The Works of John Dryden. Illustrated with Notes by Sir
Walter Scott. Revised and corrected by George Saintsbary. Vols. VII. to XII. (Paterson, Edinburgh).—Eight volumes of this fine edition of Dryden's works are filled with his dramas, and of these the greater number are forgotten, and deserve to be so. The best portion of the poet's life was devoted to the stage, not because Nature designed him for a dramatist, but because play-writing was the most profitable form of literature. He confesses that he found this kind of work against the grain, and that " All for Love " was the only play he wrote for the pleasure of writing. In that drama, and in "Don Sebastian," Dryden may be seen at his best as a dramatist ; at his worst, as in such plays as " Limberham," " In Evening's Love," and " Marriage it la Mode," he endeavours to win applause by obscenity. The intolerable grossness that in a greater or less degree pervades all his dramas, illustrates very forcibly the state of public morality in England, or rather in London,
daring the Restoration period. here was the most popular poet of the age, a man who for splendour of intellect, mastery of language, and variety of knowledge, stood for years at the head of English literature, and still occupies a place second only to the greatest, descending to the worst arts of the meanest men of letters, and gaining fame as well as money by so doing. So far, indeed, did Dryden go in this direction, that he even offended the lax moralists to whose base passions he ministered, and one of his plays, which Mr. Saintsbury justly calls " filthy stuff," had to be withdrawn from the stage. As a playwright, he met with considerable success, though, strange to say, it was a matter of dispute at the time whether his rival Settle, who is now known only by Dryden's satire, was not equal to him in merit. Although in his worst pieces there are indica- tions of greatness, it cannot be said that he is a great dramatist, and if there are passages in his plays which no one else could have written, these are for the most part rhetorical in character. To our thinking, the prefaces or essays that accompany his dramas, form by far the best portion of the feast. Dryden's prose has all, or nearly all, the qualities of a fine style, and it is remarkable that at a time when several of his distinguished contemporaries wrote in the antique mode of the Elizabethans, he should have expressed himself in English which with some slight differences a modern writer might use, if, indeed, he were capable of wielding an instrument at once so flexible and so strong. His poetical works, as distinguished from the dramas, are to be found in the last four of the volumes before us, and pleasant it is to read the great ethical and satirical poems that have made Dryden immortal in a type so clear and in an edition worthy of the well-beloved name that appeared on the title-page as editor nearly eighty years ago. It may be doubted whether a reprint of the entire works of Dryden is calculated to increase his reputation is our day, but there can be no doubt that Mr. Saintsbury's share in the work is marked throughout by ability and care.
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