Dryden and Holland

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Introduction

‘Heaven be my witness that I, at any rate, and of all men, don't want Johnnie Dryden dug up again’¹.

These lines, written by Ezra Pound, clearly suggest that there is not much pleasure to be expected for the modern reader who is going to occupy himself with Dryden, ‘that outstanding aridity’².

Glorious John³ seems to have sadly dwindled into Johnnie Dryden, at least for Ezra Pound. He tells us that even the first syllable of Dryden's name brought about an ‘association of ideas’ which prevented him from reading his poetry and that Mr. Eliot's endeavours to defend that poet⁴ had served only to strengthen his resolve ‘never, never again, to open either John Dryden, his works or any comment upon them’.

We might take the last passage as a hint and try to find out if these ‘endeavours’ will give some justification for spending time and labour on Dryden's works.

Mr. Eliot does not agree with those who think that the material which Dryden used is not fit for poetry. According to him, it was precisely one of Dryden's merits that he often turned ‘the prosaic into the poetic’, that he made trivial things magnificent. He praises Dryden's preciseness and his full round statements, but also indicates an almost complete lack of ‘suggestiveness’. This leads him to the question if verse can be poetry without this quality. His answer is as modest as it is guarded: ‘What is man to decide what poetry is’.

However this may be, Mr. Eliot is convinced that it will be dangerous to ignore the standards which Dryden set for English verse.

Apparently there is - and probably there will always be - much difference of opinion as to the artistic value of Dryden's work, even between critics so like-minded in other matters of literary art as Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot. Nevertheless few will disagree that there are some positive qualities in Dryden's writing that will for ever save him from oblivion. Apart from his skill in satire and the lively style of his

1 Literary Essays of Ezra Pound, edited by T.S. Eliot, London 1954, p. 70.

2 ibidem.

3 Sir Walter Scott referred several times to Dryden as ‘Glorious John’ in his novel The Pirate a.o. in the chapters 36 and 37.

4 Cf. T.S. Eliot, Selected Essays, London 1932, pp. 305-16.

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prose, he is esteemed for his capacity to mould his thoughts into easy and significant words; for his complete statements; in short, for his technical dexterity. His importance for literary criticism should not be underrated; it is all very well for modern readers to admire Chaucer, Shakespeare and Milton, but we should remember that Dryden was one of the first to point the way. Though nowadays nobody will assign to him ‘the third place’ in English literature¹, he is by no means a forgotten poet. Reprints of his poetry at regular intervals and occasional comment from critics and scholars in England and America indicate that he is still read. It may be too early to speak of ‘Dryden redivivus’, but it would be strange indeed, if an age that shows remarkable appreciation of Pope, would not in course of time bestow some share of the praise on his predecessor to whom he owed so much.

To enumerate Dryden's alleged or real shortcomings, both in his work and in his character, is not difficult either. It has long been a commonplace to assert that he does not excel in profundity of thought; that he was often more interested in the rhetorical than in the philosophical value of his words. It would seem that these notions need reconsideration after Bredvold's careful study². The latter proved convincingly that Dryden was deeply involved in seventeenth century philosophical problems and never hesitated to inform his readers about his ideas. It cannot be denied, however, that his poetry lacks certain qualities that are vaguely felt as poetic; ‘wonder and brooding reverie were not of his world; the divine illusion was not for him’³. Indeed, this rather narrow view of poetry has prevented many a reader from appreciating Dryden. Moreover, he was sometimes a hack-writer, driving himself in his anxiety to supply the market, and his abject adulation of superiors and patrons, though partly due to the custom of the time, can hardly find favour in the eyes of modern readers. It may also be regretted that the licentiousness of ‘good King Charles's golden days’ finds so much illustration in Dryden's comedies. And last but not least, he was often

1 As Sir Walter Scott did in his ‘Advertisement’ of the complete edition of Dryden's works: ‘...who may claim at least the third place in that honoured list, and who has given proofs of greater versatility of talent than either Shakespeare or Milton, though justly placed inferior to them in their peculiar provinces’. Scott-Saintsbury I, p. XI.

2 L.I. Bredvold, The Intellectual Milieu of John Dryden, Michigan 1934.

3 Cf. Mark van Doren, The Poetry of John Dryden, Cambridge 1931, chapter I.

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inconsistent, especially in his criticism, but also in his religion and - to a lesser degree - in politics.

It would require a separate chapter to discuss the passages where Dryden contradicts himself or rejects opinions and theories he had once vigorously defended. One or two well-known and striking examples must suffice here. In the preface to The Rival Ladies (1664) he prescribes rhymed verse as the fit vehicle for heroic plays. He did the same in his Essay of Dramatick Poesie and even more vigorously in the Defence of an Essay of Dramatique Poesie against an attack from Sir Rob. Howard (1668). Just ten years later he dropped it in All for Love (1678). Being a Puritan by descent, he became a champion of the Church of England, but changed his tenets again for those of the Roman Catholic Church under James II. The author of the Heroic Stanzas to the memory of Cromwell became in little more than a year the panegyrist of Charles II (Astraea Redux).

Yet he should not be too hastily dismissed as insincere. Many inconsistencies in Dryden, which seem to be due to mere weakness of character, may have been caused by his thoroughgoing scepticism. He fell in with the spirit of the time, which was highly sceptical. There is abundant proof that the tendency appealed to him. In his own words he was ‘naturally inclined to scepticism in philosophy’¹, a self-revelation more or less anticipated in A Defence of an Essay of Dramatique Poesie:

‘.... my whole discourse was sceptical...which is imitated by the modest inquisitions of the Royal Society’².

In his old age he gave a characteristic of the sceptic Lucian; it seems an excellent picture of Dryden himself, at least of his mental make-up before his conversion to Roman Catholicism. He says:

‘I think...that he (Lucian) doubted of everything; weighed all opinions, and adhered to none of them; only used them as they served his occasion for the present dialogue, and perhaps rejected them in the next’³.

Though scepticism sometimes leads to free-thinking and even revolutionary tendencies, it may also result in conservatism. Many a sceptic is inclined to conform to the laws and conventions he finds about him;

1 Preface to Religio Laici.

2 Ker II, p. 124.

3 Life of Lucian, Scott-Saintsbury XVIII, p. 69.

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as reason is insufficient to prove philosophical assertions, it is not worth while to oppose generally accepted principles and change them for others equally contestible. Such was the case with Dryden, the conservative sceptic; if he changed his opinions, he changed with the nation, until his conversion to Roman Catholicism made further trimming impossible.

No wonder that sceptical doctrines, as taught by Pyrrho and Sextus Empiricus in antiquity, often find an echo in Dryden's works:

‘Stiffness of opinion is the effect of pride ...
True philosophy is certainly of a more pliant nature ...’¹.

It should be added that Dryden did not approve of the more extreme form of philosophical scepticism. Speaking about the Pyrrhonians, he calls them ‘the grosser sort of Sceptics, who bring all certainty in question, and startle even at the notions of common sense ....’².

It is possible that Dryden may have read Sextus Empiricus; at least he refers to him³. But there were also many contemporary sources from which he may have derived his notions about scepticism; in the seventeenth century it was a widespread tendency, rather than a philosophical system. An account of Dryden's indebtedness to such writers as Montaigne and Sir Thomas Browne⁴ for his sceptical philosophy falls outside the scope of this study. This much is certain, that scepticism suited his temperament and will account for much that is otherwise baffling and mysterious in his character and in his zigzag course through life.

Dryden's religion is not to be separated from his philosophical ideas. He also doubted the competence of reason in fundamental religious questions, which can easily be proved from the opening lines of Religio Laici:

‘Dim as the borrowed beams of moon and stars

To lonely, weary, wandering travellers

Is reason to the soul ....’.

The scepticism underlying these lines may at least partly explain Dryden's conversion to Roman Catholicism. A soul left to doubts and

1 Dedication of Don Sebastian, Scott-Saintsbury VII.

2 Life of Plutarch, Scott-Saintsbury XVII, p. 31.

3 ibidem, p. 42.

4 A reference to Montaigne's depreciation of human reason is to be found in the dedication of Aureng Zebe. For influence of Browne compare the two suggestive titles Religio Medici and Religio Laici, and Dryden's note to line 101 of the second satire of Persius, which contains a quotation from Religio Medici.

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uncertainties, distrusting reason to decide what is truth in a flood of controversial books and pamphlets, is apt to look for certainty and security in an ‘infallible’ church. Moreover Roman Catholic propaganda in England deliberately aimed at weakening man's trust in reason, to lead him in the end to the one seat of authority, the Papal Throne¹. This current in Roman Catholic apologetics was a kind of fideism, which laid stress on personal religious experience at the expense of the value of reason and of the all-sufficiency of Scripture. It is certainly not the recognized theology of the Roman Catholic Church, but it was a very effective means of persuading the like of Dryden in search of security and authority.

The Church of England had more rational tendencies², as well she might, being attacked on one side by those non-conformists who relied on the ‘private spirit’, and on the other by the fideistic arguments of English Roman Catholics. Though Dryden may have preferred the Church of England for political reasons, his sceptical temperament inclined him towards fideism. Even Religio Laici, which was obviously written in defence of the Church by law established, is already tainted with fideistic arguments, as is apparent from the opening lines (distrust of reason) and the passage on Father Simon's Critical History of the Old Testament (lines 234-251). It implies a sceptical attitude towards Scripture and a subsequent search for an ultimate authority to settle religious questions. Though Dryden's criticism of the Roman Catholic Church is still very severe in this poem, the Anglican Church does not seem to satisfy him either:

‘Where can we hope for an unerring guide?’ (line 277)
‘An omniscient church we wish indeed.
'T were worth both Testaments ....’ (lines 282, 283)

Four years later he had found his omniscient, infallible Church. That he chose the time for his conversion when it was likely to bring him benefits from James II, does not seem very courageous. But nobody has

1 Cf. for Roman Catholic propaganda of Dryden's time, L.I. Bredvold, The Intellectual Milieu of John Dryden.

2 Cf. Sprat's defence of the Church of England, ‘The grounds on which it (the doctrine of the Ch. of E.) proceeds...are no other but... Scripture expounded by Reason. From whence may be concluded, that we cannot make war against Reason, without undermining our own strength, seeing it is the constant weapon we ought to employ’. History of the Royal Society, p. 370.

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ever asserted that the writer of so many heroic plays was himself a hero. Yet in the light of his mental development, his subsequent behaviour as a Roman Catholic and his private letters to his sons and other relations¹, there is not much reason to doubt his sincerity.

If distrust of reason was one tendency that influenced Dryden's outlook on life, distrust of the masses was certainly another. He shared this feeling of insecurity and fear with many contemporaries, who had lived through the turbulent times of the Civil War. Thomas Hobbes, the philosopher, was one of these, and Dryden fell in with some of his doctrines, as John Aubrey indicates in Brief Lives:

‘Mr. John Dreyden, Poet Laureat, is his (Hobbes's) great admirer, and oftentimes makes use of his doctrines in his plays - from Mr. Dreyden himselfe’.

To a certain extent Hobbes's ideas about government appealed to Dryden. In shaping these ideas, Hobbes was not so much actuated by a desire to lay the philosophical foundations of an ideal state, as concerned about the question: What is the worst that can befall a nation?

The unhesitating answer of both Hobbes and Dryden to this question would have been: Civil war. For Hobbes obedience to an absolute ruler was the only way to prevent it.

‘And though of so unlimited a Power, men may fancy many evill consequences, yet the consequences of the want of it, which is perpetuall warre of every man against his neighbour, are much worse’².

According to Hobbes the State was based on a social contract,

‘.... a covenant...in such a manner, as if every man should say to every man: I authorize and give up my right of governing myself to this man ...’³.

This covenant between the sovereign and his subjects was irrevocable⁴, unless the ruler should prove an inefficient autocrat and fail to preserve peace. Then the time would be ripe for an even more autocratic leader to emerge. From Hobbes's point of view Dryden was justified in extolling Cromwell, who had been an effective ruler, and to hail Charles II, who

1 Especially in the letter to Mrs. Steward, Nov. 7 th 1699.

2 Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, edited by A.R. Waller, Cambridge 1904, p. 146.

3 ibidem, p. 118.

4 Cf. Dryden's echo in Absalom and Achitophel, lines 791-94.

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might be expected to become one. Hobbes's doctrine of sovereignty can be used to justify any de facto absolute government. The obligation of the people to obey their sovereign lasted ‘as long as, and no longer, than the power lasteth, by which he is able to protect them’ (his subjects)¹.

Up to Dryden's conversion to Roman Catholicism, Hobbes's views concerning religion also suited him very well. Hobbes feared any religion which gave the individual an authority which was not derived from the sovereign. The Puritan was as much a danger as the Roman Catholic who appealed to the Pope. This was also Dryden's view:

‘.... our schismatics....make their princes only their trustees; so that, whether they or the Pope were uppermost in England, the royal authority were equally depressed: the prison of our kings would be the same, the gaolers only would be altered’².

It is certain from his own works and the testimony of contemporaries that Dryden had occupied himself seriously with Hobbes's philosophy, though the influence should not be over-emphasized. He did not share Hobbes's more extreme views of an absolute monarchy, which is clear from his dedication to All for Love³. His grandfather, who suffered imprisonment for refusing to pay illegal taxes to Charles I, is proudly referred to in one of his poems⁴. In his later life Dryden sometimes criticizes the prophet of Malmesbury even to the point of doubting his sincerity. Speaking about Lucrece in his preface to Sylvae he says:

‘I believe, he (Lucretius) differs from our Hobbes, who could not but be convinced...of some eternal truths, which he opposed’.

Nor was Hobbes the first to awaken Dryden's instincts for security and loyalty. At Westminster School, where the boys ‘to Learning and to Loyalty were bred’⁵, under the tutelage of the staunch royalist Dr. Busby, he may have learnt to give up such puritanical tendencies as he had inherited. There is at least one indication to this effect in his first poem, which was written when he was a pupil of Westminster School. It shows that he had adopted an attitude to the Civil War very different from the Puritans:

1 Leviathan, p. 156.

2 The Life of Plutarch, Scott-Saintsbury XVII, dedication p. 11.

3 ‘Neither the arbitrary power of One, in a monarchy, nor of Many, in a commonwealth, could make us greater than we are’.

4 To my Honour'd Kinsman, John Driden, lines 188-194.

5 Absalom and Achitophel, line 871.

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‘The Nations sin hath drawn that Veil which shrouds

 

Our Day-spring in so sad benighting Clouds’¹.

The atmosphere in which Dryden spent his youth at Westminster School under the famous head-master Busby, may be felt from the latter's short biography². His school was untaintedly loyal and his pupils were still called ‘King's scholars’. Dryden was a pupil in 1649 and no doubt present, when the King was publicly prayed for on ‘that black and eternally infamous day’ when he was beheaded. Dr. Busby's position was difficult and his school was suspect. Yet he managed to remain head-master, though at times there must have been a certain prevarication in his conduct. Busby's name occurs in the ‘Order of Procession to the Funeral of Oliver Cromwell’. But at the coronation of Charles II he carried the ampulla of the new regalia. Knowing this of the master Busby, whose loyalty was above suspicion, we are perhaps less surprised that later on the pupil Dryden could write a panegyric on Cromwell and a few months afterwards hail the new King in Astraea Redux.

Indeed, Dryden's philosophy of life and experiences in his youth may explain many of his vagaries. He was a sceptic, often conforming to the customs about him up to the point of time-serving³, occasionally eager to change his front as soon as he felt a change in the political atmosphere. In one respect, however, he was never inconsistent, he disliked Holland all his life. This attitude, which was typical of the majority of the English people in the seventeenth century⁴, had at least an undertone of envy⁵, and this was scarcely surprising. How must a nation of the power of Great-Britain have felt, being surpassed in commerce and in other fields of activity by a country ‘no bigger in all than a shire in Engeland’?⁶ Dryden's dislike of the Dutch originated

1 Upon the Death of Lord Hastings 1649.

2 G.F. Russell Barker, Memoir of Richard Busby, London 1895.

3 Thus in the case of the licentious comedies. He frankly admitted that his ‘genius’ was not fit for comedy, but as a poet he had to conform to the taste of the Restoration audience.

4 At least up to the Treaty of Breda. Cf. Charles Wilson, Profit and Power, London 1957, in his conclusion.

5 Of course many Englishmen were aware that jealousy was the real cause of Anglo-Dutch antagonism. John Evelyn wrote that war was waged ‘for no provocation but that the Hollanders exceeded us in commerce and industrie, and all things but envy’. Diary June 2nd 1672.

6 Beamont's words in Amboyna, act II, scene 1.

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in his youth. In the first Anglo-Dutch war he was a student at Cambridge and the events of the day did not pass unnoticed there. He persisted in this sentiment, even in his old age, when a more lenient attitude towards Dutch William's government might have served him well.

The fact that Dryden, in spite of occasional coarseness, was a gentleman by birth, fond of polite conversation and intercourse with the great, may to some extent account for his aversion to the Dutch. In his eyes all Hollanders were boorish, rude in manners and clumsy in conversation. Even the learned Isaäc Vossius, one of the very few Dutchmen with whom Dryden may have been personally acquainted, and whom he respected¹, did not give him occasion to change his judgement². This almost innate aversion to everything Dutch was reinforced by other circumstances. For one thing, it accorded with the views of the King, whom he had to serve as Poet Laureate. Though a great part of Charles's exile was spent in the Low Countries, he could hardly sympathize with the form of government of the United Provinces. The Dutch Republic was to a certain extent a danger to his throne, for he knew that many people in his kingdom still believed that ‘there needed no more to grow rich, than to change, as they (the Dutch) had done, the forme of their government’³.

Equally distasteful to Dryden was the predominant religion in Holland. He seems to have studied Calvinistic doctrine, even as it was taught in the Netherlands⁴, but obviously it did not make him change his opinions. We may be sure he thought no better of Dutch Calvinists than of French Huguenots, that ‘pestilent race of people, that could not, by their principles, be good subjects’⁵, or ‘Geneva Protestants, that propagated religion by rebellion’⁶.

1 Preface to Albion and Albanius, Ker I, p. 280.

2 Des Maizeaux in Vie de Mr. Saint Evremond, Amsterdam 1739, says: ‘In (Vossius) connoissoit à fond le génie et les coûtumes des Anciens, il ignoroit les manieres de son siecle. Son impolitesse se répandoit jusques sur ses expressions’.

3 Leviathan, p. 236.

4 In 1680, when Dryden began to occupy himself seriously with religious questions, he bought De Synopsis Purioris Theologiae, a manual of Dutch reformed clergymen in the seventeenth century. Cf. T.A. Birrell, John Dryden's Purchases at Two Book Auctions, 1680, 1682, English Studies, Amsterdam 1961.

5 Postscript of the History of the League, Scott-Saintsbury XVII. In the preface to The Medall Dryden says: ‘I can prove from the doctrine of Calvin... that they set the people above the magistrate’.

6 Vindication of the Duke of Guise, Scott-Saintsbury VII.

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As Dryden took a keen interest in politics, his feelings of aversion to the Dutch could not fail to find expression in his work. Moreover he was inclined to please the public by voicing their animosity towards a rival nation and to serve King and government by rousing these hostile feelings when war was on. Foreign politics constitute only a small part of Dryden's writings; yet there is enough of interest for a Dutch reader. If Dryden's poetry should fail to stir the deeper emotions in him, he will partly find compensation in the domain of history; Dryden's works sometimes throw interesting light on Anglo-Dutch relations.

The object of this thesis will be to investigate what Dryden, as a spokesman of the Restoration government, had to say of the Dutch, and the response that his works evoked in Holland. Recent publications have shown that Dryden's influence was not inconsiderable in France and Germany, and there seems to be every reason to try and find out if there is any influence to be discovered in the Netherlands, which of all continental countries have been best informed about seventeenth and eighteenth century England¹. Such studies in comparative literature as Milton in Holland (Scherpbier) and English Influences in Dutch Literature and Justus van Effen as Intermediary (Pienaar) do not cover the Restoration period; this thesis should try to fill that gap, at least partially.

The subject - Dryden and Anglo-Dutch relations - requires first and foremost an examination of what Dryden wrote about Holland, combined with so much of the historical background as may elucidate his text. It is obvious that a good understanding of Dryden's motives and ideas sometimes involved the inclusion of material that bears little or no relation to Dutch history in the strict sense of the word.

An attempt can then be made to ascertain whether traces of Dryden's works are to be found in the literary production of the Netherlands.

Finally there is the question of Dryden's indebtedness to the United Provinces. Was he in any way influenced by our thriving culture, which had culminated in a ‘Golden Age’, when towards 1660 Dryden commenced his literary activities?

1 F. Baldensperger in Voltaire Anglophile avant l'Angleterre (Revue de Littérature Comparée 1929, p. 28) speaks about... ces choses d'Angleterre dont les Pays-Bas étaient, de tous les pays continentaux, les plus familièrement informés.