Dryden and Holland

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Chapter III
The influence of Dutch philologists on Dryden

Whereas Dryden was scarcely read in Holland and certainly had very little influence there, the reciprocal impact of Dutch learning in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries on Dryden was by no means negligible. In his works there are a good many traces of the influence of Dutch scholars, Erasmus, Joannes Secundus, Daniël Heinsius, Nicolaas Heinsius, Gerard Vossius, Isaäc Vossius, Franciscus Dousa, Cnippingius, Graevius, Clericus, and probably Franciscus Junius.

It is conspicuous that all these people were best known under latinized surnames. Nearly all of them were members of that cultural unit, often referred to as the 'Republic of Letters', a cosmopolitan community of scholars, characterized by a profound knowledge of the classics, a common language, Latin, and often a certain aloofness from contemporary politics and quarrels between the nations. Many of these scholars moved easily from one university in Europe to another; they found the same intellectual climate wherever they chose to take up their abode. There are numerous examples that they were more or less exempted from the ordinary laws of nations. An interesting case falling within the scope of this study is that of Isaäc Vossius, mentioned by Dryden in his Preface to Albion and Albanius. In 1673, when Vossius' native country was involved in a life-and-death struggle against England and France, he dedicated a new book to lord Arlington¹, one of the chief promoters of that war. And although on May 12th 1673 he became a Canon of Windsor, there is no evidence that he was ever considered as a traitor to his country.

As the language of these scholars was chiefly Latin or French and their way of life sometimes more cosmopolitan than Dutch, the question arises whether we may consider them as representatives of Dutch cultural life. There are indeed good reasons for doing so. Holland had become one of the chief centres of classical learning in Europe; the newly founded university of Leyden attracted the best scholars from other countries

1 Evelyn's Diary, 16 March 1673, ‘I dined at my Lord Arlington's. Here was also the learned Isaäc Vossius’.

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and this was made possible by the liberality of the industrious burghers Secondly, Dryden treats these philologists as a separate group, though it must be admitted that he does not do so in the most flattering terms. For him they are the Dutch commentators, pedantic¹, vain Dutch prefacers², dull and unpalatable. Yet he tacitly admits to have benefited from their reliable information,

‘... and not to follow the Dutch commentators always, may be forgiven to a man who thinks them, in the general, heavy grosswitted fellows, fit only to gloss on their own dull poets. But I leave a further satire on their wit, till I have a better opportunity to show how much I love and honour them’³.

The final clause of this paragraph can hardly be else than irony pure and simple, unless it should be considered as one of those unexpected turns in Dryden's prose, as an afterthought, when he remembered with gratitude what he owed to Dutch philologists. A satire on their wit need not be inconsistent with praise for other qualities⁴. But we had better not press this point too much, for there is little evidence to presume genuine admiration in Dryden for Dutch scholars. But their strict adherence to the original text he could not deny; speaking of his own ‘additions and omissions’ in his translations of the classics, he had to confess,

‘I have ... sometimes made such expositions of my authors, as no Dutch commentator will forgive me. Perhaps, in such particular passages, I have thought that I discovered some beauty yet undiscovered by those pedants’⁵.

It is obvious from these quotations that in spite of his invective Dryden had studied some Dutch commentators diligently; others he mentions only cursorily. At any rate, he regarded as of Dutch origin commentaries on the classics and learned articles in periodicals, written by people born in Holland or those for any reason resident there, and who, by their activities in the field of literature, whether in Latin or French, enriched Dutch culture.

1 Preface to Sylvae. Ker I, p. 252.

2 The Life of Plutarch. Scott-Saintsbury XVII p. 76.

3 Dedication of Examen Poeticum. Ker II, p. 10 (my italics).

4 Cf. Absalom and Achitophel, where Dryden mixed bitter satire with praise, when he characterized the Earl of Shaftesbury (lines 186-197).

5 Preface to Sylvae, Ker I, p. 252.

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a. Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536).

Though Erasmus was a supreme example of what may be called the cosmopolitan classical scholar, the Low Countries have a right to claim him as a representative of their culture in the sixteenth century. He spent the first thirty years of his life in Dutch monasteries, long enough to be imbued with ideas current in the Netherlands. Nor did he forget the country of his birth in his old age. A short time before his death he declared that his efforts in the field of classical philology had been for the benefit of the people of Holland, Brabant and Flanders¹.

It goes almost without saying that Dryden was acquainted with Erasmus' works, the latter being part and parcel of the English Renaissance. His Colloquies were widely used as a textbook at English Grammar Schools, so that well educated gentlemen might be expected to have at least some acquaintance with the great scholar. They also occur in the earliest syllabus of Westminster School, though it is doubtful if the boys still read them when Dryden was a pupil there. At any rate, they are not to be found among Dr. Busby's books, still kept at the school. But for the poet Dryden, an artist in the neo-classic period, it must have been a matter of course to study Erasmus more closely.

Speaking about ‘Varronian satires’, Dryden says:

‘Amongst the moderns, we may reckon the Encomium Moriae of Erasmus’².

Afterwards he added that his own Absalom and Achitophel and Mac Flecknoe were of the same kind. What were the characteristics that Dryden admired in the tiny fragments of Varro's satires and Erasmus' Praise of Folly? A contemporary author quotes Varro saying:

‘Notwithstanding that those pieces of mine, wherein I have imitated Menippus, though I have not translated him, are sprinkled with a kind of mirth and gaiety, yet many things are there inserted, which are drawn from the very entrails of philosophy, and many things severely argued; which I have mingled with pleasantries on purpose, that they may more easily go down with the common sort of unlearned readers’³.

1 ‘Neque enim illa scripsi Italis, sed Hollandis, Brabantis, ac Flandris’. Cf. J.E. Sandys, A History of Classical Scholarship, Cambridge 1908, under Erasmus.

2 A Discourse concerning the Original and Progress of Satire, Ker II, p. 67.

3 ibidem.

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Bearing this in mind, one can hardly find fault with Dryden when he calls the Encomium Moriae an imitation of Varro's satires. Whether he has a right to class his own Absalom and Achitophel and Mac Flecknoe among the imitations of Varro is a little doubtful. There is, it is true, no lack of ‘witty pleasantry’ in Dryden's satires, but they seem to be rather personal attacks than serious attempts to teach philosophy to his countrymen.

It is on an identical subject that Dryden refers to Erasmus again. He writes in his Life of Lucian:

‘...he who has best imitated him (Lucian) in Latin, is Erasmus ... The way which Lucian chose of delivering these profitable and pleasing truths, was that of dialogue...; happily followed, as I have said above, by Erasmus...’¹.

Apart from his art, there was an additional reason why Dryden should be interested in Erasmus. He boasted of his ancestors' close friendship with the great scholar. Thus he told Aubrey² with evident pride that Erasmus stood god-father to Dryden's great-grandfather, and the Christian name Erasmus had been kept in the family ever since.

Indeed, Dryden's grandfather, his father, his brother and his third son, all bore the name of Erasmus, though Dryden's story about his being god-father to one of his ancestors is considered by some to be only family tradition, not founded on truth³. Yet in claiming direct connection with the great classicist, Dryden shows his admiration for him, and this cannot have failed to lead to a more than ordinary interest in his work.

1 Scott-Saintsbury XVIII, p. 76.

2 Oliver Lawson Dick, Aubrey's Brief Lives, London 1958, p. 103.

3 Douglas Hamer in Notes and Queries CLXXX (1941), p. 209. Hamer proves from Dryden's pedigree that his great-grandfather's Christian name was not Erasmus but John. His grandfather was the first to be called Erasmus, probably after his mother's eldest brother Erasmus Cope.

b. Joannes Secundus (1511-1536).

The influence of Joannes Secundus' Basia in Dryden's epithalamium has been treated under Amboyna.

c. Franciscus Dousa (1577-1606).

Franciscus was the fourth son of the gallant defender of Leyden, Jan

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van der Does. The latter distinguished himself when the Spaniards besieged the town and was a Latin scholar in his own right. Franciscus died prematurely, but had already proved his learning by editing the fragments of Lucilius¹. Dryden refers to him in A Discourse concerning the Original and Progress of Satire:

‘This passage of Diomedes has also drawn Dousa, the son, into the same error of Casaubon, which I say, not to expose the little failings of those judicious men ...’².

The denounced passage is in Dousa's notes on Lucilius (pp. 98, 99), where he tells us that Lucilius was the first to write satires in the strict sense of the word; they have the title in common with those of his predecessor Ennius, but the matter is quite different. In Ennius not only various metres but also different subjects occur in one and the same satire and - still according to Dousa - there was nothing of malice or acrimony in them.

This is the ‘error’ to which Dryden refers. He argues that the difference between these Latin poets is not in the subject matter, but in their art. Lucilius was the more accomplished and polished of the two.

Dousa admits that Lucilius also used various metres, but not different kinds in the same satire. This statement is endorsed in Dryden's essay. The Latin quotations from Horace and Quintilian about Lucilius are also to be found in Dousa³, and so is the fragment of the grammarian Diomedes. It is obvious that Dryden borrowed more from Dousa than our short quotation from the Discourse would suggest. Franciscus' notes provided him with much of the material that he needed for the pages which he devoted to Lucilius⁴, though it is also clear that he did not follow Dousa uncritically.

Dryden's opinion of Franciscus, that he is a judicious man, is the more remarkable because of his normal reluctance to lavish panegyric on Dutchmen. In all his works only Erasmus, Isaäc Vossius⁵ and Michiel

1 C. Lucilii, Satyrarum quae supersunt Reliquiae, Leyden 1576.

2 Ker II, p. 64.

3 In ‘Testimonia & auctoritates veterum scriptorum’, which precede the texts of the Fragments. Latin quotations in Dryden's essays are not always testimony of his profound knowledge of the classics, since he sometimes borrowed them from commentators.

4 Ker II, pp. 62-64.

5 ‘The learned Vossius’ in the preface to Albion and Albanius.

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de Ruyter¹ share with Dousa the honour of Dryden's moderate praise.

1 ‘The famed commander’ in stanza 54 of Annus Mirabilis.

d. Gerardus Johannes Vossius (1577-1649).

Gerard Vossius is justly famous for the zeal with which he amassed and systematically arranged comment on the classics and the scope of his erudition, rather than his original and brilliant ideas, still excites admiration. Some of his works may be considered as predecessors of our encyclopedias, reliable guides in the field of classical scholarship. Dryden seems to have consulted him occasionally. In his Life of Plutarch he says:

‘Joh. Gerrard Vossius² has assigned his (Plutarch's) birth in the latter end of that Emperor (Claudius)...but the most accurate Rualdus ....has manifestly proved him to be born in the middle time of Claudius, or somewhat lower ....’³.

In his De Historicis Graecis Vossius states that Plutarch was born in the reign of Claudius and 17 or 18 years old when Vespasian became emperor (A.D. 69)⁴. If this were true, the date of his birth would have been about 52, towards the end of Claudius' reign (41-54 A.D.). Modern scholars, however, assume 46 as the date of his birth, corroborating Rualdus' opinion and rejecting Vossius'. A.D. 46 was ‘the middle-time of Claudius or somewhat lower’.

But our quotation from Dryden concerning Vossius - though true in itself - might put us on the wrong track, in so far as the emphasis on ‘the most accurate Rualdus’ might suggest that on the whole Vossius' work was less reliable. The latter, however, abhorred inaccuracy and slovenliness, while Rualdus, a Frenchman who wrote a life of Plutarch, which was prefixed to the Paris edition of Plutarch's works (1624), is, by comparison, an almost unknown scholar.

When Dryden, with Gerard Vossius in mind, in the same Life of

2 Dryden was inaccurate as to Vossius' Christian names.

3 Scott-Saintsbury XVII, p. 21. To find chapter and verse of Vossius' abovementioned statement is not difficult. De Historicis Graecis suggests itself immediately in connection with Plutarch. An excellent index facilitates the search for sections dealing with this particular author.

4 De Historicis Graecis, Liber II, Caput X, ‘Cum Vespasianus coepit imperare, fuisse videtur XVII, aut XVIII annorum’. In his comment on Plutarch Vossius also mentions Rualdus, who was to become Dryden's chief source for his Life of Plutarch.

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Plutarch suddenly begins to theorize about history, ‘the profit and pleasure of that study...the most pleasant school of wisdom ...’¹, one cannot help wondering if he had also consulted Vossius' Ars Historica.² Of course there are points of resemblance, but Dryden's treatment of the subject is so different from what Vossius wrote, that it is impossible to say if and to what extent he is indebted to him.

1 Scott-Saintsbury XVII, p. 56.

2 Analysed by father Grootens in De betekenis van Vossius Ars Historica, Historisch Tijdschrift XX.

e. Isaäc Vossius (1618-1689).

Isaäc Vossius was the only son to survive his learned father, Gerard, whose life is said to have been ‘a quiet walk to the grave between two rows of ponderous folios’. The son, however, had a more chequered career. At one time Queen Christina of Sweden's favourite and librarian, he fell into disgrace but managed to get away with one of her most valuable manuscripts, the priceless Codex Argenteus; at another time he was the salaried historiographer of the States, though he never wrote one word of their history. After much travelling and collecting of manuscripts abroad he spent the last twenty years of his life in England. Isaäc dabbled in geography and natural philosophy (physics), but it was the study of the classics that took most of his time. As a canon of Windsor he even shocked the clergy by reading his Ovid during service in St. George's chapel. It is highly probable that Dryden was personally acquainted with this eccentric manuscript-collector. Common friends³, common interests, their visits at court in London and Windsor, their membership of the Royal Society⁴, with all this it is unthinkable that the two should never have met. When Dryden mentions Vossius, his tone is friendly without excessive flattery, as if speaking about an equal, whom he respects. Dryden refers to Isaäc in his preface to the opera Albion and Albanius⁵, a work that had remained unfinished for some time on account of King Charles's death. After a few months Dryden took it up again, adding a postscript to the original preface. He says that he saw no reason

3 John Evelyn, Saint Evremont, and others. Evelyn's Diary, 16 June 1683: ‘Visited Windsor and dined with Mr. Dryden there’.

4 Both Dryden and Vossius were proposed by Dr. Charleton, Dryden in 1662 and Vossius in 1664.

5 Ker I, p. 280.

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to alter much, but that he had changed his opinion as to the origin of the Italian opera, which he had formerly traced to the feasts of Spanish Moors. Now it seemed more probable to him that the Italians had derived their opera from the ‘shipwrecks’ of the Athenian and Roman theatres. Then Dryden continues: ‘But of this the learned Monsieur Vossius, who has made our nation his second country, is the best, and perhaps the only judge now living’.

What induced Dryden to insert this seemingly irrelevant passage? What, in fact, had Vossius to do with the Italian opera? At least one of his works seems to have some bearing on this subject, De Poematum Cantu ac Viribus Rythmi (1673). Here Vossius investigates the close connection between poetry and music in the classics, and for the moderns he recommends strict adherence to the ancient rules of prosody. The problems with which he deals are the same as those Dryden encountered in writing his opera. It is these questions of metre and rhythm, of how to adapt his poetry to the exigencies of a musical setting, that Dryden discusses in his preface. Although there is no direct statement in De Poematum Cantu that the new Italian opera was derived from the Ancients, the points of resemblance between ancient dramatic poetry, as described by Vossius¹, and the new Italian opera are so conspicuous that Dryden may have come to the conclusion that contemporary opera was derived from the Grecian and Roman theatres. Dryden was most probably acquainted with this work, which, in addition to being written by a well-known scholar, published in England and often discussed and criticized², was also of such importance for the study of his own technique. If this surmise is correct, the allusion to Vossius in Dryden's preface to his opera is not irrelevant.

There is another curious passage in this preface with which Vossius' name is closely connected. Speaking about his opera Dryden says:

‘....it has attempted a discovery beyond any former undertaker of our nation; only remember, that if there be no north-east passage to be found, the fault is in nature, and not in me’.

1 Speaking about Ariosto's comedies Vossius says, ‘...Quod si hac quoque in parte veteris comoediae leges diligentius observasset Ariostus, multo proculdubio plures habuisset admiratores, praesertim si dramata istaec modulis animata musicis, & à peritis artis scenicae recitata fuissent cantoribus.

2 Discussed in the Royal Society in 1673. (Philosophical Transactions no. 93, April 1673).

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For a long time the north-east passage had been something of an obsession to Vossius. The subject - of such importance because of West European trade with the Indies - had been revived by Nicolaas Witsen, a burgomaster of Amsterdam and famous geologist. It 1674 Witsen sent a letter to the Royal Society about Nova Zembla¹. According to him it was not an island, but was connected with the continent. Isaäc Vossius, credulous as ever², immediately took up the subject and his imagination soon ran away with him. Improving upon Witsen's information, he told King Charles that the north-east passage could be discovered north of Nova Zembla. The sailors would find an open sea there, and behind the 'peninsula' the coast would at once decline to the south³. The King lent his ear to the discussion and provided a ship for an expedition, while the Duke of York, Pepys and some other gentlemen bought another. The two vessels sailed under the command of one captain Wood, but the expedition proved a failure; one ship was wrecked and many sailors perished⁴. Confidence in the validity of Vossius' opinion was badly shaken. But, nothing daunted, he kept hammering away at the same theme. In 1685 - the year of Dryden's new opera - Vossius published Variarum Observationum, which again contained an essay about Northern navigation to the Indies and Japan⁵. Perhaps after all, it is not so strange that Dryden, having Vossius in mind, should hit upon the metaphor of the north-east passage to explain his difficulties. He had attempted to write an opera in English, which language - according to the same Vossius - would conform less readily to the ancient rules of prosody. If Dryden had failed to adapt his poetry to a musical setting, the fault was in the nature of the language and not in the poet.

1 Philosophical Transactions no. 101 (1674).

2 Charles II is said to have remarked about Vossius, ‘He is a strange man for a divine; there is nothing that he will not believe, if only it is not in the bible’. Sandys, History of Classical Scholarship II, p. 322.

3 Witsen repeatedly dissociated himself from Vossius' rather fantastic notions. In 1691 he sent a letter to the Royal Society, ‘...The late Monsieur Vossius would needs persuade himself, as well as he did others to their Ruine, that there was a passage to Japan by the North and that the Tartarian Countries behind Nova Zembla did immediately decline towards the South; I did always oppose it...’ (printed in Philosophical Transactions no. 193).

4 Recueil de Voyages au Nord, tome II, 1732. Captain Wood relates the story of this voyage. He says that a letter from Holland to the Royal Society was one of the causes that an expedition was sent out.

5 De Patefacienda per Septentrionem ad Japonenses & Indos Navigatione p. 187.

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Nor should De Poematum Cantu ac Viribus Rythmi be overlooked in the discussion of Dryden's Alexander's Feast. The ode in itself is nothing if not an illustration of the ‘vires rythmi’; the story of Thimotheus and Alexander is also mentioned by Vossius¹ as the stock example of the power of music, defined by him as the power to rouse and afterwards to tranquillize the passions². De Poematum Cantu also offers an explanation and the justification for certain changes of metre in Alexander's Feast. In section I of the poem there is an abrupt transition from iambs to trochees, immediately followed by a dactyl, to express the happiness of the King and his bride. Vossius had explained: ‘trochaeus...lenibus & amatoriis affectibus exprimendis est aptus (p. 6). Si quod hilare & jucundum sit explicare velimus, advocandi sunt dactili’ (p. 73).

Something analogous - the sudden change of iambs into trochees - occurs in section V, where the King's mind is turned to love:

‘Softly sweet, in Lydian Measures,
Soon he sooth'd his Soul to Pleasures...’.

In section VI of Alexander's Feast the iambs, not unsuitable in themselves for the description of bellicose feelings, are followed by even more suitable anapaests. They accelerate the movement, suggesting rising fury and the spirit of revenge. In De Poematum Cantu p. 73 we read: ‘Vehemens & iracundus est iambus. Si furorem & insaniam inducentibus numeris opus habemus, praesto erit...anapaestus’.

Of course not every irregularity of metre in Alexander's Feast can be explained so easily. Neither should it be suggested that Dryden slavishly applied rules derived from Vossius and others. A good deal may be due to his fine ear for metrical effects. But if Dryden had read De Poematum Cantu - and there is little reason to doubt - the book must have contributed to his acquisition of that technical dexterity which enabled the poet to write his Encomium Musicae.

1 De Poematum Cantu, p. 59.

2 ibidem p. 75. Vossius calls music ‘virtus illa excitandis & sopiendis apta affectibus.

f. Daniel Heinsius (1580-1655).

Heinsius, professor of the university of Leyden, a most important figure in the field of classical philology, contributed materially to the formation of literary criticism in the seventeenth century. According to Saintsbury, there is no clearer or more workmanlike exposition of the

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neo-classical dramatic ideal than his De Tragoediae Constitutione¹. Influence on Dryden is apparent in A Discourse concerning the Original and Progress of Satire, the dedication of the Aeneis, the Essay on Dramatick Poesie and the translation of Ovid.

As Dryden excelled in the field of satire, it is interesting to consider what he owed to Heinsius for his theoretical conceptions in this particular branch of literature. In his above-mentioned Discourse Dryden asserts that he had read Heinsius attentively², which is no doubt true, since his definition of satire³ is a literal translation of Heinsius in De Satyra Horatiana, which the latter had added to his edition of Horace⁴. One may wonder why Dryden borrowed this definition from the Dutch commentator. It did not satisfy him at all; in fact he calls it obscure and perplexed, and instead of translating a long passage, he might have attempted to give a definition of his own. However, he preferred to follow Heinsius, which at any rate gave him an opportunity of attacking some of the views of a generally accepted authority. Dryden's chief objection is that Heinsius thought a ‘low and familiar way of speech’ characteristic of satire. According to Dryden, this low and familiar way of speech was to be found in Horace, but not so in Juvenal and Persius. To his regret he realized that on the whole Heinsius preferred Horace as the author who best applied the rules for satire proper. ‘Heinsius and Dacier are the most principal of those who raise Horace above Juvenal and Persius.’⁵ But Dryden was by no means inclined to follow these critics in their preference for Horace. Neither does he approve of Heinsius' assertion that satire should be nearer to comedy than to tragedy⁶. Heinsius had written that Juvenal was faulty in this respect, because he shocks us in his satire as if it were a tragedy, rousing horror and indignation⁷.

1 G. Saintsbury, History of Criticism, Edinburgh 1922-29, vol. II, p. 357.

2 Ker II, p. 100.

3 Dryden's definition in Ker II, p. 100 is the same as Heinsius' in De Satyra Horatiana p. 54.

4 De Elzevir edition of Quintus Horatius Flaccus 1629 consists of I. The works of Horace. II. Heinsius' dissertation De Satyra Horatiana. III. Notes. IV. A re-arrangement of the text of the Ars Poetica. (Heinsius thought that the order of this text as he found it in the manuscripts was corrupt).

5 Ker II, p. 69.

6 ibidem, p. 91.

7 De Satyra Horatiana, p. 75, ‘Quos inprimis limites excessit Iuvenalis qui cum nuptias virorum commemorat cum viris, non tam odium quam indignationem & abominationem movet’. Ibidem p. 83, ‘Flaccus enim Comice illudit; Iuvenalis saepe Tragice percellit’.

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Another point of difference between Dryden and Heinsius is the question of the origin of Roman satire, whether it was derived from Greek satirical plays or not. Dryden labours to demonstrate that Roman satire came into being without influence from Greece¹.

It is clear from these examples that Dryden studied Heinsius' De Satyra Horatiana diligently but above all critically. His literal translation of Heinsius' definition shows that he had the book ready at hand when he wrote his Discourse.

There is another reference to Heinsius in Dryden's dedication of the Aeneis. He says that he wrote his dedication ‘in a loose epistolary way’, after the example of Horace in his epistle to the Pisos (the famous Ars Poetica). Dryden continues that in this epistle he sees no method, ‘whatever Scaliger the father, or Heinsius, may have seen, or rather think they had seen...’². Indeed, Heinsius was of the opinion that the confused order of the Ars Poetica was due to corruption in the manuscripts and he made a systematic attempt to rearrange the text³.

On another occasion Dryden refers erroneously to Heinsius. He was probably relying on his memory, when he imputed to Heinsius the opinion that amusement and delight were the only end of comedy. The guarded terms of Dryden's statement suggest, indeed, that he himself was in some doubt here. ‘It is disputed, I think, by Heinsius, before Horace his Art of Poetry, whether instruction be any part of its (comedy's) employment.’⁴ Heinsius, of course, wrote no such thing. On the contrary, for him comedy meant delight and instruction. He expressly states that among the Greeks the writers both of comedies and of tragedies were called ‘teachers’. ‘Comoedia enim delectat & docet...’⁵.

Heinsius' influence on Dryden's Ovid translations will be treated under Cnippingius, whose variorum edition the poet used.

1 Heinsius defends the opposite point of view on pp. 18 and 42 of his dissertation De Satyra Horatiana.

2 Ker II, p. 164. This remark is not true as far as Scaliger is concerned, who did not see any method in the Ars Poetica either. Cf. Ker's note on the passage.

3 Heinsius gives the revised text at the end of his edition of Horace 1629. His example was followed by Ben Jonson in one of his translations of the Ars Poetica.

4 Preface to An Evening's Love, Ker I, p. 142 (my italics).

5 Heinsius' note on line 270 of the Ars Poetica. He gave almost verbatim the same paragraph on page 2 of De Plauto & Terentio judicium 1618.

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So far Dryden's indebtedness to Heinsius is above question because in these instances he frequently mentions Heinsius by name. But there are other places in Dryden's essays which have a distinctly Heinsian flavour, where proof of direct influence is lacking, e.g. his theories about the purpose of tragedy, the ideal tragic hero, verisimilitude in a work of art, and the vexed question of catharsis or purgation of the passions. It is a commonplace in Dryden's essays that a tragedy should not only delight but also instruct, a utilitarian interpretation which was typical of Heinsius. As regards catharsis the latter had taught that the passions in themselves are neither good nor bad; only their lack or excess is harmful. In witnessing a tragedy the passions are roused, chiefly pity and fear¹, but at the same time the spectators get used to these feelings so that they are no longer unduly upset. Thus the effect of tragedy prepares man for the sufferings that fate may have in store for himself. The passions are purged and tempered, which contributes to the spiritual welfare of the individual. Heinsius realized that pity and fear cannot easily be aroused in the spectator's mind by entirely good or entirely bad characters. A certain identification of the spectator with the actor on the stage is necessary; therefore he should be ‘moderately’ good². This was also Dryden's conception:

‘All reasonable men have long since concluded that the hero of the poem ought not to be a character of perfect virtue...nor yet altogether wicked’³.

As to the purgation of the passions Dryden's opinions are not always clear, but once he seems to follow Heinsius:

‘But I hasten to the end and scope of Tragedy, which is, to rectify or purge our passions, fear and pity’⁴.

To rectify the passions surely means to reduce them to such a state that they are no longer harmful.

Heinsius preferred verisimilitude to truth in the work of a poet, truth

1 De Tragoediae Constitutione, p. 18, ‘Tragoedia est seriae absolutaeque actionis...imitatio...quaeque non narrando, vero per misericordiam & horrorem, eorundem expiationem affectuum inducit’.

2 ibidem, p. 75, ‘terror (excitatur) vero a nobis simili’.

3 Preface to All for Love, Ker I, p. 191.

4 Preface to Troilus and Cressida, Ker I, p. 209.

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being chiefly the business of the historian. But he adds that the plot of a tragedy may be historically true¹. Dryden has similar ideas,

‘The last quality of the action is that it ought to be probable... 'Tis not necessary that there should be historical truth in it; but always necessary that there should be a likeness of truth,....probable being that which succeeds, or happens oftener than it misses.’²

It seems likely that Dryden derived more from Heinsius than he knew or would care to admit. This influence may have been indirect, that is to say through the intermediary of his favourite French critics and Ben Jonson. How much French dramatic theory owed to Heinsius is proved by Edith Kern in her well-known dissertation³. She argues that the French, when they became interested in the theory of dramatic art, turned to the latest commentaries on Aristotle and Horace, which were mainly the work of Heinsius and later Vossius. This is proved by numerous quotations from Chapelain, Mesnardière, Sarrasin, Scudéry, the Examens of Corneille etc.⁴. Dryden himself frequently mentions Ben Jonson's Discoveries as one of the chief sources for his Essay of Dramatick Poesie⁵. Jonson, however, borrowed extensively from Heinsius. In fact the last 300 lines of the Discoveries are almost literal translations of various passages in the latter's works.

Our surmise - the indirect influence of Heinsius through the intermediary of other critics - is not mere guess-work, as may be illustrated by the following examples.

Dryden wrote in his Essay of Dramatick Poesie about the unity of action:

‘For two actions equally laboured and driven on by the writer, would destroy the unity of the poem: it would be no longer one play, but two: not but that there may be many actions in a play, as Ben Jonson has observed in his Discoveries; but they must be all subservient to the great one...’⁶.

1 De Tragoediae Constitutione, p. 45, ‘sequitur non minus veram admitti actionem, cum praesertim verisimilis quoque esse possit, qua est vera’.

2 Preface to Troilus and Cressida, Ker I, p. 209.

3 Edith G. Kern, The influence of Heinsius and Vossius upon French dramatic theory, Baltimore 1949.

4 Cf. Ker I, Introduction XXVIII, where exactly the same names occur as ‘the ancestors of Dryden's prose’.

5 Ker I, pp. 41, 122, 125.

6 ibidem, p. 41.

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The passage in the Discoveries to which Dryden refers is an involved one:

‘Now, that it (the action) should be one, and intire. One is considerable two waies: either, as it is only separate, and by itself: or as being compos'd of many parts, it beginnes to be one, as those parts grow, or are wrought together. That it should be one the first way alone, and by itself, no man that has tasted letters ever would say, especially having required before a just Magnitude, and equall Proportion of the parts in themselves. Neither of which can possibly bee, if the Action be single and separate, not compos'd of parts, which laid together in themselves, with an equall and fitting proportion, tend to the same end; which thing out of Antiquitie it selfe, hath deceived many; and more this Day it doth deceive.’¹

Dryden does not seem to realize that this passage is an almost word-for-word translation of Heinsius², which accounts for the extreme obscurity of the style.

Again, in his discussion of Aristophanes' comedies Dryden unconsciously borrows from Heinsius. Dryden says:

‘Thus when you see Socrates brought upon the stage, you are not to imagine him made ridiculous by the imitation of his actions, but rather by making him perform something very unlike himself: something so childish and absurd, as by comparing it with the gravity of the true Socrates, makes a ridiculous object for the spectators’³.

These lines were no doubt suggested by Jonson in his Discoveries, where he says about Aristophanes' comedies:

‘What could have made them laugh, like to see Socrates presented, that Example of all good life, honesty, and vertue, to have him hoisted up with a Pullie, and there play the Philosopher, in a basquet? Measure, how many foote a Flea could skip Geometrically...’⁴.

But Jonson surely translated Heinsius. A comparison with the original will reveal the striking resemblance.

‘Quis non ridet, quando Socrates ridetur; ipse pater omnium

1 Ben Jonson, edited by C.H. Herford Percy and Evelyn Simpson, Oxford 1947, vol. VIII, p. 647.

2 De Tragoediae Constitutione, caput IV, pp. 33, 34. Dryden disapproves of this manner of translating. He says that Jonson could not avoid obscurity. Ker I, p. 238.

3 An Essay of Dramatick Poesie, Ker I, p. 84.

4 op. cit., vol. VIII, p. 644.

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virtutium, & ipsa innocentia; cum in corbe philosophatur; cum geometrice quot pedes pulices saliant, metitur?’¹

From the foregoing the conclusion seems warranted that Dryden owed more to Heinsius than is indicated by the occasional references in his essays.

1 Ad Horatii de Plauto & Terentio judicium Dissertatio, Amsterdam 1618, prefixed to Heinsius' edition of Terentius, (p. 5).

g. Nicolaas Heinsius (1620-1681).

Nicolaas Heinsius, an ambassador of the Netherlands, who went on diplomatic missions to various countries, was Daniel Heinsius' only son. Just like his father he was a distinguished classical philologist, though his travels in the service of the government prevented him from becoming a dull and pedantic scholar. He had excellent opportunities to collate manuscripts in the famous libraries of Europe and he was gifted with a natural aptitude for textual emendation, so that his editions of classical authors were among the best of the seventeenth century.

Dryden does not distinguish between Daniel the father and Nicolaas the son. The Heinsius to which he refers in his Preface concerning Ovid's Epistles was no doubt Nicolaas. Dryden can hardly be blamed for his inaccuracy. Both Heinsius the father and the son had edited Ovid; Nicolaas' edition even appeared in his father's life-time². Comparison of the two editions, however, will show that Dryden owed something to Nicolaas for his translation of Ovid, but hardly anything to Daniel. The following passages are an illustration of Dryden's indebtedness to Nicolaas. In his Preface concerning Ovid's Epistles Dryden says:

‘But Heinsius has judged more truly, that the inscription of our author was barely Epistles; which he concludes from his cited verses, where Ovid asserts this work as his own invention, and not borrowed from the Greeks’.

This refers to the first note on the Epistles in Nicolaas' edition; it does not occur in Daniel's. Nicolaas argued that Epistolae Heroidum was a corruption of the original text; it should be simply Epistolae.

2 Daniel Heinsius, Pub. Ovidii Nasonis Opera, Leyden 1629. This edition has synopses before the Epistles and short notes at the end.
Nicolaas Heinsius, Operum P. Ovidii Nasonis editio nova, Amsterdam 1652. Neither synopses nor notes. But the reprint of 1659 has copious notes though still no summaries.

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Dryden also follows Nicolaas when he discusses the cause of Ovid's banishment. Nicolaas had declared: ‘Non satis est liquido cognita causa mihi’¹, where most commentators supposed that Ovid was banished because he had seen Augustus' incest with his own daughter.

These examples are taken from Dryden's Preface. His translation of Ovid also contains matter from Nicolaas' notes. In The Art of Love, Book I, line 837, Dryden writes: ‘Nor fail a night-cap in full health to wear’. ‘Full health’ is not in the original text. It was derived from Nicolaas' gloss on this line: ‘....enim infirmae valetudinis erant, palliolis obnubebant caput’. From such passages we may conclude that Dryden borrowed from the younger Heinsius; but they are not convincing proof that Dryden actually consulted Nicolaas' Ovid edition, since the text and many of his notes have been incorporated in the variorum edition of Borchardus Cnippingius. This was the chief source for Dryden's Ovid translation, and here he may have found all that he owes to Heinsius the son, the reliable text, many of his notes, and the comments of other scholars into the bargain. When Cnipping quotes Nicolaas Heinsius, he simply refers to him as ‘Heinsius’ or ‘Heins’, which may have led Dryden to associate the name with Daniel.

1 This is N. Heinsius' note on ‘Cur aliquid vidi, cur noxia lumina feci’. (Tristium, Book II, line 103).

h. Borchardus Cnippingius (1623 or 1624-1674).

The Dutch philologists whose influence is traceable in Dryden's works were in the main outstanding scholars. As biographical dictionaries and histories² contain particulars of their lives, it has not been thought necessary to repeat these details. Cnipping, however, is an unknown figure in the realm of classical scholarship, though his well-printed Ovid edition seems to have been popular in Holland³ and abroad and was chosen by Dryden for his Ovid translations. Jöcher says that Cnipping probably lived in Holland⁴. The Dutch Dictionary of Biography (van der Aa) gives the scanty information that he was perhaps a schoolmaster in Leyden. Indeed, Cnipping's variorum edition of Ovid was dedicated

2 J.E. Sandys, A History of Classical Scholarship, Cambridge 1908.
L. Müller, Geschichte der Klassischen Philologie in den Niederlanden, Leipzig 1869.

3 Cnipping's edition had at least two reprints, 1683 and 1702. Bilderdijk possessed an editio princeps. Cf. the catalogue for the sale of Bilderdijk's library, 1832.

4 Allgemeines Gelehrten Lexicon, Leipzig 1751.

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to a Leyden magistrate, Herman van der Meer, ‘gymnasii nostri curatori’; so it was to be expected that the register of the Leyden Latin School¹ would provide material to piece together something of Cnipping's lifehistory.

He was born in Bremen in 1623 or 1624², and in 1647 we hear of him in Holland, when, at the age of 23 or 24 he was appointed rector of the Latin School at Culemborg by Maria Magdalena, dowager-Countess of Waldeck Piermont and Culemborg. His German descent may have appealed to the Countess, but his appointment to a responsible position at an early age also presupposes some confidence in his abilities. An elaborate school-regulation³ was made for him, and he seems to have carried out its articles to the satisfaction of the magistrates; at least, his salary was raised several times, till it amounted - according to himself - to 700 guilders and a house rent-free. Having married Maria Catharina du Molijn, he gave up his position of rector to become a third-class teacher at the Leyden Latin School⁴. This meant a drop in salary, but Cnipping was ambitious enough to suffer a temporary set-back for a better prospect in the future. Leyden, as a seat of learning, offered him more opportunities for a successful career. He at once matriculated into Leyden university⁵; this happened ‘humanitatis ergo’ - for the sake of charity - and as such he was annually registered⁶ until his death eighteen years later. As he never took his doctor's degree, it is not certain if he really studied at the university. As a third class teacher he must have been in rather poor circumstances and such people were sometimes admitted among the gownsmen to give them the benefit of certain privileges.

Cnipping soon made friends in the university; the famous Coccejus, professor of theology, and himself a native of Bremen, stood godfather to his eldest son. The next twelve years saw Cnipping quietly at work among his ‘liberos ac libros’. Six children were born to him; two sons

1 Now in the municipal record-office of Leyden.

2 He matriculated in Leyden 5 May 1656, as Borchardus Cnippingius Bremensis, 32 years old. (Album Studiosorum, column 448). So he was born in 1623 or 1624.

3 Record-office Culemborg no. 1994.

4 Praeceptor tertiae classis. (Leyden, Archief v.d. Triviale Scholen no. 3).

5 Album Studiosorum, colum 448.

6 Among the non-resident scholars (huyshouders), which was a separate list until 1664, as distinct from the boarders (costgangers).

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matriculated in 1668, at twelve and thirteen years old¹. In the mean time Cnipping had risen to the rank of con-rector and worked diligently at a variorum edition of Ovid. The work was published in 1670, and his prospects became bright indeed. Leyden, however, was an unhealthy place to live in. His friend Coccejus had already fallen victim to an outburst of the plague in 1668; he himself died prematurely in 1674. After his death the magistrates graciously granted a quarter of his annual salary to his children; it is not clear whether the money was to be paid every year or only once².

In his edition of Ovid, Cnipping used Nicolaas Heinsius' text and a number of his notes, adding a good many from various sources and some of his own. For the synopses before the Epistles Cnipping borrowed from Heinsius the elder; some of them he copied verbatim; others he abbreviated and altered.

Now Dryden, whose indebtedness to Cnipping is to be shown, strongly disapproved of word-for-word renderings, and as it was his aim to give the meaning and spirit of his author as clearly as possible, he did not hesitate to introduce explanatory matter into his translations³. It is these deviations from the original text which give a clear indication of the editions which Dryden used. We shall compare some seeming mistranslations and intrusions in Dryden's Ovid translations⁴ with Cnipping's own notes⁵. Glosses from other philologists, also included in the Cnipping-edition and sometimes used by Dryden, are of course no proof at all that he used Cnipping's work; he might have borrowed them directly from these scholars.

De Arte Amandi, Liber I, lines 27, 28,

‘Nec mihi sunt visae Clio Cliusque sorores
Servanti pecudes vallibus, Ascra, tuis’.

1 Poor boys! The great majority of students matriculating in 1668 were 20 years of age and older.

2 Leyden, Burgemeestersdagboek N folio 65.

3 It is less pardonable that Dryden could not always refrain from a sneer at political enemies in his translations. He makes Ovid say in the Art of Love, Book I, lines 588, 589,
‘Dress not in short too little, or too much;
And be not wholly French nor wholly Dutch’.

4 Dryden did not translate the whole of Ovid's works, but a considerable number of fragments, which appeared in various miscellanies between 1683 and 1704.

5 Fortunately Cnipping mentions his sources when he copies notes from another.

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Dryden translates, ‘Nor Clio, nor her sisters have I seen;

 

As Hesiod saw them on the shady green:’¹

Hesiod is introduced here on the authority of Cnipping's note on these lines. He explains that Ovid refers to Hesiod, who tended his flock near mount Helicon when he was made a poet by the muses, ‘Hesiodum dicit qui cum patris oves pasceret juxta Heliconum à Musis ad fontem Hippocrenem ductus, poëta evasit’.

De Arta Amandi, Liber I, lines 69, 70:

‘ubi muneribus nati sua munera mater addidit...’, where ‘ubi’ refers to a public building, probably the Porticus Octaviae. But Dryden translates, ‘Concord's fane, or that proud edifice...’². ‘Concord's fane’ may have been taken from Cnipping's note on the corresponding lines.

De Arte Amandi, Liber I, line 75, ‘....Veneri ploratus Adonis’. In the translation, ‘they mourn Adonis with Assyrian Rites’³. The Assyrian Rites are not in the original text, but in Cnipping's note: (Venus) .... quae ritu Assyrio Romae colebatur cum Adonide.

Dryden's translation, ‘And free your arm-pits from the ram and goat’⁴ seems a far cry from De Arte Amandi, Liber I, line 522: ‘Nec laedant nares virque paterque gregis’, until we consult Cnipping, who explains ‘nares’ as ‘alae sive axillae, partes...sub brachiis’.

In Metamorphoses, Book I, line 418, we read, ‘The stag swims faster, than he ran before’. The Latin text only says that the swift legs of the stag are useless in a flood⁵; in Dryden's translation the stag seems to be more actively engaged. This may be due to a gloss in Cnipping, that ‘ablato cervo’ means ‘celeritate pedum subducto’.

Ovid writes in Metamorphoses, Book VIII, lines 622-3:

‘ipse locum vidi: nam me Pelopeia Pittheus

misit in arva, suo quondam regnata parenti’.

Dryden translates, ‘I (Lelex) saw the Place and them, by Pittheus sent

To Phrygian Realms, my Grandsire's Government.’⁶

Seemingly an inaccuracy. Cnipping, however, had explained that Pittheus in his turn was the great grandfather of Lelex, so that Lelex

1 Art of Love, Book I, lines 31, 32.

2 ibidem, line 74.

3 ibidem, line 81.

4 ibidem, line 587.

5 line 306, ‘Crura nec ablato prosunt velocia cervo’.

6 Baucis and Philemon, lines 19 and 20.

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too could claim the ‘Phrygian Realms’ as the territory of his ancestors. From a mythological point of view it was immaterial whether Dryden translated ‘his’ or ‘my’. For some reason or other he preferred ‘my’ and so introduced Cnipping's information in his text.

Dryden also translated the synopses before Ovid's Epistles, which Cnipping had borrowed almost wholesale from Daniel Heinsius. The summary of Epistola XI (Canace to Macareus) is a good example. Cnipping took it verbatim from Heinsius the elder and Dryden translated Cnipping literally¹.

Our small collection of borrowings from Cnipping's commentary is by no means exhaustive², but it is sufficient to warrant the conclusion that Dryden used Cnipping's edition extensively, though, it should be added, not exclusively. This is in accordance with Dryden's method. When he began a translation from the classics, he collected various editions³, compared the texts and chose what in his opinion was the best, though he did not hesitate to borrow occasionally from other editors.

Though it was no mean achievement for Cnipping to publish a variorum edition of Ovid which was afterwards chosen by a famous poet as the chief source for his translations, yet he was never recognized as a worthy member of the Republic of Letters. When Burman gave a new Ovid edition in 1727, he mentioned Cnippingius and Crispinus in his preface as ‘commentatores e plebe’. Curiously enough they are the same editors whose influence can be clearly shown in Dryden's translation.

1 This is another instance of Dryden unconciously and indirectly borrowing from Daniel Heinsius.

2 J. Mc. G. Bottkol in Dryden's Latin Scholarship, Modern Philology XL (1942-43) and Kinsley in his recent edition of Dryden's poems gave more examples. Bottkol proved that Dryden also used Crispinus' edition. Crispinus, a Swiss, edited Ovid in 1689.

3 Cf. Aeneis, postscript to the reader, ‘... Gilbert Dolben... enriched me with all the several editions of Virgil, and all the commentaries of those editions in Latine’.

i. Graevius (1632-1703).

In his Life of Lucian Dryden writes, ‘.... for Lucian, that is the sincere example of Attic eloquence, as Graevius says of him, is only a mass of solecism, and mere vulgarisms in Mr. Spence...’⁴. From this

4 Scott-Saintsbury XVIII, p. 80.

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it is clear that Dryden strongly disapproved of an English translation of Lucian, made by one Mr. Spence, and that Dryden had read a commentary on Lucian from Johann Georg Graeve, Professor of Eloquence at Utrecht.

It is generally assumed that Dryden is here referring to some passage in Graevius' variorum edition of Lucian, published in 1687¹. But there does not seem to be anything corresponding to the above mentioned statement concerning Lucian either in Graevius' preface or in his notes. It is more probable that Dryden had another book in view. As early as 1668 Graevius had edited one of Lucian's dialogues, Luciani Pseudosophista, sev Soloecista. In a preface to the reader Graevius says that in this dialogue Lucian pungently and wittily exposes the sophists, who did not know the true nature and the peculiar character of Attic speech. Graevius promises to expound the solecisms which Lucian tried to correct, and he does so at the end of the book in an ‘Expositio Soloecismorum’.

The quoted passage in Dryden's Life of Lucian must have been inspired by Graevius' preface to Luciani Pseudosophista, sev Soloecista. It deals with the problem of solecisms and these especially irritated Dryden in Spence's work. The latter had not been careful enough to avoid offence against grammar and idiom. Lucian, a master of the Greek language and promoter of its purity, deserved better treatment from his translator.

1 Luciani Samosatensis Opera, Amsterdam 1687.

j. Joannes Clericus (Jean le Clerc 1657-1736).

Jean le Clerc², professor of the Mennonite Seminary at Amsterdam, is sometimes erroneously taken for a French Huguenot. He was a Geneva protestant who had abandoned his Calvinistic tenets for those of the Arminian denomination. Consequently he had little in common with the orthodox Huguenots flocking to Holland. Having lived in England for some time, he settled at Amsterdam in 1683. Besides being a theologian, he was a polyhistor and writer of numerous books on philosophy and history, and the founder of one of the oldest Dutch literary periodicals: the Bibliothèque Universelle. Dryden sometimes read this paper³, which is apparent from a passage in his dedication of the

2 Cf. Annie Barnes, Jean le Clerc et la République des Lettres, Paris 1938.

3 It was for sale in London. The advertisement in tome VI (1687) says, ‘...on trouvera toujours le dernier (tome)... à Londres chez S. Smith’.

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Aeneis: ‘Le Clerc has told us lately, and I believe has made it out, that David's Psalms were written in as arrant rhyme as they are translated’¹. Le Clerc had treated this particular subject in an article called ‘Essay de Critique, où l'on tache de montrer en quoi consiste la Poésie des Hébreux’², where he proves that the psalms in the original language consist of rhymed poetry. He concludes his essay by reconstructing psalm 150 into rhymed Hebrew verse.

This article may have appealed to Dryden, because he had some knowledge of Hebrew since his school-days; in the seventh form of Westminster School he had been obliged to study the Psalter in Hebrew, for which his famous head-master Busby had written a grammar³.

Though Dryden seems to have realized that Le Clerc was an important figure in the Republic of Letters, there cannot have been much sympathy between them. Le Clerc was a friend and correspondent of Gilbert Burnet and of the third Earl of Shaftesbury, both outspoken enemies of Dryden. He even undertook to defend the reputation of the first Earl of Shaftesbury (Dryden's Achitophel) against attacks of the ‘Jacobites’⁴, of whom Dryden had no doubt been one of the most famous.

1 Ker II, p. 220.

2 Bibliothèque Universelle IX, pp. 219-291 (1688).

3 F. Watson, The English Grammar Schools to 1660, Cambridge 1908, p. 529.

4 Bibliothèque Choisie VI (1705), pp. 342-412, in what is called the first biography of Locke. Locke had been the first Earl of Shaftesbury's secretary.

k. Franciscus Junius (1589-1677).

One star in the firmament of seventeenth century Dutch scholarship remains for discussion, Franciscus Junius. Dryden refers to Junius' father⁵, he consulted the works of Junius' brother-in-law (Gerard Vossius) and admired Junius' nephew (Isaäc Vossius), but he does not mention Franciscus himself. Yet it is unlikely that Dryden should not have heard of this diligent promoter of Anglo-Saxon studies, who had lived in England for more than thirty years in the service of the art-loving Earl of Arundel, and had returned to the quiet of Oxford in his old age,

5 In the dedication of the Aeneis, Ker II, p. 204, and in Religio Laici, line 241. About 1680 Dryden bought two books of Junius the elder, evidently to prepare himself for religious controversy, Amiable confrontation de la simple verité de Dieu, Leiden 1581, and Indices expurgatorii duo, testes fraudum ac falsationum pontificiarum, Hannover 1611.

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leaving his collection of Anglo-Saxon manuscripts to the University¹.

Dryden's Parallel of Poetry and Painting sometimes reminds us of Junius' well-known textbook on the painting of the ancients, De Pictura Veterum (1637). The work was so popular that Junius himself gave an English translation², and it contains a chapter devoted to a comparison of poetry and painting. There seems to be parallelism with Dryden's essay when Junius speaks about the Greek painters Apelles and Protogenes. Junius: ‘...for he (Apelles) said...that Protogenes in one thing was farre inferiour to him, because he knew not when to hold his hand’³. Dryden: ‘Apelles said of Protogenes that he knew not when to give over’⁴. Junius: ‘When Apelles had made any workes, says Plinie, he exposeth them in a place, where all that passed by might see them: hiding himselfe in the meane time behind the picture, to hearken what faults were noted in his works’⁵. Dryden: ‘Thus, like Apelles, you stood unseen behind your own Venus, and received the praises of the passing multitude’⁶.

In the last decades of his life Dryden paid more than usual attention to the art of painting (To Sir Godfrey Kneller, Parallel of Poetry and Painting). He may have consulted Junius' book, but our evidence is not conclusive⁷, since Junius and Dryden may quite independently have derived the parallel of poetry and painting and the particulars of Greek painters from the Ancients. Influence of Junius' book must remain a surmise, though bordering on probability.

If Dryden himself could be believed, we should also include the famous Julius Scaliger among the philologists discussed in this chapter. At least he seems to think that the elder Scaliger was a Dutchman,

‘....it must be acknowledged, in spite of his (Ovid's) Dutch friends, the commentators, even of Julius Scaliger himself, that

1 ‘Franciscus Junius died at his nephew's house Isaäc Vossius of a feaver, aet. 89, at Southlie neare Windsore: and had before given his MSS of Saxon and Northerne languages to the University’. (Wood's Life and Times II, p. 393.)

2 The Painting of the Ancients, London 1638. A Dutch edition appeared three years later, De Schilder-konst der Oude, Middelburg 1641.

3 The Painting of the Ancients, book III, p. 325.

4 A Parallel of Poetry and Painting, Ker II, p. 152.

5 The Painting of the Ancients, p. 214.

6 Dedication of the Aeneis, Ker II, p. 163.

7 Dryden himself mentions Bellori as his chief source.

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Seneca's censure will stand good against him: Nescivit quod bene cessit relinquere’¹.

References to Scaliger's Poetices² are fairly numerous in Dryden's essays and offer a field for research, but unfortunately Julius Scaliger never graced Leyden university with his learning nor did he ever take up his residence in Holland. Of course Dryden's mistake is understandable, for the elder Scaliger's son Justus was from 1593 till his death in 1609 the outstanding classical scholar in the Netherlands. But there are no traces of Scaliger the younger's works in Dryden.

In concluding this chapter, we may state that the impact of Dutch scholarship on Dryden was not inconsiderable. If foreign influence in Dryden's works is to be discussed, the writers of classical antiquity stand pre-eminent as an important factor in stimulating his critical faculties. Next come French, Italian and Spanish authors and critics, who never failed to excite Dryden's admiration, even if he would not always follow them unconditionally. Finally some continental influences can be traced back to Dutch scholars, whom, in spite of national prejudices, and almost reluctantly, he chose to study for the improvement of his knowledge and his art. From a historical point of view it may seem curious that Dryden, who disliked both the Dutch and their culture, should occasionally turn to the great Dutch philologists for information. In reality it is a confirmation of a generally accepted truth³. When in the seventeenth century interest began to be felt in dramatic theory and literary criticism, and ideas from the Republic of Letters were transmitted to literature in the vernacular, critics almost naturally turned to the latest commentaries on the classics, which happened to be issued by the Dutch press and were often written by Dutch scholars; it is also clear from what Dryden borrowed, that Daniel Heinsius was the most prominent figure among them, whose influence far exceeded the boundaries of his own country.

1 Preface to the translation of Ovid's Epistles, Ker I, p. 234.

2 Poetices Libri Septem, 1561.

3 Also defended by E.G. Kern in The Influence of Heinsius and Vossius upon French Dramatic Theory.