That is a kind of aphorism such as Pope made in large quantities in the following age.  It contains a thought, is catchy, quotable, easy to remember; and the Restoration writers delighted in it.  Soon this mechanical closed couplet, in which the second line was often made first,[177] almost excluded all other forms of poetry.  It was dominant in England for a full century, and we have grown familiar with it, and somewhat weary of its monotony, in such famous poems as Pope’s “Essay on Man” and Goldsmith’s “Deserted Village.”  These, however, are essays rather than poems.  That even the couplet is capable of melody and variety is shown in Chaucer’s Tales and in Keats’s exquisite Endymion.

These four things, the tendency to vulgar realism in the drama, a general formalism which came from following set rules, the development of a simpler and more direct prose style, and the prevalence of the heroic couplet in poetry are the main characteristics of Restoration literature.  They are all exemplified in the work of one man, John Dryden.

JOHN DRYDEN (1631-1700)

Dryden is the greatest literary figure of the Restoration, and in his work we have an excellent reflection of both the good and the evil tendencies of the age in which he lived.  If we can think for a moment of literature as a canal of water, we may appreciate the figure that Dryden is the “lock by which the waters of English poetry were let down from the mountains of Shakespeare and Milton to the plain of Pope”; that is, he stands between two very different ages, and serves as a transition from one to the other.

LIFE.  Dryden’s life contains so many conflicting elements of greatness and littleness that the biographer is continually taken away from the facts, which are his chief concern, to judge motives, which are manifestly outside his knowledge and business.  Judged by his own opinion of himself, as expressed in the numerous prefaces to his works, Dryden was the soul of candor, writing with no other master than literature, and with no other object than to advance the welfare of his age and nation.  Judged by his acts, he was apparently a timeserver, catering to a depraved audience in his dramas, and dedicating his work with much flattery to those who were easily cajoled by their vanity into sharing their purse and patronage.  In this, however, he only followed the general custom of the time, and is above many of his contemporaries.

Dryden was born in the village of Aldwinkle, Northamptonshire, in 1631.  His family were prosperous people, who brought him up in the strict Puritan faith, and sent him first to the famous Westminster school and then to Cambridge.  He made excellent use of his opportunities and studied eagerly, becoming one of the best educated men of his age, especially in the classics.  Though of remarkable literary taste, he showed little evidence of literary ability up to the age of thirty.  By his training and family connections he was allied to the Puritan party, and his only well-known work of this period, the “Heroic Stanzas,” was written on the death of Cromwell: