Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Jayam Subramanian and PG Distributed
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With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes,
In our Life of Dryden we promised to say something about the question,how far is a poet, particularly in the moral tendency and taste of hiswritings, to be tried—and either condemned or justified—by thecharacter and spirit of his age? To a rapid consideration of thisquestion we now proceed, before examining the constituent elements orthe varied fruits of the poet's genius.
And here, unquestionably, there are extremes, which every critic shouldavoid. Some imagine that a writer of a former century should be tried,either by the standard which prevails in the cultured and civilisednineteenth, or by the exposition of moral principles and practice whichis to be found in the Scriptures. Now, it is obviously, so far as tasteis concerned, as unjust to judge a book written in the style and mannerof one age by the merely arbitrary and conventional rules established inanother, as to judge the dress of our ancestors by the fashions of thepresent day. And in respect of morality, it is as unfair to visit withthe same measure of condemnation offences against decorum or decency,committed by writers living before or living after the promulgation ofthe Christian code, as it would be to class the Satyrs, Priapi, andBacchantes of an antique sculptor, with their imitations, by inferiorand coarser artists, in later times. There must be a certain measure ofallowance made for the errors of Genius when it was working as thegalley-slave of its tradition and period, and when it had not yetreceived the Divine Light which, shining into the world from above, hassupplied men with higher æsthetic as well as spiritual models ofprinciples, and revealed man's body to be the temple of the Holy Ghost.To look for our modern philanthropy in that "Greek Gazette," the Iliadof Homer—to expect that reverence for the Supreme Being which the Biblehas taught us in the Metamorphoses of Ovid—or to seek that refinementof manners and language which has only of late prevailed amongst us, inthe plays of Aristophanes and Plautus—were very foolish and very vain.In ages not so ancient, and which have revolved since the dawn ofChristianity, a certain coarseness of thought and language has beenprevalent; and for it still larger allowance should be made, because ithas been applied to simplicity rather than to sensuality—to rusticbarbarism, not to civilised corruption—and carries along with it arough raciness, and a reference to the sturdy aboriginal beast—just asacorns in the trough suggest the immemorial forests where they grew, andthe rich greenswards on which they fell.
In two cases, it thus appears, should the severest censor be prepared tomodify his condemnation of the bad taste or the impurity to be found inwriters of genius—first, in that of a civilization, perfect in itskind, but destitute of the refining and sublimating element which arevelation only can supply; and, secondly, in that of those ages inwhich the lights of knowledge and religion are contending with the gloomof barbarian rudeness. Perhaps there are still two other cases capableof palliation—that of a mind so c