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John Dryden

John Dryden (1631-1700) was a celebrated English poet, "glorious John," born in Northamptonshire, of a good family of Puritan principles. He was educated at Westminster School and Cambridge. His first poetic production of any merit was a set of "heroic stanzas" on the death of Cromwell. At the Restoration he changed sides and wrote a poem which he called "Astræa Redux" in praise of the event, which was ere long followed by his "Annus Mirabilis," in commemoration of the year 1666, which revealed at once the poet and the royalist, and gained him the appointment of poet-laureate, prior to which and afterwards he produced a succession of plays for the stage, which won him great popularity, after which he turned his mind to political affairs and assumed the role of political satirist by production of his "Absalom and Achitophel," intended to expose the schemes of Shaftesbury, represented as Achitophel and Monmouth as Absalom, to oust the Duke of York from the succession to the throne.

On the accession of James II, he became a Roman Catholic, and wrote "The Hind and the Panther," characterised by Stopford Brooke as "a model of melodious reasoning in behalf of the milk-white hind of the Church of Rome," and really the most powerful thing of the kind in the language. At the Revolution he was deprived of his posts, but it was after that event he executed his translation of Virgil, and produced his celebrated odes and "Fables".

Wisdom & Quotes

  • Errors, like straws, upon the surface flow;
He who would search for pearls must dive below.
- All for Love, prologue
  • All heiresses are beautiful.
- King Arthur
  • Happy the man, and happy he alone,
He, who can call today his own:
He who, secure within, can say,
Tomorrow do thy worst, for I have lived today.
- Imitation of Horace
  • For heaven be thanked, we live in such an age,
When no man dies for love, but on the stage.
- Mithridates, Epilogue
  • There is a pleasure sure
In being mad, which none but a madmen know.
- The Spanish Friar
  • What passion cannot music raise the quell?
- A Song for St. Cecilia's Day
  • Nor is the people's judgment always true;
The most may err as grossly as the few.
- Absalom and Achitophel
  • Plots true or false are necessary things,
To raise up commonwealths and ruin kings.
- Absalom and Achitophel

Dr Richard Cumberland


Page last modified on Thursday December 23, 2021 11:56:50 GMT-0000