Annus Mirabilis: The Year of Wonders/An Account of the Ensuing Poem

by John Dryden

AN

ACCOUNT

OF THE

Ensuing POEM,

IN

A LETTER

to the HONOURABLE

S^r. Robert Howard.

 

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⁠SIR,

I

Am so many ways oblig'd to you, and so little able to return your Favours, that, like those who owe too much, I can only live by getting farther into your debt. You have not only been careful of my Fortune, which was the effect of your Nobleness, but you have been solicitous of my Reputation, which is that of your Kindness. It is not long since I gave you the trouble of perusing a Play for me, and now, instead of an Acknowledgment, I have given you a greater, in the Correction of a Poem. But since you are to bear this Persecution, I will at least give you the encouragement of a Martyr, you could never suffer in a nobler cause. For I have chosen the most heroick Subject which any Poet could desire: I have taken upon me to describe the motives, the beginning, progress and successes, of a most just and necessary War; in it, the care, management and prudence of our King; the conduct and valour of a Royal Admiral, and of two incomparable Generals; the invincible courage of our Captains and Seamen; and three glorious Victories, the result of all. After this, I have, in the Fire, the most deplorable, but withal the greatest Argument that can be imagin'd; the destruction being so swift, so sudden, so vast and miserable, as nothing can parallel in Story. The former part of this Poem, relating to the War, is but a due expiation for my not serving my King and Country in it. All Gentlemen are almost oblig'd to it: And I know no reason we should give that advantage to the Commonalty of England to be formost in brave actions, which the Nobless of France would never suffer in their Peasants. I should not have written this but to a Person, who has been ever forward to appear in all Employments, whither his Honour and Generosity have call'd him. The later part of my Poem, which describes the Fire, I owe first to the Piety and Fatherly Affection of our Monarch to his suffering Subjects; and, in the second place, to the Courage, Loyalty, and Magnanimity of the City; both which were so conspicuous, that I have wanted words to celebrate them as they deserve. I have called my Poem Historical, not Epick, though both the Actions and Actors are as much Heroick, as any Poem can contain. But since the Action is not properly one, nor that accomplish'd in the last successes, I have judg'd it too bold a Title for a few Stanza's, which are little more in number than a single Iliad, or the longest of the Æneids. For this reason, (I mean, not of length, but broken action, ti'd too severely to the Laws of History,) I am apt to agree with those who rank Lucan, rather among Historians in Verse, than Epique Poets: In whose room, if I am not deceived, Silius Italicus, though a worse Writer, may more justly be admitted. I have chosen to write my Poem in Quatrains, or Stanza's of four in alternate rhyme, because I have ever judg'd them more noble, and of greater dignity, both for the Sound and Number, than any other Verse in use amongst us; in which I am sure I have your approbation. The learned Languages have, certainly, a great advantage of us, in not being tied to the slavery of any Rhyme; and were less constrain'd in the quantity of every syllable, which they might vary with Spondæes or Dactiles, besides so many other helps of Grammatical Figures, for the lengthening or abbreviation of them, than the Modern are in the close of that one Syllable, which often confines, and more often corrupts the sense of all the rest. But in this necessity of our Rhymes, I have always found the couplet Verse most easie, (though not so proper for this occasion,) for there the work is sooner at an end, every two lines concluding the labour of the Poet; but in Quatrains he is to carry it farther on; and not only so, but to bear along in his head the troublesome sense of four lines together. For those who write correctly in this kind, must needs acknowledge, that the last line of the Stanza is to be consider'd in the composition of the first. Neither can we give our selves the liberty of making any part of a Verse for the sake of Rhyme, or concluding with a word which is not currant English, or using the variety of Female Rhymes, all which our Fathers practised; and for the Female Rhymes, they are still in use amongst other Nations; with the Italian in every line, with the Spaniard promiscuously, with the French alternately, as those who have read the Alarique, the Pucelle, or any of their later Poems, will agree with me. And besides this, they write in Alexandrins, or Verses of six feet, such as amongst us is the old Translation of Homer by Chapman: All which, by lengthning of their Chain, makes the sphere of their activity the larger. I have dwelt too long upon the choice of my Stanza, which you may remember is much better defended in the Preface to Gondibert; and therefore I will hasten to acquaint you with my endeavors in the writing. In general I will only say, I have never yet seen the description of any Naval Fight in the proper terms which are us'd at Sea; and if there be any such in another Language, as that of Lucan in the third of his Pharsalia, yet I could not prevail my self of it in the English; the terms of Art in every Tongue bearing more of the Idiom of it than any other words. We hear indeed, among our Poets, of the Thundering of Guns, the Smoke, the Disorder and the Slaughter; but all these are common notions. And certainly as those, who, in a Logical dispute, keep in general terms, would hide a fallacy, so those who do it in any Poetical description would vail their Ignorance.

Descriptas servare vices operumque colores,
Cur ego, si nequeo ignoroque, Poeta salutor?

For my own part, if I had little knowledge of the Sea, yet I have thought it no shame to learn: and if I have made some few mistakes, 'tis only, as you can bear me witness, because I have wanted opportunity to correct them; the whole Poem being first written, and now sent you from a place, where I have not so much as the converse of any Sea-man. Yet, though the trouble I had in writing it was great, it was more than recompens'd by the pleasure; I found my self so warm in celebrating the Praises of Military men, two such especially as the Prince and General, that it is no wonder if they inspir'd me with thoughts above my ordinary level. And I am well satisfied, that as they are incomparably the best subject I ever had, excepting only the Royal Family; so also, that this I have written of them is much better than what I have perform'd on any other. I have been forc'd to help out other Arguments, but this has been bountiful to me; they have been low and barren of praise, and I have exalted them, and made them fruitful: But here—Omnia sponte suâ reddit justissima tellus. I have had a large, a fair and a pleasant field, so fertile, that without my cultivating, it has given me two Harvests in a Summer, and in both oppressed the Reaper. All other greatness in Subjects is only counterfeit, it will not endure the test of danger; the greatness of arms is only real: Other greatness burdens a Nation with its weight, this supports it with its strength. And as it is the happiness of the Age, so it is the peculiar goodness of the best of Kings, that we may praise his Subjects without offending him: Doubtless it proceeds from a just confidence of his own Virtue, which the lustre of no other can be so great as to darken in him; for the Good or the Valiant are never safely praised under a bad or a degenerate Prince. But to return from this digression to a farther account of my Poem, I must crave leave to tell you, that as I have endeavoured to adorn it with noble thoughts, so much more to express those thoughts with elocution. The Composition of all Poems is or ought to be of wit, and wit in the Poet, or wit writing, (if you will give me leave to use a School distinction,) is no other than the faculty of imagination in the Writer, which, like a nimble Spaniel, beats over and ranges through the field of Memory, till it springs the Quarry it hunted after; or, without metaphor, which searches over all the Memory for the Species or Idea's of those things which it designs to represent. Wit written, is that which is well defin'd, the happy result of Thought, or product of Imagination. But to proceed from wit, in the general notion of it, to the proper wit of an Heroick or Historical Poem, I judge it chiefly to consist in the delightful imaging of Persons, Actions, Passions, or Things. 'Tis not the jerk or sting of an Epigram, nor the seeming contradiction of a poor Antithesis, (the delight of an ill-judging Audience in a Play of Rhyme,) nor the gingle of a more poor Paronomasia; neither is it so much the morality of a grave Sentence, affected by Lucan, but more sparingly used by Virgil; but it is some lively and apt description, dressed in such colours of speech, that it sets before your eyes the absent object, as perfectly and more delightfully than nature. So then, the first happiness of the Poet's imagination is properly Invention, or finding of the thought; the second is Fancy, or the Variation, deriving or moulding of that thought, as the Judgment represents it proper to the subject; the third is Elocution, or the Art of clothing and adorning that thought, so found and varied, in apt, significant, and sounding words: The quickness of the Imagination is seen in the Invention, the fertility in the Fancy, and the accuracy in the Expression. For the two first of these, Ovid is famous among the Poets, for the later Virgil. Ovid images more often the movements and affections of the mind, either combating between two contrary passions, or extreamly discompos'd by one: His words therefore are the least part of his care, for he pictures Nature in disorder, with which the study and choice of words is inconsistent. This is the proper wit of Dialogue or Discourse, and, consequently, of the Drama, where all that is said is to be suppos'd the effect of sudden thought; which, though it excludes not the quickness of Wit in repartees, yet admits not a too curious election of words, too frequent allusions, or use of tropes, or, in fine, any thing that shews remoteness of thought, or labour, in the Writer. On the other side, Virgil speaks not so often to us in the person of another, like Ovid, but in his own, he relates almost all things as from himself, and thereby gains more liberty than the other, to express his thoughts with all the graces of elocution, to write more figuratively, and to confess as well the labour as the force of his Imagination. Though he describes his Dido well and naturally, in the violence of her Passions, yet he must yield in that to the Myrrha, the Biblis, the Althæa, of Ovid; for as great an admirer of him as I am, I must acknowledge, that, if I see not more of their Souls than I see of Dido's, at least I have a greater concernment for them: And that convinces me, that Ovid has touched those tender strokes more delicately than Virgil could. But when Action or Persons are to be described, when any such Image is to be set before us, how bold, how masterly are the strokes of Virgil! We see the objects he represents us with in their native figures, in their proper motions; but so we see them, as our own Eyes could never have beheld them so beautiful in themselves. We see the Soul of the Poet, like that universal one of which he speaks, informing and moving through all his Pictures, Totamque infusa per artus Mens agitat molem, & magno se corpore miscet; we behold him embellishing his Images, as he makes Venus breathing beauty upon her son Æneas.

———lumenque juventæ
Purpureum, et lætos oculis afflârat honores:
Quale manus addunt ebori decus, aut ubi flavo
Argentum, Pariusve lapis circundatur auro.

See his Tempest, his Funeral Sports, his Combat of Turnus and Æneas, and in his Georgicks, which I esteem the Divinest part of all his writings, the Plague, the Country, the Battel of the Bulls, the labour of the Bees, and those many other excellent Images of Nature, most of which are neither great in themselves, nor have any natural ornament to bear them up: but the words wherewith he describes them are so excellent, that it might be well appli'd to him which was said by Ovid, Materiam superabat opus: The very Sound of his Words has often somewhat that is connatural to the subject, and while we read him, we sit, as in a Play, beholding the Scenes of what he represents. To perform this, he made frequent use of Tropes, which you know change the nature of a known word, by applying it to some other signification; and this is it which Horace means in his epistle to the Pisos.

Dixeri egregie, notum si callida verbum
Reddiderit junctura novum ———

But I am sensible I have presum'd too far to entertain you with a rude discourse of that Art, which you both know so well, and put into practice with so much happiness. Yet before I leave Virgil, I must own the vanity to tell you, and by you the world, that he has been my Master in this Poem: I have followed him every where, I know not with what success, but I am sure with diligence enough: My Images are many of them copied from him, and the rest are imitations of him. My Expressions also are as near as the idioms of the two Languages would admit of in translation. And this, Sir, I have done with that boldness, for which I will stand accomptable to any of our little Criticks, who, perhaps, are not better accquainted with him than I am. Upon your first perusal of this Poem, you have taken notice of some words which I have innovated (if it be too bold for me to say, refin'd,) upon his Latin; which, as I offer not to introduce into English prose, so I hope they are neither improper, nor altogether unelegant in Verse; and, in this, Horace will again defend me.

Et nova, fictaque nuper, habebunt verba fidem, si
Græco fonte cadunt, parcè detorta ———

The inference is exceeding plain: for if a Roman poet might have liberty to coin a word, supposing only that it was derived from the Greek, was put into a Latin termination, and that he used this liberty but seldom, and with modesty; how much more justly may I challenge that privilege to do it with the same prerequisites, from the best and most judicious of Latin writers! In some places, where either the fancy or the words were his, or any other's, I have noted it in the margin, that I might not seem a plagiary; in others I have neglected it, to avoid as well tediousness, as the affectation of doing it too often. Such descriptions or images well-wrought, which I promise not for mine, are, as I have said, the adequate delight of heroic poesy; for they beget admiration, which is its proper object; as the images of the burlesque, which is contrary to this, by the same reason beget laughter: for the one shows nature beautified, as in the picture of a fair woman, which we all admire; the other shows her deformed, as in that of a lazar, or of a fool with distorted face and antique gestures, at which we cannot forbear to laugh, because it is a deviation from nature. But though the same images serve equally for the Epic poesy, and for the historic and panegyric, which are branches of it, yet a several sort of sculpture is to be used in them. If some of them are to be like those of Juvenal, Stantes in curribus Æmiliani, heroes drawn in their triumphal chariots, and in their full proportion; others are to be like that of Virgil, Spirantia mollius æra: there is somewhat more of softness and tenderness to be shewn in them. You will soon find I write not this without concern. Some, who have seen a paper of Verses, which I wrote last year to her Highness the Dutches, have accus'd them of that only thing I could defend in them; they said I did humi serpere, that I wanted not only height of Fancy, but dignity of Words to set it off; I might well answer with that of Horace, Nunc non erat hic locus, I knew I address'd them to a Lady, and accordingly I affected the softness of expression, and the smoothness of measure, rather than the height of thought; and in what I did endeavour, it is no vanity to say, I have succeeded. I detest arrogance; but there is some difference betwixt that and a just defence. But I will not farther bribe your candor, or the Readers. I leave them to speak for me; and, if they can, to make out that character, not pretending to a greater, which I have given them.

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