Wordsworth wrote to Scott on Dryden's poetic character:
I admire his talents and genius highly, -hut his is not a poetical genius.
The only qualities I can find in Dryden that ere essentially poetical, are a
certain ardour and impetuosity of mind, and an excellent ear. It may seem
strange that I do not add to this, great command of languages That he certainly
has, and of such language too, as it is most desirable that a poet should
possess, or rather that he should not be without. But it is not language that
is, in the highest sense of the word, poetical, being neither of the imagination
nor of the passions... (i)
In general, modern critics have recognised Dryden's supreme abilities in verse
satire and argument, and his 'ardour and impetuosity of mind?; but, while few
have agreed with Arnold's extreme view that 'Dryden and Pope are not classics
of our poetry, they are classics of our prose', few have disagreed with the
implications of Wordsworth's letter and granted Dryden much of the poetic imag¬
ination, either in idea, in imagery, or in diction, whioh was a first essential
with the Romantics. He is a powerful writer, exciting, and vital; but in the
end there is too muohmere statement, and too much plainness in him, for him
to claim a place with the best poets.
Mr. T.S. Eliot has done much to counteract such criticism. 'The depreciation
or neglect of Dryden', he says, 'is due not to the fact that his work is not
poetry, but to a prejudice that the material, the feelings, out of which he
builds, is not poetic*. This defence is based on a revaluation of the argumentative, satiric, and rhetorical elements in Dryden. Mr. Eliot affirms that the
work of Dryden is poetic just where the Romantics thought it prosaic; and his
appreciation of Dryden as a completely non-romantic poet is brought out in two
comments on the language of his poetry:
(He) bears a curiously antithetical resemblance to Swinburne. Swinburne was also
a master of words, but Swinburne's words are all suggestion and no denotation;
if they suggest nothing, it is because they suggest too much. Dryden's words, on
the other hand, are precise, they state immensely, but their suggestiveness is
almost nothing.
From the perfection of such an elegy (the lines on Oldham) we cannot detracts
the lack of suggestiveness is compensated by the satisfying completeness of
the statement.
There is at least one objection to this kind of critical defences it does
not take into account the intentions of the poet. It is true that Dryden delighted in 'stating immensely'; but he would have been distressed to find himself
defended as a poet who excelled in statement rather "than in suggestion. It is
here that so much well-meant criticism of Dryden falls shorts he does not fit into
the poetic category where denotation is all, and connotation is nothing; and
critics have been too ready to read back into Dryden that desire for undiluted
clarity, precision, and finality of statement which is a characteristic of some
types of eighteenth century verse. He lived through an age when the critical re¬
action from the fantastic and obscure, from poetic ellipsis and excessive con¬
notation, was producing a simpler, clearer style; and he played his part in that
reaction. On the other hand, his natural boldness and perpetual liveliness in
poetry did not let him rest content with a direct, merely denotative manner of
writing; and the magnificent obviousness of his diction is often illusory. Modern
readers, looking back on Dryden over the nineteenth century Romantics, are conditioned to expect brilliant and suggestive novelty in the diction and imagery of
poetry; and Dryden does not seem to satisfy that expectation. Neither Augustan
nor Romantic avoided the conventional or artificial in diction; but the circumscribed, regulated artifies of the Augustan poets gave way, in the nineteenth
century, to an uncontrolled freedom in poetio language which gets in the way of
our sympathy with the Augustan style. Mr. Tillotson, taking the extreme example
of Keats, succinctly expresses the difference between the poetic suggestion of
the best Augustans and that of the Romantics; the Augustans, he says,
knew that a reader soon scrambles on to the level of a poem, and that when he
has reached it, that level becomes his norm... In Endymion, everything is so
exotic that, to,provide a surprise, Keats has almost to burst a blood-vessels
In Gray's Elegy, the even tenor of the style gives to words like 'tinklings'
the equivalent of an 'angelic strength'.
Here Dryden's conception of the language of poetry as a highly selective,
ornamental dress, or final colouring, for the poet's thought as opposed to
the modern notion of poetic language as the full and inevitable expression of
thought— is of the first importance. Poetic language was, for him, essentially
'made' language; and his own enthusiastic love of experiment and novelty, in
diction no less than in general style, encouraged him to 'make' his poetic
language much as he chose. It is the firm, durable groundwork of current vocabulary and idiom in his poetry which gives it a deceptively plain and obvious
appearance. But in the occasional novelty, giving a new twist of meaning to a
common word, dropping into colloquialism or rising into the heroic, introducing
a word laden with venerable poetic associations or echoing the classical poets,
Dryden's diction takes on a large measure of suggestion. He builds fundamentally
in strong, graceful, beautifully sculptured stone; but he varies and adorns the
smooth surface of his work with colour -— sometimes merely a suggested shadow,
and sometimes the bold brilliance of mediaeval bosses and capitals rich in
paint. That the number of potentially suggestive words in his vocabulary is
comparatively small, is not important; a rather narrow range of novel words,
old words used in new ways, and -words carrying an aura with them from older
poets, can vivify and change the -whole texture of a poet's style, if he works
carefully and subtly. Colour need not be thick, massy, and continuously patterned
to be effective: the brilliance of a cathedral interior is due, not merely to
the bright colouring of windows and hangings, but to the contrasts between that
colouring and the great masses of monochrome stonework. The poet -who touches a
basically plain style with subtly disposed light, shade, and colour, may give
a less cloying and more delicate impression of richness and suggestion than does
a poet who scrapes his whole palette into every line. Language
is not marble, neither is it putty. Classical tendencies in the use of words
would lean to the former, romantic to the latter. Those who prefer a hard
material, a fixed and rigorous system of language., may be likened to the sculptor
and his marble; those who desire the widest liberty, like Keats, may in extreme
cases reduce the language to the consistency of putty. (I)
Dryden, as a neo-classical poet, inclines to work in marble rather than
in putty; but he fully realises the coldness and unresilience of marble, and
works as freely as he can, within the limits of the classical tradition, for
warmth, novelty, and colour. He is not constrained by any rigid doctrine of
propriety in diction. He manipulates colloquialisms, archaisms, provincial
and technical terms, and latinisms, with characteristic boldness, to give
added power, light, vividness, or delicacy to his style. Again, his perpetual
energy and his highly individual exaltation of tone create an atmosphere in
his poetry which removes it, even at its most didactic or philosophical, far
from mere 'statement'j the force and passion -which thrust up into all his work
in every poetic kind, gives* it a pulsing, thrilling freshness and vitality.
The tempestuous ardour and glow of his style transform ideas, personalities,
arguments, and situations into passionate and imaginative poetry.
The centrifugal force in Dryden's poetical career was his constant concern
for the standards, techniques, and development of his art. From Dr. Johnson to
Mr. Van Doren, critics have busied themselves in pointing out that there was
certain poetic genres in which Dryden was at home, and others which made demands
upon his mental, imaginative, and technical resources, which he could not meet;
but, as important as his comparative success or failure in any one poetic kind,
is his awareness of the variety of styles in the traditional forms of poetry,
his constant interest in the potentialities of those forms, and his persistent
experimentation with every sort of genre, style, and tone. In philosophy, he
was often sceptical and disengaged; his critical views were in many respects
tentative and fluid} but in his conception of the artistic function of the
professional poet, and his delight in trials of poetic strength and resourcefulness, he remained constant. Despite deliberate distortions, contradictions,
special pleading, and shifts in opinion as times and circumstances alter, his
critical essays are the handbook to his poetry; and they illustrate his constant regard for good art, whatever the political, theological, or personal needs of
the hour might be. He wrote as a professional poet, and supplied the needs of
his time in political satire, religious controversy, the celebration of public
characters and occasions, narrative verse and elegant translations for cultured
readers, and the drama. To a large extent, the interests of his age provided
him with his range and variety of poetic tasks, and encouraged his ingenuity
and versatility. Ultimately, however, he met every fresh demand as a good
artist, reconsidering the traditional techniques and conventions, undogmatically
working out his own attitudes and methods for each task, and executing each
with boldness and conscientious originality.
Perhaps no nation ever produced a writer that enriched his language
with such variety of models. To him we owe the improvement, perhaps
the completion of our metre, the refinement of our language, and much
of the correctness of our sentiments. By him we were taught 'sapere
et fari", to think naturally and express forcibly... What was said
of Rome, adorned by Augustus, may be applied by an easy metaphor to
English poetry embellished by Dryden, 'lateritiam invenit, marmoream
reliquit', he found it brick, and he left it marble, (i)
