilliantly tells us5
All this does not mean that Dryden and others who went to
school to Hobbes did not write great, amazing poetry.
It
only explains why they failed to write poetry of a certain
kind. Wonder and brooding were simply not of their world
.... Dryden had to learn to be great in his own way. Op. cit..
p. 26-27.,-.
- .
-*
2
Ibid.,
p.
31.
61
of poetry and the drama, for that development had an indisputable effect
upon his religious status.
on reason.
Central in this development is Dryden's reliance
Van Doren expresses the thought
in this manner:
The distinguishing characteristic of Dryden's genius
seems to have been the power of reasoning.
Another excellent statement attesting to Dryden's analytical and ra
tional turn of mind and to the kind of religious faith our author had comes
from Christis
His sharp clear intellect and his strong critical faculty
made it easy for him to see faults and flaws,
him against all fanaticism.
and protect
His "Religio Laici" is the
mature expression that is more of the head than of the
heart.
It is the reason of a calm and clear-sighted man,
who has reasoned himself into accepting a quantum of the
ology and desires as little dogma as possible.
It is true,
Leo adds,
... that Dryden's general character constitutes a gradual
and increasingly forceful development in the direction of
Catholicism and that his conversion was very far from be
ing a sudden conversion.
The "Religio Laici1' is written from
the viewpoint of a man who has indeed reasoned himself into
accepting a quantum of theology, but it is so written be
cause a clear and consistent thinker could find in the Es
tablished Church but a modicum of theology and dogma to
accept.^
Thus, we may observe that Bryden's conversion to Catholicism was the
final link in a chain of religious and intellectual experiences.
The Puri
tanism in which he was brought up never profoundly affected him, and he
it off in his young manhood.
cast
Next he adopted the fashionable skepticism of
the timesj but his cast of mind was such that he could not content himself
1
Mark Van Doren,
op.
2
Op.
clt., p. 491.
cit.,
p.
18.
62
with a negative or indifferent attitude toward religion, and the outcome
was the matured adhesion to the Episcopal form of belief.
This, with his
earnestness and thoroughgoing power of analysis, he sifted and weighed; and
finding it wanting in certain of the marks of the Church of Christ, he pro
ceeded as a last resort, to examine the claims of the Catholic Church, with
the result that he could, consistently exclaim! Good life be now my task;
ray doubts are donej
For a final evaluation of our poet's religious views, it might be well
to compare him with another graat writer of the seventeenth century, John
Milton.
John Dryden, the Christian realist, and John Milton the rational
idealist, have, paradoxically, many things in common.
Each writer is representative of the age that produced him, and together
they form a suggestive commentary upon faith and reason, the two forces that
rule our humanity,
le have already given a detailed description of the age
in which Dryden lived—an age of scientific questioning, intellectual awaken
ings, and materialistic theories.
In giving the age of Dryden we have also
given, though not in detail, the age of Milton.
It is necessary, then, in
order to get a clear picture of Milton to go a little more in detail into
the temper of his era.
Born twenty years after the defeat of the Spanish Armanda, and five
years after the death of the Queen herself, he lived through the stirring
Puritan epoch and on into the dark days of the Restoration.
It is the
Puritan Age, however, that affected him most strongly—the Puritan age wibh
its profound religious convictions, religious and political strife, and a
fierce
struggle for truth.
The problems of sin, predestination and atone-
63
meat
1
'
■
were studied vdth a passion and zeal unheard of
Dunto.
fore,
This new force
2
siuce the time of
soon do-ninated Milton's life and chareeter,
there
accounting for much of his passionate religious
Milton's relstioa,
however, to either Puritan or Elizabethan Englaad
cannot be understood without an intimate acquaintance with his temperament
and ideals.
Thompson assures us that
No finer instance of conscientious, unswerving loyalty
to an ideal can be found anywhere than in Milton.^
A study of his poetry ravesis that, from beginning to end, Milton pur sued the same high ideals.
Almighty Godj
justice,
He was a devout Christian,
a firm believer in ea
and arch-idealist of English letters,a worshipper of purity,
liberty,
and truth.
Like Dryden,
bellious; yet these ideals remain the same*
he was often recalcitrant or re
He seldom went against his own
basic opinions and principles*
Ihen Milton finished his course at Cambridge, his father wished him
to enter the ministry.
But the intense lov© of mental liberty was too
T
Panooast throws further light on this assertion:
In all Biblical history, two events stand out as of the
highest importance, the fall of man and his redemption
by Christ.
These questions were subject of much oon-
troversy in Milton1 s day.
H. S. Paneoast, The Englaad of Milton (New York, 1896), p. 185.
2
'~"
" .
■""'"
Pancoast also states:
Besides Milton other writers of the period were power
fully moved by this religious intensity.
The devotioa&l
poets, John Donna, George Herbert, Robert Herriok, Eiohard
Cranshsw, Henry Vaughn, and Thomee Traherne, together with
3
John Bunyau, a prose writer, are striking examples. Ibid., p. 190.
-"""
"
Newbowlt, however* makes the distinction that, "Milton, though intensely
religious, does not full into the group of devotional poets." Sir Henry New-
bolt, "Introduction, " jjevotional Poets of the XVII Century, (London, Jud_7 )xxi.
4
"*"~
""'
~
Elbert W. S. Thompson, JSssjays on Milton (London, 1914), p. 37.
64
strong within him,
and he refused to take the "oath of servitude," as he
called it, which would mark his ordination.
as Dryden did,
sary.
Though profoundly religious,he,
changed his church affiliations, whenever he deemed it neces
He severed his relation with the Anglican Church to become a Puritan.
After joining the Puritans, he found that his esthetic, moral and religious
ideas clashed with those of the Puritans, and he often attacked or ran coun
ter to them in his likes and dislikes; for example, Milton composed Comus a
masque; yet the grand bedga of a Puritan was to condemn stage plays, and
wholly renounce these pomps of the devil.
He admired secular music, drama,
and dancing, which were also distasteful to the Puritans.
Unlike most Puri
tans, he believed that the heart was the place for the worship of God rather
than a special shrine or cathedral.
Puritan in gifts or
outside show.
Nor did he believe with the typical
He expresses this beautifully in his son
net "On His Blindness":
Doth God exact day-labor,
I fondly ask.
light denied?"
But Patience,
murmur soon, replies,
to
prevent that
God doth not need
Either man's work or his
own gifts.
Who best
Bear his mild yoke they serve him best.
This rebellious'temper is everywhere manifest in Milton.
Watt, Wood and And
erson speak truly when they say of him:
He was a rebel and non-conformist from the
beginning of his
life, and dissenter he remained until death,
his sails to winds adverse to his course,2
I
"
John Milton,
'
"On His Blindness," Poetical Works,
not trimming
■
ed. WilHam Addis
Wright (Cambridge, 1903), p. 84. All quotations or reference to Milton's poems
will be taken from this edition and will be listed by title only.
2
George B. Woods, Homer A. Watt, George K. Anderson (eds.), The Literature
of England (Chicago, 1936), I, 572.
65
The same consistency, moreover, was shown in his religious ideals.
He
recognized a divine call to service in the fine sonnet composed on his twen
ty-third birthday:
Yet be it less or
It shall be still
To that same lot,
Toward which Time
more, or soon or slow,
in strictest measure given
however mean or high,
leads me and the will
of Heaven.
And the proud boast is reaffirmed in these lines from "Paradise Lost":
Now safe I sing with mortal voice,
unchanged
To hoarse or mute, though fallen on evil days.^
Finally, at near the end of his life, he says in "Samson Agonistes":
Unless there be who thinks not God at all.
If any be they walk obscure
For such Doctrine never TAras there school.
But the heart of a Fool.3
From these lines and from many others in Milton's peems, we see that to
Milton, God is a God of justice, of mercy, of love of truth.
To Dryden also,
as has been shown, God is a just, merciful and loving father—one whom man
must worship, revere, and praise.
In other words, both Milton and Dryden are
in accord in their basic Christian concept.
Another similarity between these two great poets of the Puritan and Res
toration eras, is that both liked debate and a rational approach to their
themes.
Consequently, their works are of a hjghly controversial nature.
characteristics have been pointed out in Gryden's works.
in both Milton's prose and poetry.
The same is found
A good example of his controversial prose
1
2
"On His Being Arrived To the Age of Twenty-Three," p. 75.
"Paradise Lost," p. 320.
3
"Samson Agonistes," p. 481a
These
66
is "Areopagitica,11
the most famous plea in English for freedom of the press.
This tendency to employ the process of debate to induce belief and to
effect persuasion is also found in many of Milton's best known poems.
cidas" is as much of an attaok on iniquitous church practices and a
cation of virtue as it is a lament or elegy.
serious
"Ly-
justifi
"Comus," too, is essentially a
condemnation of vice or an argument for virtue and truth.
For example,
in "Comus" Milton writes:
I hate when Vice can bolt her arguments
And Virtue has no tongue to
check her pride.
The best example of Milton's inclination to argument is found in "Paradise
Lost,11 especially in Book Two.
It is hers the fallen angels debate as to
whether there should be another battle for the recovery of Heaven.
Satan
opens this debate as followst
"... to union, and firm faith, and firm accord,
More than can be in Heaven, we now return
To claim our just inheritance of old.
Surer to prosper than prosperity
Could have assured us;
and by what best way,
Whether to open war or convert guile,
We now debate.
Who fian advise may speak."
A careful reading of "Paradise Lost" may lead us into another point of
comparison, the intellectual pattern of Milton and Dryden. Milton's poetry
1
Areopagitica is not, of course, the only work of Milton that is argu
mentative.
His numerous anti-prelatical and political tracts as well as his
several divorce papers attest to this flact.
Lieder, Lovett, and Root make
this pertinent statements
His Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce and his Tetrachordon are
arguments justifying his desertion by his first wife.
He opposed
the doctrine of divine rights in his Tenure of Kings and Magistratesj and against the hostile criticism of scholars and publi
Op.
cit.,
cists on the Continent he wrote his First Defense of the People,
p.
367.
2
"Comus," p. 760.
3
"Paradise Lost," p. 141.
~~~
67
rests primarily in the fact that intellect and principle1 rule all that he
wrote.
Thompson affirms:
He had the knowledge that the pedant craves, but
the assimilative power of the true scholar, that
transmutes learning into culture, and the creative
energy that finds for old truths new forms and new
meanings•
Milton's intellect, it seems, developed constantly and harmoniously making
a steady growth but no radical change, and, as Thompson further states:
... he presents no simple character for the reader
to comprehend....
His style is pure and sublime be
cause his thoughts are sound and his ideals high.3
In the foregoing discussion, an attempt has been made to illuminate
some points that two distinguished writers of the seventeenth century held
in common.
We have noted that both were temperamentally alike in their
mannwr of reacting to life, that is, in both men, the scholarly, the intel-
leotual, and the rational approach was preeminent.
Both were rebels in
church affiliations, changing whenever the cause seemed to justify the act.
Both were Christian gentlemen, who believed in love, mercy, justice, truth,
and their God.
Both believed in argument, controversy, and balancing of
conflicts, in order to accomplish a desired end.
But the fact that they were alike in these and other eespeots challenge
also a contrast.
J
■
In short what are some basic differences between Milton
■
—
,
.
Evert*s statement might illuminate this points
.
His later poetry, following the Restoration, has a note of sad
ness; yet it proclaims the eternal principles of liberty, justice,
and truth. Clark M. Evert, "Milton and the Warfare of Peace"
South Atlantic Quarterly (April, 1946), p. 20.
3
Elbert W. Thompson, Essays on Milton (Oxford, 1914), p. 52.
Ibid.,
p. 56.
68
and Dryden—especially with respect to religious concept?
To answer this
question is to state the differences between the ages that produced them.
The Puritan age was moved by a stern and unchanging purpose that had its
basis not only in a deep, if sometimes narrow, religious faith, but also in
a profound sense of righteousness, duty and justice.
Milton was the poet of
steadfast will and purpose, who moved like a god amid fears and hope and
changing impulses of the world.
Dryden was the soul
of candor, writing with
no other master than literature, and with no other object than to advance h
his age and nation.
Milton is filled with religious zeal and imagination.
Dryden is the cold practical man of the world, who makes full use of his rea
son, while subordinating his imagination in order that faith may rise tri
umphant.
Thus we find the defense of faith supporting the whole logical
structure of both of Dryden's religious poems:
Dim as the
borrowed beams of Moon and Stars
To lonely, weary, wandering Travellers
.
Is Reason to the soul....
So reasonings glimmering Ray was lent....
To guide us upward to a better
^
Milton soared into the heavens and showed us the power and glory there
in.
Thompson states it in this way:
Heaven, "the deep tract of Hell," and that illimitable and
chaotic regies® which ibles between, make up the vast Miltonic
background, where legions of Angels strive with God, and where
in is enacted the mysterious drama not of men, but of the ra.ee
of men.2
Dryden1s attitude toward that unseen and mysterious region which lies beyond
the limits of our human experience was that of the philosophical skeptic;
1
—
"Religio Laici," p. 680.
2
Op.
Git.,
p.
138.
■
69
one who places us in the midst of our familiar world.
In his religious
thought, he used more his reason than his imagination.
In the final analysis, however, each writer had his place in the religi
ous thought of his time; each man showed that while God is a God of Justice,
he is no less a God of Mercy.
Dryden, for example, in the "Preface" to Re-
ligio Laici" expresses the opinion that unconverted heathens are not neces
sarily lost.
Milton also voices this thought, though he dwells more on the
salvation of those who have consciously sinned and have turned to God for
pardon.
Dryden's religious belief was certainly not based on Puritan creed.
Neither did Milton allow the limitations of the Puritan creed to |eeep, him from
ranging freely in the higher atmosphere of the best that the world had felt,
thought, said.
The Puritan creed was little more than behaviorism.
sisted in observing certain moral rules.
It con
A Puritan might not have any ac
quaintance with mercy or tolerances but as long as he obeyed the rules, he
felt as righteous as the Pharisee whose prayers consisted in bragging of his
own goodness.
But neither Dryden nor Milton showed outside signs of such righteous
behavior.
They believed that merit does not consist in shrines, cathedrals,
making sacrifices, and observing rules and rituals.
in his heart so
But, "As a man thinketh
is he."
What, then, in conclusion has our study of Dryden revealed concerning
his religious views?
It has revealed that the poet laureate's conversion was
not only sincere but consistent, and that what in him is termed as time-server,
turncoat,
or opportunist is simply his religious progression which was almost
70
inevitable for his type of mind.
In short, despite the undeniable fact
that he had three changes in church affiliations, his heart did not change.
There is then slight, if any, justification for thinking of him as a wily
opportunist of unfixed religious principles.
For John Dryden—poet, critic,
satirist, dramatist—was not only thoroughly acquainted, as a layman, with
church history and theological questions, but had definite end constant re
ligious convictions.
And he did not turn aside, when the "Divine Hand"
stretched out to him and led him on.
BIBLIQGt&PHY
I.
Works of Specific Reference
A, Editions
Dryden, John.
Poetical Works,
Martins,
Edited by W. D. Christie. London: St.
1902.
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Company,
The Macxnillan
1930.
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Walter Scott*
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Aaron, R.
I. Dryden. London: The University Press, 1902.
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Doren, Mark Van.
John Dryden A Study of His Poetry.
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Eliot, Thomas S.
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Dryden and the Critical Canons of the Eighteenth Century.
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Hollis; Christopher.
Saintsbury, George.
Dryden.
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The Life of Dryden.
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A. Miscellaneous Works of English Literature
Alden, R. M. The Rise of Formal Satire.
192"E:
Broadus, Edmund K.
:
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Sooial Backgrounds of English Literature.
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71
New York:
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72
Braybrook, H. L. (ed.) Diary and Correspondence of Samuel Pepys.
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British Poetry and Prose.
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73
Gardiner, Samuel.
History of the Commonwealth and Protectorate.
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~~
*"
""
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Hew Yorks
Grand Rapid% Michigan:
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Stephen, Sir Leslie. English Thought in the Eighteenth Century.
The Macmillan Company, 1902.
~——~~~1^
Strong, Augustus H.
The Great Poets and Their Theology.
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Belden, H. M. "The Authorship of MaeFlecknow,"
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~
Bredvold, Louis I. "Dryden, -Hobbes and the Hoayal Society,1' Modern Philolo
gy, XXV (1927-28), 417-438.
—^"i
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Brown, R. A. "Dryden's Epic Manner and Virgil," PMLA, XXX (March, 1940),
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———
Haneman, John Belle, "Dryden After Two Centuries,"
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"
Houston, Percy H. "The Inconsistencies of John Dryden "
VI (1914), 58-67.
Leo, Brother,
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*
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"Dryden's Importance as Spokesman of the Tories," Texas
University Studies in English (April, 1941), 11-17.
"
74
Lubbook, Alan,
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MacDQnald, W. L.
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Sister, Rose Marie,
6-17.
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The Ecolesi-
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Child, C. G.
"The Rise of the Heroic Play," PMLA, XIX (1904) 61-62.
Dubbs, S. E.
"Leisure at Horton,"
20.
South Atlantic Quarterly (April, 1947),
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"Oliver's Secretary, John Milton, In an Age of Revolt,"
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"Milton and Servetus," PMLA, XXXVII (February, 1936), 10.