Glossary of John Dryden's Critical Terms

140 Pages·1969·8.4 MB·English

by  H.James Jensen

A Glossary of
JOHN DRYDEN'S
CRITICAL TERMS
BY
H. James Jensen
UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA PRESS, MINNEAPOLIS
© COPYRIGHT 1969 BY THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA. ALL RIGHTS RE-
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CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION 3
KEY TO ABBREVIATIONS 15
THE GLOSSARY 18
BIBLIOGRAPHY 133
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Introduction
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INTRODUCTION
NOT only is John Dryden the spokesman and greatest critic of his age, he is
also what Dr. Johnson calls him, "The father of English criticism . . . the
writer who first taught us to determine upon principles the merit of com-
position."1 No critic before him can pretend to rival his accomplishment,
and all who come after are his descendants. He established the basis for
English criticism, complete with vocabulary, models of great works, and
theories and principles of what is proper and great art. Dryden produced a
constant stream of literary works and critical thoughts, over a period of
thirty-seven years; moreover, he was vigorous in mind throughout his whole
life. Early in his career, in 1668, Dryden wrote the "Essay of Dramatic Poesy,"
a beautifully executed Ciceronian dialogue, presenting different Restoration
critical positions;2 and he closed his career as a critic with the "Preface to Fa-
bles Ancient and Modern," a charming little masterpiece written just before
his death in 1700. In his writing Dryden is everywhere delightfully fluent, ev-
erywhere confident, a man of the world interested in his world's reaction to
what he writes. His principles never change. They are based on a balance be-
tween judgment and fancy, between "inventio" and "dispositio." But Dryden's
stands on particular issues do change, depending on what he is interested in
at the time he is writing, what critics he has just read, and at what stage of his
growth we find him. In fact, Dryden spends less time establishing rules of
criticism and writing than he does in justifying his own works and explaining
what lessons the writers and critics of earlier times and of other countries have
for his contemporaries. This gives Dryden's criticism its explanatory nature,
its immediacy, its changing emphases and conclusions, its controversiality, and
its perennial interest. As were T. S. Eliot, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Dr.
Johnson, John Dryden was a professional man of letters to whom criticism was
a natural occupation. He dominated English literature and criticism for the
last half of the seventeenth century, and his influence was felt long after his
death.
Dryden is the only Englishman of the seventeenth century who wrote ex-
tensively on critical matters. The others wrote only sporadically or translated
criticism of other times or countries. Jonson's Timber, although valuable, is
many times a translation of classical rhetoricians, especially Roman. Milton is
precise and thoughtful, but is not much given to discussion of critical ques-
tions. Although Rymer is much more rigid in his views, Dryden respects him,
and for us he is valuable as Dryden's complement. Highly regarded in his own
time, Rymer introduced a number of critical terms into the English language
and was quite conscious of the history of criticism. Earlier seventeenth-century
critics, found in Spingarn's valuable edition, show the progress of English
1 Samuel Johnson, Works, IX, 393.
2 The "Essay of Dramatic Poesy" was Dryden's second published critical work. The
first was his Preface to The Rival Ladies, published in 1664.
3
criticism and the importance of Dryden's achievements. The early critical
language was inadequate. Henry Peachum, for example, uses circumlocution
after circumlocution, clumsily trying to render into English the criticism of
Horace, Quintilian, and Cicero. It is not until Hobbes and Davenant that a
higher degree of critical subtlety is reached. From these meager beginnings, by
borrowing eclectically from mainly classical, French, and Italian sources be-
sides his own thoughts and experience, Dryden formulated an English criticism,
with vocabulary, models, and ideas. Despite this magnificent achievement,
Boileau is said to have forgotten Dryden's name. It was not until the eighteenth
century that English criticism achieved international renown.
Dryden's criticism is difficult for twentieth-century readers to understand
and appreciate. This is not because his style is hard to read, for it is perpetually
entertaining, clear, and elegant, but because he continually digresses and be-
cause, although his words are still familiar, some of his intended meanings are
not. His virtues as an entertaining stylist hide from us his excellence as a critic.
He digresses continually because he writes as he thinks, capturing his thoughts
as they occur to him in an open, familiar, charming style. He owes much of
this style to Montaigne, and he says so.3 Because of his rambling style, he never
systematically develops a work or theory of criticism to any length, and his
discussions of particular subjects, as well as many of his great critical state-
ments, occur in isolated passages, many times in momentary digressions. One
of his notable paraphrases from Bouhours' "Je ne sais quoi," for example, ap-
pears in his dedication of Amboyna, one of his less notable dedications.4
"Beauty," in critical contexts, occurs eighty-six times in forty-three different
works.5
One passage seldom represents Dryden's over-all views on a subject. He will
cheerfully deny at one time what he confidently affirmed two years earlier. One
can, for example, prove by quotations from several places that Dryden thought
delight or pleasure the chief end of poetry. He says, "Delight is the chief if not
the only end of poetry." Later he says, "The great end of the poem is to in-
struct." If one sees only one or two of these statements, he will accuse Dryden
of pandering to the moment or occasion. Actually, Dryden thought about de-
light and instruction over a period of years, finally concluding reasonably that
both are necessary, that to "instruct delightfully is the general end of all
poetry." "All arts are made to profit," but pleasure must be the vehicle for in-
struction, not only to capture the audience but also to gain reputation and
wealth for the author.6 "Raillery" is another example. Before 1671, Dryden
used "raillery" to mean rough, heavy-handed satire or jesting, connecting it
to the older English verb "to rail." Later, he uses it to mean witty, refined
abuse, relating it to the English verb "to rally" and the French verb railler.
With only isolated quotations, Dryden's position on certain subjects and his
definitions of specific words cannot be accurately ascertained.
While a critical concordance which locates Dryden's discussions of important
words and concepts is useful, it is equally important to know Dryden's special
critical vocabulary to understand what he is saying. In his criticism, Dryden
noticeably avoids technical terms, such as those found in the jargon of rhetori-
8 See p. 92.
4 See Admiration.
5 See Beauty.
8 See Instruction.
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cal textbooks. Instead, his terms are those in common, cultivated use, or critical
words which came from the French, the polite language of precise and culti-
vated criticism. The French critics used most often are Corneille, Boileau,
Rapin, and Bouhours.7 Dry den wrote largely for ladies and gentlemen of wit
and quality who, as he says, delighted in familiar, refined conversation.8 Thus
his style is free and familiar and his choice of words easy, but careful. Because
Dryden's critical terms were in common use, they usually have both general
and specific meanings. Many of Dryden's words are still current, giving his
prose a superficial clarity. A modern reader thinks he understands Dryden,
when in fact he does not. The words are the same, but the meanings have
changed. Dryden was trying to create a critical vocabulary, which the Eng-
lish language did not provide, by expanding the meanings of the current Eng-
lish words, by using French meanings for English words with French critical
equivalents (when the English meanings were sometimes quite different), and
by introducing into English critical words, and their connotations, from other
languages, such as French and Latin. The OED often does not record the
meanings and connotations Dryden employed because it uses only a selected
portion of his critical works.
"Humour" is an excellent example of a word with an expanded meaning,
and although Dryden probably borrowed his meanings from earlier writers,
one can trace its development as a critical term through his use. Dryden started
by using "humour" to mean temperament, and then expanded it to mean an
overriding whim, jest, mood, extravagant habit, etc. This is the common
Restoration usage. In good satire, a "humour" and its depiction became more
important than the character who displayed it. The character literally became
a "humour." From this meaning it was an easy step to designate a kind of
comedy, which represents "humours," as "comedy of humours" (sometimes
called "mechanic comedy" [George Watson, ed., John Dryden, Of Dramatic
Poesy and Other Critical Essays, I, 67]). "Kind" and "sweetness" also have
expanded English meanings. Dryden so often used "kind" to mean a literary
genre, and Barbara Strang corroborates this, that "kind" in Dryden finally means
"genre." "Sweetness," which is usually associated with a vague, saccharine qual-
ity, becomes a relatively precise quality of smooth-running, pleasant verse.
Dryden goes so far as to designate two different kinds of "sweetness": the one
kind, found in good lyrical verse, is produced by using many vowels, avoiding
open vowels side by side, and eliminating clashing consonants; the other, found
in more dignified prose and verse, is produced by brevity, preciseness, and the
exact placement of words for both meaning and sound.
Dryden's use of French meanings for English equivalents can sometimes be
misleading (if either the French or the English meaning might apply) or
puzzling (when an English meaning is quite different from the French).
"Point," for example, cannot be understood without a knowledge of the mean-
ings of the French pointe. Dryden's "point of wit" is, as Cayrou says, "Pensee
qui surprend par quelque subtilite d'imagination, par quelque jeu de mots." A
"point" thus must be regarded as rhetorical rather than emotional. Some of
the meanings of "manage" come from the French manager; others do not. A
French meaning which Dryden uses extensively is "disposer avec art," "mena-
7 Others he used are Chapelain, Dacier, Segrais, d'Aubignac, St. fivremond, du
Fresnoy, Le Bossu, Perrault, Fontenelle, Balzac, La Mesnardiere, and Goulu.
8 See Easy and Language.
5