Various - The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 02, No. 10, August, 1858

Of the multitudinous rejoinders and counterblasts provoked by this thunder, Dryden, it is supposed, ascribed the authorship of one of the keenest to Shadwell. We are to conceive some new and immediate provocation as added to the old grudge, to call for a second attack so soon; for it was only a month later that the "MacFlecknoe" appeared; not in 1689, as Dr. Johnson states, who, mistaking the date, also errs in assuming the cause of Dryden's wrath to have been the transfer of the laurel from his own to the brows of Shadwell. "MacFlecknoe" is by common consent the most perfect and perfectly acrid satire in English literature. The topics selected, the foibles attacked, the ingenious and remorseless ridicule with which they are overwhelmed, the comprehensive vindictiveness which converted every personal characteristic into an instrument for the more refined torment of the unhappy victim, conjoin to constitute a masterpiece of this lower form of poetical composition;–poetry it is not. While Flecknoe's pretensions as a dramatist were fairly a subject of derision, Shadwell was eminently popular. He was a pretender to learning, and, entertaining with Dryden strong convictions of the reality of a literary metempsychosis, believed himself the heir of Jonson's genius and erudition. The title of the satire was, therefore, of itself a biting sarcasm. His claims to sonship were transferred from Jonson, then held the first of dramatic writers, to Flecknoe, the last and meanest; and to aggravate the insult, the "Mac" was inserted as an irritating allusion to the alleged Irish origin of both,–an allusion, however harmless and senseless now, vastly significant at that era of Irish degradation. Of the immediate effect of this scarification upon Shadwell we have no information; how it ultimately affected his fortunes we shall see presently.

During the closing years of Charles, and through the reign of James, Dryden added to the duties of Court Poet those of political pamphleteer and theological controversialist. The strength of his attachment to the office, his sense of the honor it conferred, and his appreciation of the salary we may infer from the potent influence such considerations exercised upon his conversion to Romanism. In the admirable portrait, too, by Lely, he chose to be represented with the laurel in his hand. After his dethronement, he sought every occasion to deplore the loss of the bays, and of the stipend, which in the increasing infirmity and poverty of his latter days had become important. The fall of James necessarily involved the fall of his Laureate and Historiographer. Lord Dorset, the generous but sadly undiscriminating patron of letters, having become Lord Chamberlain, it was his duty to remove the reluctant Dryden from the two places,–a duty not to be postponed, and scarcely to be mitigated, so violent was the public outcry against the renegade bard. The entire Protestant feeling of the nation, then at white heat, was especially ardent against the author of the "Hind and Panther," who, it was said, had treated the Church of England as the persecutors had treated the primitive martyr, dressed her in the skin of a wild beast, and exposed her to the torments of her adversaries. It was not enough to eject him from office,–his inability to subscribe the test oaths would have done so much,–but he was to be replaced by that one of his political and literary antagonists whom he most sincerely disliked, and who still writhed under his lash. Dorset appears to have executed the disagreeable task with real kindness. He is said to have settled upon the poet, out of his own fortune, an annuity equal to the lost pension,–a statement which Dr. Johnson and Macaulay have repeated upon the authority of Prior. What Prior said on the subject may be found in the Dedication of Tonson's noble edition of his works to the second Earl of Dorset:–"When, as Lord Chamberlain, he was obliged to take the king's pension from Mr. Dryden, (who had long before put himself out of a possibility of receiving any favor from the court,) my Lord allowed him an equivalent out of his own estate. However displeased with the conduct of his old acquaintance, he relieved his necessities; and while he gave him his assistance in private, in public he extenuated and pitied his error." But there is some reason for thinking this equivalent was only the equivalent of one year's salary, and this assistance casual, not stated; else we are at a loss to understand the continual complaints of utter penury which the poet uttered ever after. Some of these complaints were addressed to his benefactor himself, as in the Dedication to Juvenal and Persius, 1692:–"Age has overtaken me, and want , a more insufferable evil, through the change of the times, has wholly disenabled me . Though I must ever acknowledge, to the honor of your Lordship, and the eternal memory of your charity, that, since this revolution, wherein I have patiently suffered the ruin of my small fortune, and the loss of that poor subsistence I had from two kings, whom I served more faithfully than profitably to myself,–then your Lordship was pleased, out of no other motive than your own nobleness, without any desert of mine, or the least solicitation from me, to make me a most bountiful present , which, in that time when I was most in want of it, came most seasonably and unexpectedly to my relief." This passage was the sole authority, we suspect, Prior had for a story which was nevertheless sufficiently true to figure in an adulatory dedication; and, indeed, Prior may have used the word "equivalent" loosely, and had Dorset's gift been more than a year's income, Dryden would hardly have called it a "present,"–a phrase scarcely applicable to the grant of a pension. 22 22 Macaulay quotes Blackmore's Prince Arthur , to illustrate Dryden's dependence upon Dorset:– "The poets' nation did obsequious wait For the kind dole divided at his gate. Laurus among the meagre crowd appeared, An old, revolted, unbelieving bard, Who thronged, and shoved, and pressed, and would be heard. "Sakil's high roof, the Muse's palace, rung With endless cries, and endless songs he sung. To bless good Sakil Laurus would be first; But Sakil's prince and Sakil's God he curst. Sakil without distinction threw his bread, Despised the flatterer, but the poet fed." Laurus , of course, stands for Dryden, and Sakil for Dorset.

Dismissed from office and restored to labors more congenial than the dull polemics which had recently engaged his mind, Dryden found himself obliged to work vigorously or starve. He fell into the hands of the booksellers. The poems, it deserves remark, upon which his fame with posterity must finally rest, were all produced within the period bounded by his deposition and his death. The translations from Juvenal, the versions of Persius and of Virgil, the Fables, and the "Ode upon St. Cecilia's Day," were the works of this period. He lived to see his office filled successively by a rival he despised and a friend who had deserted him, and in its apparently hopeless degradation perhaps found consolation for its loss.