It is the best specimen of
every-day style that we have. But the habitual dwelling of his mind in a
commonplace atmosphere, and among those easy levels of sentiment which
befitted Will's Coffee-house and the Bird-cage Walk, was a damage to his
poetry. Solitude is as needful to the imagination as society is wholesome
for the character. He cannot always distinguish between enthusiasm and
extravagance when he sees them. But apart from these influences which I
have adduced in exculpation, there was certainly a vein of coarseness in
him, a want of that exquisite sensitiveness which is the conscience of
the artist. An old gentleman, writing to the Gentleman's Magazine in
1745, professes to remember "plain John Dryden (before he paid his court
with success to the great) in one uniform clothing of Norwich drugget. I
have eat tarts at the Mulberry Garden with him and Madam Reeve, when our
author advanced to a sword and Chadreux wig."[30] I always fancy Dryden
in the drugget, with wig, lace ruffles, and sword superimposed. It is the
type of this curiously incongruous man.
The first poem by which Dryden won a general acknowledgment of his power
was the "Annus Mirabilis," written in his thirty-seventh year. Pepys,
himself not altogether a bad judge, doubtless expresses the common
opinion when he says: "I am very well pleased this night with reading a
poem I brought home with me last night from Westminster Hall, of
Dryden's, upon the present war; a very good poem.
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