Epilogue

It is difficult to gauge the effect of Dryden's rhetorical campaign in his last works. What evidence we have, however, suggests that his reputation as a poet increased in the 1690s even among those who opposed his politics. The Virgil was a financial success: 351 prominent Englishmen subscribed to the translation, and the first edition sold out within six months.^[1] We may imagine that some of the five-guinea subscribers were willing to overlook Dryden's political reputation in order to accompany the poet in his assured march toward posterity by means of engraved plates inscribed with their coats of arms.

The best testimonies to Dryden's success are the protests of his enemies and competitors. Dryden's view of contemporary politics did not in fact survive. His party was repeatedly and decisively defeated, and his version of the Revolution fell victim to the retrospective appropriation of that event by the Lockean Whigs in the eighteenth century and has only recently been given extensive study. But Dryden's contemporaries could no more foresee this contingency than Dryden himself, and there is a noticeable political animus behind the attempts of such writers as George Powell, Luke Milbourne, and Jonathan Swift to circumvent Dryden's potential appropriation of cultural authority in the eyes of a credulous posterity. In the Preface to The Fatal Discovery , Powell describes Dryden's "To Mr. Grenville , on his Excellent Tragedy called Heroique Love " as "a true Dryden Composition, in all his own celebrated perfections of Pride , Fancy , and Scandal ":

This Poem, though designed a Caress to the Honourable Author, however, makes the top Compliment at home: the main flourish is upon himself: when with his own long and laudable Vanity, all true Drydenism , he gives the Reader to understand, That J. Dryden is the very Father of the Muses, the Source, Fountain, and Original of Poetry, nay,

the Apollo himself; when all the Address he has to make this Ingenious and Honourable Author, is, the Resignation of his own Lawrels.

But here, I am afraid, he makes him but a course Compliment, when this great Wit, with his Treacherous Memory, forgets, that he had given away his Lawrels upon Record, no less than twice before, viz . once to Mr. Congreve , and another time to Mr. Southern .^[2]

In his attack on the Dedication of the Aeneis , Milbourne also derides Dryden's self-presentation as transparent vanity. Dryden's comparison of himself to "Dutch commentatours" sends Milbourne into paroxysms of rage:

But what a Happiness is it, that Mr. D . can speak so freely as no Dutch Commentator could? Poor Scoundrels, filthy illiterate Fellows they! What were the Heinsius's and Emmenessius's to Mr. Dryden ? But onePoet may judge of another by himself . Excellent! Poet Squab , endued with Poet Maro 's Spirit by a wonderful Metempsychosis .^[3]

Dryden's claim to have discovered the source of sweetness in Denham's lines on the Thames has a similar effect on Milbourne:

And why must not others have observ'd both the Sweetness and the Reason of the Sweetness of that Couplet . Is Mr. D . the only Man of Ear? . . . I must believe, that no Man living can teach him to make smooth well-running Verses , who has not a Musical Ear : unless Mr. D . or some like him , would give us a new English Parnassus .
(P. 24)

Milbourne reacts with the same defensive sarcasm to Dryden's discussion of the dependence of historical fame on poetic patronage:

The Triumvir and Proscriber had descended to us in a more hideous Form, if the Emperor had not taken care to make Friends of Virgil and Horace. Well, I can't but tremble at our present King's Fate: Boast not, Great Prince , of all thy Martial Acquisitions ; boast not of having given Check to the Grand Louis ; talk not of Namure , nor Ireland reduced, nor pretend to Thanksgivings for a Glorious Peace , for the terrible Mr. Bays is disobliged! What an unlucky thing was it to give his Lawrel to a Shadwell or a Tate , whose drawn Pen is more fatal than that of Hipponax , and more terrible than a Lüxemburg or Boufflers in the Head of a French veterans Army . Well, how his Majesty 'll come off I know not.
(Pp. 25–26)

Swift's attack, though more clever than these, depends on ridicule of the same rhetorical strategies. Dryden's implied presentation of himself as the English Virgil is made ridiculously explicit in the Battel of the Books :

Dryden in a long Harangue soothed up the good Antient , called him Father , and by a large deduction of Genealogies, made it plainly appear, that they were nearly related. Then he humbly proposed an Exchange of Armor, as a lasting Mark of Hospitality between them. Virgil consented . . . tho' his was of Gold, and cost a hundred Beeves, the others but of rusty Iron.^[4]

In A Tale of a Tub Swift inflates Dryden's professions of retirement from politics to ridiculous proportions:

THESE Notices may serve to give the Learned Reader an Idea as well as a Taste of what the whole Work is likely to produce; wherein I have now altogether circumscribed my Thoughts and my Studies; and if I can bring it to a Perfection before I die, shall reckon I have well employ'd the poor Remains of an unfortunate Life. This indeed is more than I can justly expect from a Quill worn to the Pith in the Service of the State, in Pros's and Con's upon Popish Plots , and Meal-Tubs , and Exclusion Bills , and Passive Obedience , and Addresses of Lives and Fortunes ; and Prerogative , and Property , and Liberty of Conscience , and Letters to a Friend : From an Understanding and a Conscience, thread-bare and ragged with perpetual turning; From a Head broken in a hundred places, by the Malignants of the opposite Factions, and from a Body spent with Poxes ill cured, by trusting to Bawds and Surgeons, who, (as it afterwards appeared) were profess'd Enemies to Me and the Government, and revenged their Party's Quarrel upon my Nose and Shins. Fourscore and eleven Pamphlets have I written under three Reigns, and for the Service of six and thirty Factions. But finding the State has no farther Occasion for Me and my Ink, I retire willingly to draw it out into Speculations more becoming a Philosopher, having, to my unspeakable Comfort, passed a long Life, with a Conscience void of Offence.
(Pp. 69–71)

The modern author of A Tale claims to have been honored with Dryden's confidences on the subject of his self-presentation: "He has often said to me in Confidence, that the World would have never suspected him to be so great a Poet, if he had not assured them so frequently in his Prefaces, that it was impossible they

could either doubt or forget it" (p. 131). If Dryden were as flagrantly self-promoting as these parodies suggest, there would be little need for parodies. Swift, writing as an unknown in the late 1690s, is reacting to a masterly rhetoric of self-definition that seems not only to have deflected criticism from Dryden's political behavior but to have dominated the literature of his times.