INTRODUCTORY NOTE. In the first edition of "Annus Mirabilis," a little volume in small octavo, bound in brown calf, and "printed for Henry Herringman, at the Anchor of the Lower Walk of the New Exchange, 1667," Dryden inserted this short notice: "TO THE READERS. Notwithstanding the diligence which has been used in my absence, some faults have escaped the press; and I have so many of my own to answer for that I am not willing to be charged with those of the printer. I have only noted the grossest of them, not such as by false stops have confounded the sense, but such as by mistaken words have corrupted it." With the aid of Dryden's list of errata, the text of this first edition may be almost entirely relied on. The poem was reprinted in quarto in 1688, with several changes in the text, which are almost all deteriorations; and the text of 1688 was followed in the next reprint of the poem, in the edition of the "Miscellany Poems" of 1716. In subsequent editions other errors have been added. The text of Scott's edition is faulty; Scott had not seen the first edition of the poem. Dryden printed some notes to this poem, which are given among the notes between marks of quotation, and given verbatim, except only that his Latin quotations, often incorrectly given, are corrected. The variations of the second edition of 1688 from the original edition are specified in the notes. The marginal indications are Dryden's own. Since the publication of the poem addressed to the Lord Chancellor, the press had been placed under a licenser by the Act of 1662, continued in 1665. This poem was licensed November 22, 1666. Samuel Pepys read and admired it on February 2, 1666-7, when he entered in his Diary, “I am very well pleased this night with reading a poem I brought home with me last night from Westminster Hall of Dryden's upon the present war, a very good poem." 1 TO THE METROPOLIS OF GREAT BRITAIN, THE MOST RENOWNED AND LATE FLOURISHING CITY OF LONDON, IN ITS REPRESENTATIVES THE LORD MAYOR AND COURT OF ALDERMEN, THE SHERIFFS AND COMMON COUNCIL OF IT. As perhaps I am the first who ever presented a work of this nature to the metropolis of any nation, so is it likewise consonant to justice, that he who was to give the first example of such a dedication should begin it with that City which has set a pattern to all others of true loyalty, invincible courage, and unshaken constancy. Other cities have been praised for the same virtues, but I am much deceived if any have so dearly purchased their reputation : their fame has been won them by cheaper trials than an expensive though necessary war, a consuming pestilence, and a more consuming fire. To submit yourselves with that humility to the judgments of Heaven, and at the same time to raise yourselves with that vigour above all human enemies; to be combated at once from above and from below; to be struck down and to triumph I know not whether such trials have been ever paralleled in any nation, the resolution and successes of them never can be. Never had prince or people more mutual reason to love each other, if suffering for each other can endear affection. You have come together a pair of matchless lovers, through many difficulties; he, through a long exile, various traverses of fortune, and the interposition of many rivals, who violently ravished and withheld you from him: and certainly you have had your share in sufferings. But Providence has cast upon you want of trade, that you might appear bountiful to your country's necessities; and the rest of your afflictions are not more the effects of God's displeasure (frequent examples of them having been in the reign of the most excellent princes) than occasions for the manifesting of your Christian and civil virtues. To you, therefore, this Year of Wonders is justly dedicated, because you have made it so: you, who are to stand a wonder to all years and ages, and who have built yourselves an immortal monument on your own ruins. You are now a phoenix in her ashes, and, as far as humanity can approach, a great emblem of the suffering Deity. But Heaven never made so much piety and virtue, to leave it miserable. I have heard indeed of some virtuous persons who have ended unfortunately, but never of any virtuous nation. Providence is engaged too deeply, when the cause becomes so general; and I cannot imagine it has resolved the ruin of that people at home, which it has blessed abroad with such successes. I am, therefore, to conclude that your sufferings are at an end, and that one part of my poem has not been more an history of your destruction, than the other a prophecy of your restoration. The accomplishment of which happiness, as it is the wish of all true Englishmen, so is by none more passionately desired than by SIR, The greatest of your admirers and most humble of your servants, JOHN DRYDEN. AN ACCOUNT OF THE ENSUING POEM, IN A LETTER TO THE HONOURABLE SIR ROBERT HOWARD. I am so many ways obliged to you and so little able to return your favours that, like those who owe too much, I can only live by getting farther into your debt. You have not only been careful of my fortune, which was the effect of your nobleness, but you have been solicitous of my reputation, which is that of your kindness. : All It is not long since I gave you the trouble of perusing a play for me ;* and now, instead of an acknowledgment, I have given you a greater in the correction of a poem. But since you are to bear this persecution, I will at least give you the encouragement of a martyr; you could never suffer in a nobler cause. For I have chosen the most heroic subject which any poet could desire: I have taken upon me to describe the motives, the beginning, progress, and successes of a most just and necessary war; in it the care, management, and prudence of our King; the conduct and valour of a royal Admiral and of two incomparable Generals; the invincible courage of our captains and seamen, and three glorious victories, the result of all. After this, I have in the fire the most deplorable, but withal the greatest argument that can be imagined; the destruction being so swift, so sudden, so vast and miserable, as nothing can parallel in story. The former part of this poem, relating to the war, is but a due expiation for my not serving my King and country in it. gentlemen, are almost obliged to it and I know no reason we should give that advantage to the commonalty of England, to be foremost in brave actions, which the noblesse of France would never suffer in their peasants. I should not have written this but to a person who has been ever forward to appear in all employments, whither his honour and generosity have called him. The latter part of my poem, which describes the fire, I owe, first, to the piety and fatherly affection of pur Monarch to his suffering subjects; and, in the second place, to the courage, loyalty, and magnanimity of the City; both which were so conspicuous that I have wanted words to celebrate them as they deserve. I have called my poem historical, not epic, though both the actions and actors are as much heroic as any poem can contain. But since the action is not properly one, nor that accomplished in the last successes, I have judged it too bold a title for a few stanzas, which are little more in number than a single Iliad or the longest of the Æneids. For this reason (I mean not of length, but broken action, tied too severely to the laws of history) I am apt to agree with those who rank Lucan rather among historians in verse than epic poets; in whose room, if I am not deceived, Silius Italicus, though a worse writer, may more justly be admitted. I have chosen to write my poem in quatrains or stanzas of four in alternate rhyme, because I have ever judged them more noble and of greater dignity both for the sound and number than any other verse in use amongst us; in which I am sure I have your approbation. The learned languages have certainly a great advantage of us in not being tied to the slavery of any rhyme, and were less constrained in the quantity of every syllable, which they might vary with spondees or dactyls, besides so many other helps of grammatical figures for the lengthening or abbreviation of them, than the modern are in the close of that one syllable, which often confines, and more often corrupts, the sense of all the rest. But in this necessity of our rhymes, I have always found the couplet verse most easy (though not so proper for this occasion), for there the work is sooner at an end, every two lines concluding the labour of the poet; but in quatrains he is to carry it farther on, and not only so, but to bear along in his head the troublesome sense of four lines together. For those who write correctly in this kind must needs acknowledge that the last line of the stanza is to be considered in the composition of *This play was probably the "Maiden Queen," which was brought out on the stage early in 1657. Dryden mostly resided at Charlton in Wiltshire, whence this letter is dated (the seat of the Earl of Berkshire, his father-in-law, and Sir R. Howard's father), from the middle of 1665 to the end of 1666; and during this period he composed the "Maiden Queen," the "Annus Mirabilis," and his " Essay of Dramatic Poesy," which was published towards the end of 1665, and led to a controversy and quarrel with Sir R. Howard. The plays produced by Dryden up to this date were the "Wild Gallant," the "Rival Ladies," and the "Indian Emperor," a sequel of Sir R. Howard's play, "The Indian Queen," of which Dryden had written some part. the first. Neither can we give ourselves the liberty of making any part of a verse for the sake of rhyme, or concluding with a word which is not current English, or using the variety of female rhymes; all which our fathers practised. And for the female rhymes, they are still in use amongst other nations: with the Italian in every line, with the Spaniard promiscuously, with the French alternately, as those who have read the Alaric, the Pucelle, or any of their latter poems, will agree with me. And besides this, they write in Alexandrines or verses of six feet, such as, amongst us, is the old translation of Homer by Chapman ;* all which by lengthening of their chain makes the sphere of their activity the larger. I have dwelt too long upon the choice of my stanza, which you may remember is much better defended in the Preface to Gondibert; and therefore I will hasten to acquaint you with my endeavours in the writing. In general I will only say I have never yet seen the description of any naval fight in the proper terms which are used at sea; and if there be any such in another language, as that of Lucan in the third of his Pharsalia, yet I could not prevail myself of it + in the English; the terms of arts in every tongue bearing more of the idiom of it than any other words. hear, indeed, among our poets, of the thundering of guns, the smoke, the disorder and the slaughter; but all these are common notions. And certainly as those who in a logical dispute keep in general terms would hide a fallacy, so those who do it in any poetical description would veil their ignorance. : "Descriptas servare vices operumque colores si nequeo ignoroque, poeta salutor?" We For my own part, if I had little knowledge of the sea, yet I have thought it no shame to learn and if I have made some few mistakes, it is only, as you can bear me witness, because I have wanted opportunity to correct them, the whole poem being first written, and now sent you from a place where I have not so much as the converse of any seaman. Yet though the trouble I had in writing it was great, it was more than recompensed by the pleasure; I found myself so warm in celebrating the praises of military men, two such especially as the Prince and General, that it is no wonder if they inspired me with thoughts above my ordinary level. And I am well satisfied, that as they are incomparably the best subject I have ever had, excepting only the royal family, so also that this I have written of them is much better than what I have performed on any other. I have been forced to help out other arguments; but this has been bountiful to me they have been low and barren of praise, and I have exalted them and made them fruitful; but here-Omnia sponte sua reddit justissima tellus. § I have had a large, a fair, and a pleasant field; so fertile, that, without my cultivating, it has given me two harvests in a summer, and in both oppressed the reaper. All other greatness in subjects is only counterfeit, it will not endure the test of danger; the greatness of arms is only real. Other greatness burdens a nation with its weight; this supports it with its strength. And as it is * Chapman's translation of Homer is in lines of seven feet. + A French idiom, which occurs again in Dryden in “Absalom and Achitophel," line 461: "Prevail yourself of what occasion gives;" and both here and there all the later editors, following Derrick, have printed avail instead of prevail. Dryden also uses the French idiom to profit of: "To profit of the battles he had won (Aurengzebe, act 2, sc. 1); and again, to provide oneself of, as "Provide yourself of some more worthy heir" (Love Triumphant, act 4, sc. 1). Hor. Ars Poet. 87. A misquotation by Dryden, who probably confused in his memory two passages of Virgil: "Fundit humo facilem victum justissima tellas" (Georg. ii. 460), and "Omnis feret omnia tellus" (Ecl. iv. 39). Ovid also, "Per se dabat omnia tellus " (Metam. i. 102). the happiness of the age, so is it the peculiar goodness of the best of kings, that we may praise his subjects without offending him. Doubtless it proceeds from a just confidence of his own virtue, which the lustre of no other can be so great as to darken in him for the good or the valiant are never safely praised under a bad or a degenerate prince. But to return from this digression to a farther account of my poem: I must crave leave to tell you, that, as I have endeavoured to adorn it with noble thoughts, so much more to express those thoughts with elocution. The composition of all poems is or ought to be of wit; and wit in the poet, or wit-writing (if you will give me leave to use a school-distinction), is no other than the faculty of imagination in the writer; which, like à nimble spaniel, beats over and ranges through the field of memory, till it springs the quarry it hunted after: or, without metaphor, which searches over all the memory for the species or ideas of those things which it designs to represent. Wit written is that which is well defined, the happy result of thought, or product of imagination. But to proceed from wit in the general notion of it to the proper wit of an heroic or historical poem; I judge it chiefly to consist in the delightful imaging of persons, actions, passions, or things. 'Tis not the jerk or sting of an epigram, nor the seeming contradiction of a poor antithesis (the delight of an ill-judging audience in a play of rhyme), nor the jingle of a more poor paronomasia ;* neither is it so much the morality of a grave sentence, affected by Lucan, but more sparingly used by Virgil; but it is some lively and apt description, dressed in such colours of speech, that it sets before your eyes the absent object as perfectly and more delightfully than nature. So then the first happiness of the poet's imagination is properly invention, or finding of the thought; the second is fancy, or the variation, driving, or moulding of that thought as the judgment represents it proper to the subject; the third is elocution, or the art of clothing and adorning that thought so found and varied, in apt, significant, and sounding words. The quickness of the imagination is seen in the invention, the fertility in the fancy, and the accuracy in the expression. For the two first of these Ovid is famous amongst the poets; for the latter, Virgil. Ovid images more often the movements and affections of the mind, either combating between two contrary passions, or extremely discomposed by one; his words, therefore, are the least part of his care; for he pictures nature in disorder, with which the study and choice of words is inconsistent. This is the proper wit of dialogue or discourse, and consequently of the drama, where all that is said is to be supposed the effect of sudden thought; which, though it excludes not the quickness of wit in repartees, yet admits not a too curious election of words, too frequent allusions, or use of tropes, or in fine anything that shows remoteness of thought or labour in the writer. On the other side, Virgil speaks not so often to us in the person of another, like Ovid, but in his own he relates almost all things as from himself, and thereby gains more liberty than the other to express his thoughts with all the graces of elocution, to write more figuratively, and to confess as well the labour as the force of his imagination. Though he describes his Dido well and naturally, in the violence of her passions, yet he must yield in that to the Myrrha, the Byblis, the Althea of Ovid. For as great an admirer of him as I am, I must acknowledge that, if I see not more of their souls than I see of Dido's, at least I have a greater concernment for them : and that convinces me that Ovid has touched those tender strokes more delicately than Virgil could. But when action or persons are to be described, when any such image is to be set before us, how bold, how masterly are the strokes of Virgil! We see the objects he represents us within their native figures, in their proper motions but we so see them as our own eyes could never have beheld them, so beautiful in * Spelt paranomasia by Dryden; a pun, or, as then commonly called, a clinch, ; |