Dryden’s faith went from Puritan to Catholic; his style went from Metaphysical to
Baroque to something clearer. His theatrical flourish settled in the 1670s into a way
of discoursing in verse, less heroic and more urbane. Extravagance ripened into
complexity. Charles wanted heroic tragedies to be in rhyming couplets, as in France,
but the second edition ofParadise Lost(1674) carries a defence by Milton of ‘English
heroic verse without rhyme’, and a commendatory poem by Marvell, including the
lines:
Well mightst thou [Milton] scorn thy Readers to allure
With tinkling Rime, of thy own sense secure;
While the Town-Bayes writes all the while and spells,
And like a Pack-horse tires without his bells.
Milton had just given Dryden leave to ‘tag his verses’: to put Paradise Lostinto rhyme
for a semi-opera. The result,The State of Innocence, was printed but never staged,
though Dryden learned much in reducing Milton’s 10,000 lines to 1400.Bayes did
indeed write ‘all the while’, but the persuasive verse prologues, and the prose accom-
panying the printed plays, show that he also thought all the while.
Marvell sneered in rhyme: rhyme lends point in a closed couplet. Dryden found
that the English closed couplet was too neat for tragedy, and made it instead the
vehicle for satire. He also used open couplets, and triplets, as in the famous opening
ofReligio Laici (1682):
Dim, as the borrow’d beams of Moon and Stars
To lonely,weary,wandringTravellers,
Is Reason to the Soul: And as on high,
Those rowling Fires discoverbut the Sky
Not light us here;So Reason’s glimmering Ray
Was lent, not to assure our doubtfull way,
But guide us upward to a better Day.
This ‘layman’s religion’ relies less on glimmering Reason than on the light of Faith,
ye t its language is quietly witty. Dryden has a reasoned response to the historical crit-
icism of Scripture:
More Safe, and much more modest ‘tis, to say
God wou’d not leave Mankind without a way:
And that the Scriptures, though not every where
Free from Corruption, or intire, or clear,
Are uncorrupt, sufficient, clear, intire,
In all things which our needfull Faith require.170 5 · STUART LITERATURE: TO 1700
John Dryden’s chief writingsAstraea Redux(1660) To the Memory of Mr Oldham(1684)
Annus Mirabilis(1667) The Hind and the Panther(1687)
Essay on Dramatic Poesy(1668) A Song for St Cecilia’s Day(1687)
Absalom and Achitophel, Part I (1681) Alexander’s Feast(1697)
The Medal, A Satire against Sedition(1681) Virgil: Works(1697)
Mac Flecknoe(1682) Fables, Ancient and Modern(1700)
Religio Laici(1682)