December 18, 2008
John Dryden Suffers For His Art (1679)
The pen may be mightier than the sword, but it's no match for a cudgel to the head. According to the "Domestic Intelligence" newspaper, a scurrulous poem caused serious problems to John Dryden: "Mr Dryden, the great poet, was set upon in Rose-street, Covent Garden, by three persons who called him rogue and son of a whore, knocked him down and dangerously wounded him, but upon his crying out murder, they made their escape."
The fuse behind the attack was a poem circulated in manuscript on the Restoration's equivilent of the Internet: London's coffee houses, where the Englishmen gathered to gossip, drink and conduct their business. "An Essay upon Satire" contained a number of attacks on the king and his mistresses and courtiers, but reserved a special amount of bile for the John Wilmot, the second Earl of Rochester, one of the era's most notorious rakes: Rochester I despise for's mere want of wit,While most historians attribute "An Essay on Satire" to John, Earl of Mulgrave — who Rochester had dubbed "Monster All-Pride" and nearly fought ten years before — suspicion fell upon Dryden. Not only had Mulgrave been his protégé, but some of the lines were clever enough to come from the Poet Laureate's pen.
Tho' thought to have a tail and cloven feet,
For while he mischief means to all mankind,
Himself alone the ill effects does find. ...
False are his words, affected is his wit,
So often does he aim, so seldom hit.
To every face he cringes while he speaks,
But when the back is turn'd, the head he breaks.
Mean in each action, lewd in every limb,
Manners themselves are mischievous in him ...
Early in Dryden's career, Rochester had applied his poetical wit to Dryden's drafts, and his patronage to get Dryden the laureateship. Dryden had responded with praise, even dedicating his play "Marriage a la Mode" to Rochester. But by this time, they were sniping at each other in their writings. Rochester wrote:
Dryden in vain tried this nice way of wit,And Dryden riposted in his preface to his play "All for Love":
For he to be a tearing blade thought fit,
To give the ladies a dry bawdy bob,
And thus he got the name of Poet Squab."
From hence it comes that so many satires on poets, and censures of their writings, fly abroad. Men of pleasant conversation (at least esteemed so) and endued with a trifling kind of fancy, perhaps helped out with some smattering of Latin, are ambitious to distinguish themselves from the herd of gentlemen by their poetry ... And is not this a wretched affectation, not to be contented with what fortune has done for them, and sit down quietly with their estates, but they must call their wits in question, and needlessly expose their nakedness to public view? Not considering that they are not to expect the same approbation from sober men, which they have found from their flatters after the third bottle."To Rochester, having his wit called "pleasant conversation" that only drunkards would appreciate, by the man who he had helped with his influence, was surely too much to bear.
Dryden survived the attack, and shortly thereafter, placed a notice in the "London Gazette," offering £50 for the identity of the thugs, and even a pardon from the king if one of them would confess. No one claimed the reward. As for Lord Rochester, the pleasure he took in his revenge was short-lived. A lifetime of rogering and roistering had sapped his health, and alcoholism and syphilis did the rest. Eight months later, he died at age 33.
Born: Saki (ps. H.H. Munro), short-story writer, humorist, Akyab, Burma, 1870; Christopher Fry, playwright, Bristol, England, 1907.
Died: Philip Freneau, journalist, poet, editor, Monmouth County, N.J., 1832; Samuel Rogers, poet, London, 1855; Will Carleton, poet, New York City, 1912; Heywood Broun, sportswriter, columnist, Stamford, Conn., 1939; Louis Untermeyer, memoirist, Newtown, Conn., 1977.
Quote for the Day: "Comedy is an escape, not from truth but from despair; a narrow escape into faith." — Christopher Fry, playwright, who was born today in 1907
Also from "Writers 365":
- Charles Sedley's frolic (1663)
- London Burning I (1666)
- London Burning II: Take Me To The River (1666)
- London Burning III: Burn Down The Mission (1666)
- London Burning IV: The End (1666)
- Man Falls Twice: Milton & Darwin (1667, 1858)
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