In pious times, e’er Priest-craft did begin,
Before Polygamy was made a sin;
When man, on many, multiply’d his kind,
E’er one to one was, cursedly, confind:
When Nature prompted, and no law deny’d
Promiscuous use of Concubine and Bride;
Then Israel’s Monarch, after Heaven’s own heart,
His vigorous warmth did, variously, impart
To Wives and Slaves: And, wide as his Command,
Scatter’d his Maker’s Image through the Land.Dryden launches his complex fable with astonishing ease, confidence and
humour. Criticism of Absalom is wrapped in praise: ‘What faults he had (for who
from faults is free?) / His Father could not, or he would not see.’ Achitophel is a
Miltonic tempter, offering Charles’s son Monmouth
‘Not barren praise alone, that gaudy flower
Fair only to the sight, but solid power;
And nobler is a limited command,
Given by the love of all your native land,
Than a successive title, long and dark,
Drawn from the mouldy rolls of Noah’s ark.’
The biblical David grieved bitterly for his son Absalom, killed running away; but
Monmouth survived.
This dexterous poem, published during Shaftesbury’s trial for treason, ends with
David’s mercy to the rebels – and to his sons. But it warns the King, the country, and
any future rebels against a second civil war. Charles had prevented Parliament’s
exclusion of James Duke of York from his ‘successive title’. Parliament took revenge,
however: when James was deposed, Dryden lost the Laureateship to Shadwell.
Dullness had succeeded.
Literary succession was on Dryden’s mind in his moving poem in memory of the
younger poet John Oldham, and again in his late work: his musical Odes, his Preface
to the Fables, and his Virgil. It is the theme of his 1693 epistle ‘To my dear friend Mr
Congreve on his comedy called The Double Dealer’:
Well then, the promis’d Hour is come at last;
The present Age of Wit obscures the past:
Strong were our Syres, and as they fought they Writ,
Conqu’ring with Force of Arms and Dint of Wit:
Theirs was the Giant Race before the Flood ...The realism of this retrospect is as remarkable as its tone. Making way for Congreve,
Dryden finds his own generation weaker than its predecessor. Charles had brought
re finement, but the likes of Shakespeare and Jonson would not come again. There
had bee n giants on earth in those days, before the ‘Flood’ of the Civil War.
Our age was cultiv ated thus at length,
But what we gain’d in Skill we lost in Strength.
Our Builders were with Want of Genius curst;
The second Temple was not like the first.The rebuilt temple was English Augustanism. ‘O that your brows my Lawrel had
sustain’d’, says Dryden to Congreve: ‘Well had I been depos’d if you had reign’d!’172 5 · STUART LITERATURE: TO 1700