Dryden:Selected Poems

Paul Hammond, David Hopkins, Paul Hammond, David Hopkins

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000153194
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Littérature
• Categoría: Critique littéraire

Dryden: Selected Poems is drawn from Paul Hammond and David Hopkins's remarkable five-volume The Poems of John Dryden, and includes a generous selection of his most important work. The great satires, MacFlecknoe and Absalom and Achitophel, are included in full, as are his religious poems Religio Laici and The Hind and the Panther, along with a number of Dryden's translations from Horace, Ovid, Homer, and Chaucer.

Each poem is accompanied by a headnote, which gives details of composition, publication, and reception. The first-rate annotations provide information on matters of interpretation and give details of allusions that might prove baffling to contemporary readers. Some 300 years after his death, Dryden: Selected Poems will enable new generations of readers to discover the poet of whom Eliot wrote: 'we cannot fully enjoy or rightly estimate a hundred years of English poetry unless we fully enjoy Dryden'.

1 Heroic Stanzas

Date and publication. Cromwell died on 3 September 1658. Because of ineffectual embalming, the body had to be buried privately at an unknown date before the state funeral on 23 November, at which an effigy was used. On 20 January 1659 Henry Herringman entered in SR ‘a booke called Three poems to the happy memory of the most renowned Oliver, late Lord Protector of this Commonwealth, by Mr. Marvell, Mr. Driden, Mr. Sprat.’ But Herringman did not proceed with publication, possibly because of changing political circumstances. It was William Wilson who at an unknown date in 1659 published Three Poems Upon the Death of his late Highnesse Oliver Lord Protector of England, Scotland, and Ireland, with Waller’s ‘Upon the Late Storm, and of the Death of his Highness ensuing the same’, already printed, replacing Marvell’s poem. D.’s poem was reprinted in 1681 with the title An Elegy on the Usurper O.C. by the Author of Absalom and Achitophel, published to shew the Loyalty and Integrity of the Poet, which was evidently a Whig attempt to embarrass D.; there were two similar unauthorized reprints in 1682, and another in 1687, which described D. as ‘the Author of The H—d and the P—r’. An authorized reprint was issued by Tonson in 1691 or 1692 as part of a uniform set of D.’s earlier poems.

An autograph MS of this poem survives in BL MS Lansdowne 1045 (hereafter ‘MS’), the only autograph MS of a poem by D. now known (apart from the verses in his letter to Honor Dryden). This was identified as being in D.’s hand by Anna Maria Crinò in English Miscellany xvii (1966) 311–20. Beal 403–4 lists fourteen other MSS of this poem, so it was evidently given some limited MS circulation through the Restoration period. A critical text based on MS was printed by Vinton A. Dearing et al. in PBSA lxix (1975) 502–26, and the texts of MS, 1659 and 1692 were compared (particularly in their use of accidentals) by Paul Hammond in PBSA lxxvi (1982) 457–70.

The relationship of MS to 1659 is not entirely clear: MS is probably a fair copy (perhaps intended for presentation) made before the poem was revised for its publication in 1659. It is likely that the substantive variants in ll. 10, 67, 89, 90 and 145 are authorial revisions to the poem made for 1659; it is possible that the same is true of the variants in ll. 57 and 138 (though Dearing regards them as errors made by 1659). If the text in MS could be shown to have had any public circulation, the textual policy of this edition would point to the choice of MS as copytext; however, since the poem seems to have reached its first public in 1659, the present edition follows 1659, emending only at l. 63 (apart from the usual silent emendation of indubitable misprints). Substantive variants between MS and 1659 are recorded in the notes, and a reprint of MS is provided in Poems i, Appendix A.

Context. D. probably joined the service of the Protectoral government through his cousin Sir Gilbert Pickering, who was Cromwell’s Lord Chamberlain. (Later, Shadwell wrote that D. had been ‘Clerk to Nolls Lord Chamberlain’: The Medal of John Bayes (1682) 8.) On 19 October 1657 D. received £50 from John Thurloe, Cromwell’s Secretary of State, for unspecified services. In 1659 he was allocated 9s. for mourning and walked in Cromwell’s funeral procession as one of the secretaries of Latin and French tongues, who also included Milton and Marvell (see Paul Hammond, Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society viii (1981) 130–6; Winn 557–8).

Sources. The stanza form had been used by Davenant in Gondibert (1651). Several similarities with Sprat’s and Waller’s poems on the death of Cromwell suggest that D. saw them before writing his own. Garrison 149–55 describes how the poem draws upon the arrangement of material favoured in classical orations. For the classical elements see also Hammond 70–84.

Heroic Stanzas

Consecrated to the Glorious Memory Of his most Serene and Renowned Highness Oliver, Late Lord Protector of this Commonwealth, etc. Written after the Celebration of his Funeral

1

And now ’tis time; for their officious haste

Who would before have borne him to the sky,

Like eager Romans, ere all rites were past

Did let too soon the sacred eagle fly.

2

5 Though our best notes are treason to his fame,

Joined with the loud applause of public voice,

Since heaven what praise we offer to his name

Hath rendered too authentic by its choice;

3

10 Though in his praise no arts can liberal be,

Since they whose Muses have the highest flown

Add not to his immortal memory,

But do an act of friendship to their own:

4

15 Yet ’tis our duty and our interest too,

Such monuments as we can build to raise,

Lest all the world prevent what we should do,

And claim a title in him by their praise.

5

20 How shall I then begin, or where conclude,

To draw a fame so truly circular?

For in a round what order can be shewed,

Where all the parts so equal perfect are?

6

His grandeur he derived from heaven alone,

For he was great ere Fortune made him so;

And wars, like mists that rise against the sun,

Made him but greater seem, not greater grow.

7

25 No borrowed bays his temples did adorn,

But to our crown he did fresh jewels bring;

Nor was his virtue poisoned soon as born

With the too early thoughts of being king.

8

30 Fortune (that easy mistress of the young,

But to her ancient servants coy and hard)

Him at that age her favourites ranked among

When she her best-loved Pompey did discard.

9

35 He private marked the faults of others’ sway,

And set as sea-marks for himself to shun;

Not like rash monarchs who their youth betray

By acts their age too late would wish undone.

10

40 And yet dominion was not his design:

We owe that blessing not to him but heaven,

Which to fair acts unsought rewards did join,

Rewards that less to him than us were given.

11

Our former chiefs, like sticklers of the war,

First sought t’ inflame the parties, then to poise;

The quarrel loved, but did the cause abhor,

And did not strike to hurt, but make a noise.

12

45 War, our consumption, was their gainful trade;

We inward bled whilst they prolonged our pain:

He fought to end our fighting, and essayed

To stanch the blood by breathing of the vein.

13

50 Swift and resistless through the land he passed,

Like that bold Greek who did the east subdue;

And made to battles such heroic haste

As if on wings of victory he flew.

14

55 He fought secure of fortune as of fame,

Till by new maps the island might be shown

Of conquests, which he strewed where’er he came,

Thick as the galaxy with stars is sown.

15

60 His palms, thou...