John Dryden
John Dryden was born in the village rectory of Aldwincle near Thrapston in Northamptonshire. His father Erasmus Dryden belonged to a landowning gentry family that supported the Puritan cause and Parliament. The boy lived nearby in Titchmarsh, where he likely received his first education. In 1644 he went to Westminster School as a King's Scholar under headmaster Richard Busby. Busby was a charismatic teacher who also acted as a severe disciplinarian. The school had been re-founded by Elizabeth I and embraced royalism and high Anglicanism during this period. Dryden respected his headmaster and later sent two of his own sons to attend Westminster. He wrote an elegy on the death of his schoolmate Henry Lord Hastings from smallpox. This poem alluded to the execution of King Charles I which took place on the 30th of January 1649 very near the school.
Dryden became England's first Poet Laureate in 1668 after establishing himself as the leading poet and literary critic of his day. He transferred his allegiances to the new government following the Restoration of the monarchy. His work Annus Mirabilis described the English defeat of the Dutch naval fleet and the Great Fire of London in 1666. This lengthy historical poem established him as the preeminent poet of his generation. It was crucial for attaining the posts of Poet Laureate in 1668 and historiographer royal in 1670. He established the heroic couplet as a standard form of English poetry through successful satires religious pieces fables epigrams compliments prologues and plays. Auden referred to him as the master of the middle style that served as a model for his contemporaries and much of the 18th century. Alexander Pope heavily influenced by Dryden often borrowed from him and praised his versification in an imitation of Horace's Epistle II.i.
At around 8 pm on the 18th of December 1679 Dryden was attacked in Rose Alley behind the Lamb & Flag pub near his home in Covent Garden. Thomas Shadwell had hired thugs who attacked Dryden whilst walking back from Will's Coffee House to his house on Gerrard Street. Dryden survived the attack and offered £50 for the identity of the thugs placed in the London Gazette. A Royal Pardon was promised if one of them would confess but no one claimed the reward. His greatest achievements were in satiric verse including the mock-heroic Mac Flecknoe which lampooned the playwright Thomas Shadwell. His main goal in the work was to satirize Shadwell ostensibly for his offenses against literature but more immediately we may suppose for his habitual badgering of him on the stage and in print. This line of satire continued with Absalom and Achitophel published in 1681 and The Medal published in 1682.
In 1694 Dryden began work on what would be his most ambitious and defining work as translator The Works of Virgil published in 1697. The publication of the translation of Virgil was a national event and brought Dryden the sum of £1,400. He translated the Aeneid into couplets turning Virgil's almost 10,000 lines into 13,700 lines. Joseph Addison wrote the prose prefaces for each book while William Congreve checked the translation against the Latin original. Dryden argued that as Latin is a naturally concise language it cannot be duly represented by a comparable number of words in English. He stated that the way to please the best Judges is not to Translate a Poet literally and Virgil least of any other. His final translations appeared in the volume Fables Ancient and Modern published in 1700 which included episodes from Homer Ovid and Boccaccio as well as modernised adaptations from Geoffrey Chaucer interspersed with Dryden's own poems.
On the 1st of December 1663 Dryden married Lady Elizabeth Howard at St Swithin's London. The consent of the parents was noted on the licence although Lady Elizabeth was then about twenty-five. The couple met after 1660 when Dryden began lodging in London with her brother Sir Robert Howard son of the earl of Berkshire. The marriage lasted until his death but there is little evidence about how they lived as a couple. A small estate in Wiltshire was settled upon them by her father. They had three sons: Charles born 1666 died 1704 John born 1668 died 1701 and Erasmus Henry born 1669 died 1710. Lady Elizabeth Dryden survived her husband but reportedly lost her wits after becoming a widow. Although some have historically claimed to be from the lineage of John Dryden his three children one of whom became a Roman Catholic priest had no children themselves.
Dryden died on the 12th of May 1700 and was initially buried in St. Anne's cemetery in Soho before being exhumed and reburied in Westminster Abbey ten days later. He was the subject of poetic eulogies such as Luctus Brittannici or the Tears of the British Muses published in London in 1700 and The Nine Muses. A Royal Society of Arts blue plaque commemorates Dryden at 43 Gerrard Street in London's Chinatown. He lived at 137 Long Acre from 1682 to 1686 and at 43 Gerrard Street from 1686 until his death. In his will he left The George Inn at Northampton to trustees to form a school for the children of the poor of the town. This became John Dryden's School which later became known as The Orange School.
Samuel Johnson summed up the general attitude with his remark that the veneration with which his name is pronounced by every cultivator of English literature is paid to him as he refined the language improved the sentiments and tuned the numbers of English poetry. His poems were very widely read and are often quoted for instance in Henry Fielding's Tom Jones and Johnson's essays. One of the first attacks on Dryden's reputation was by William Wordsworth who complained that Dryden's descriptions of natural objects in his translations from Virgil were much inferior to the originals. However several of Wordsworth's contemporaries such as George Crabbe Lord Byron and Walter Scott were still keen admirers of Dryden. The next major poet to take an interest in Dryden was T.S. Eliot who wrote that he was the ancestor of nearly all that is best in the poetry of the eighteenth century. Eliot also accused Dryden of having a commonplace mind but acknowledged that we cannot fully enjoy or rightly estimate a hundred years of English poetry unless we fully enjoy Dryden.
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Common questions
When was John Dryden born and where did he grow up?
John Dryden was born in the village rectory of Aldwincle near Thrapston in Northamptonshire. He lived nearby in Titchmarsh, where he likely received his first education.
What year did John Dryden become England's first Poet Laureate?
John Dryden became England's first Poet Laureate in 1668 after establishing himself as the leading poet and literary critic of his day. This appointment followed his work Annus Mirabilis which described the English defeat of the Dutch naval fleet and the Great Fire of London in 1666.
Who attacked John Dryden on the 18th of December 1679 and why?
Thomas Shadwell hired thugs who attacked John Dryden whilst walking back from Will's Coffee House to his house on Gerrard Street. The attack occurred at around 8 pm on the 18th of December 1679 in Rose Alley behind the Lamb & Flag pub near his home in Covent Garden.
How much money did John Dryden receive for translating Virgil's works?
The publication of the translation of Virgil brought John Dryden the sum of £1,400. He translated the Aeneid into couplets turning Virgil's almost 10,000 lines into 13,700 lines in a project published in 1697.
When did John Dryden die and where is he buried now?
John Dryden died on the 12th of May 1700 and was initially buried in St. Anne's cemetery in Soho before being exhumed and reburied in Westminster Abbey ten days later. A Royal Society of Arts blue plaque commemorates him at 43 Gerrard Street in London's Chinatown.