19 August: Boreham on John Dryden

Life Begins At Fifty
In view of his birthday today, it is appropriate to ask as to the piece that John Dryden occupies in English literature.

Fielding introduced into one of his novels an old lady who was the proud mother of 12 children. Between the birth of the sixth and that of the seventh there was, however, a gap of several years. The interval had the effect of dividing the family into two sections, a circumstance that led the good woman to refer to the seventh child as "the biggest of the little-'uns." That is precisely Dryden's place in the republic of English letters.

He is the most considerable of our second-rate poets. Yet, in his later years, he revealed such splendour of conception, such beauty of style, and such grace of diction that it is only fair to him to say that the zone that intervenes between him and the men of the front rank is very narrow indeed. Short, slight, well-proportioned, and handsome in youth, characterised by sprightly movement, a nimble stride and wide-awake eyes, Dryden developed towards middle-age an uncomely rotundity which earned for him, among his intimates, the nickname of The Squab.

We catch fitful glimpses of him, a portly little gentleman of ruddy face and double chin, sitting with his rod on the primrosed banks of one of the upper reaches of the Thames, or participating violently in an animated conversation at one of the tables in Wills' famous coffee house. We surprise him basking in the sun on the balcony of his residence in Gerrard St., and, in his later and greater days, we watch him at a respected distance as he strolls with the King among the flower beds of St. James.

The Secret Behind A Memorable Transformation
The career of John Dryden divides itself into two distinct periods—the Age of Lead and the Age of Gold. If, as Macaulay says, Dryden had died at 50, he would have been known only to men of letters, and by then he would have been mentioned as a writer who squandered his powers on subjects with which he was incompetent to deal.

But, as Saintsbury points out, the work that he did in the years that followed the fiftieth is superb. By the time a man reaches his fiftieth birthday, he has, as a rule, made his name, or failed to do so; his die is cast. Fifty spells finality. But, in the case of Dryden, his fiftieth year proved to be his golden climacteric; it was then that, scorning the mediocrity of the decades behind him, he plumed his wings for their most glorious flights.

How are we to account for the remarkable transformation that overtook the spirit and style of Dryden as he entered upon life's eventide? It is not as difficult as it at first appears. Dryden was made of plastic material, he was essentially a child of his age. And, in his earlier days, the spirit of the age was not conducive to the production of literary work of superlative merit. His ripening manhood was enfolded in the excesses and frivolities that marked the regime of the Stuarts. English customs, English standards, and English ideals were at their lowest ebb. It was an age of artificiality and affectation. The atmosphere of the time was disgustingly servile; the aspirations of the time were sordid and selfish; the language of the time was incredibly coarse.

A New Man In A New Age
But while Dryden was still young enough to be affected by such transitions, the tide turned. The wind, veering suddenly, blew from quite another quarter.

The Bible, freely translated, became the guiding star of the English. Dryden was only 40 when "Paradise Lost" was published; he was 47 when Bunyan gave "Pilgrim's Progress" to the world. A note of stark sincerity had been struck; an era of crystal-clear simplicity had dawned.

Dryden saw that the old style—the involved and elaborate style of which Clarendon was the chief exponent—had received its death blow. He pondered carefully the new trend and the spiritual forces that lay behind it. He observed silence for a few years, and, when once more he applied his pen to paper, it was a new and greater Dryden that the world saluted.

In his "Short History of the English People" Green shows that, at that crucial moment, a galaxy of philosophers, scientists, and inventors appeared simultaneously on the public horizon, culminating in the sensational triumphs of Sir Isaac Newton. Dryden was at the heart and centre of these interlacing developments and would have shown himself to be singularly unimpressionable if he had been uninfluenced by them. The 20 years that followed were the richest and most fruitful that he ever knew. Dying in 1700, he was buried in Westminster Abbey, where an ornate and noble monument marks his honoured tomb.

F W Boreham

Image: John Dryden