THE SHORT OXFORD HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE

of a London slum, is enthroned bearing ‘a
[p. 260]
mighty Mug of potent Ale’ instead of an orb and, with a due sexual innuendo, a copy of his play Love’s Kingdom
instead of a sceptre as a symbol of his impotent claims to literary worth.
Dryden’s two philosophico-religious poems of the 1680s, Religio Laici, or A Laymans Faith (1682) and The Hind
and the Panther (1687), are public defences of the authority of a Church rather than, as they might have been in the
hands of earlier seventeenth-century poets, explorations of the springs of devotion or private faith. In the Preface to
the earlier poem Dryden describes himself as one who is ‘naturally inclin’d to Scepticism in Philosophy’ though one
inclined to submit his theological opinions ‘to my Mother Church’. The poem sees the Church of England as serenely
fostering ‘Common quiet’ in the face of attacks from Deists, Dissenters, and Papists and it blends within the form of a
verse-epistle theological proposition with satirical exposition. Its striking opening image of human reason as a dim
moon lighting the benighted soul is developed into an attack on those Deists who reject the Scripturally based
teachings of Christianity. As it proceeds, the poem also attempts to demolish both Roman claims to infallible
omniscience and the Puritan faith in individual inspiration, but it ultimately begs the vital question of religious
authority. This question is emphatically answered in The Hind and the Panther, Dryden’s longest poem, written after
his reception into the Roman Catholic Church in 1685. It is a somewhat wordy and unworthy tribute to his new-found
religious security, an allegorical defence of James II’s attempts to achieve official toleration for Catholics in a
predominantly Anglican culture and an attempt to prove the validity of Catholic claims to universal authority. It takes
the form of a beast fable in which Quakers appear as hares, Presbyterians as wolves, Romans as hinds, and Anglicans
as panthers. It is obliged to resort to the absurdity of a good-natured conversation about the mysteries of religion in
which a hind actually attempts to persuade a panther, and to the incongruity of casting the Christian God as the
nature god, Pan. Personal conviction and a certain political urgency coincided again in Britannia Rediviva, the
propagandist public ode written to celebrate the birth of James II’s heir in June 1688. Dryden’s poem rejoices in the
fact that the Stuart family has at last produced legitimate male issue and it attempts to brush aside the protests of ‘th’
ungrateful Rout’ who both doubted that the child was truly the King’s and were profoundly uneasy at the prospect of
an assured Catholic succession to the throne.
The birth of James’s son was not received with universal rejoicing in his kingdom, bringing as it did a longdrawn-out
constitutional crisis to a head and immediately precipitating the overthrow of an alienated regime and with
it the Poet Laureate’s pious hopes. With the abrupt end to his official career in 1688, Dryden’s sense of a patriotic
mission for English poetry was forced to take a new and less overtly political turn. Apart from his translations and his
libretto for Henry Purcell’s extravagant ‘Dramatick Opera’ King Arthur, or The British Worthy (1691), two late lyric
poems - A Song for St Cecilia’s Day, 1687, and Alexander’s Feast; or the Power of Musique. An Ode, in Honour of St
Cecilia’s Day
[p. 261]
(1697) - proved of particularly fruitful impact on the eighteenth century. Both poems contributed to the fashion for the
irregular stanzas and verse paragraphs of the ‘Cowleyan’ Ode. More significantly, both later attracted the attention of
Handel, anxious to prove his credentials as a composer resident in England and as a setter of English texts. If in
Britannia Rediviva Dryden had produced the right words for what was soon seen as a wrong and intensely divisive
cause, in his two St Cecilia Odes he provided the occasion for an extraordinary exploration of the potential of
harmony.
Women’s Writing and Women Writing in the Restoration Period
Dryden’s ode ‘To the Pious Memory of the Accomplisht Young Lady Mrs Anne Killigrew, Excellent in the two
Sister-Arts of Poesie, and Painting’ (1686) was, according to Dr Johnson, ‘the noblest ode that our language has ever
produced’. It was remarkable not simply for its intrinsic qualities but also for its celebration of an exceptional woman
artist in a world largely dominated by patriarchal principles, prejudices, and images. Anne Killigrew (1660-85) had
quietly earned a respect as a practitioner of what Dryden significantly styles ‘sister arts’ before her life was cut short
by smallpox. She was the daughter of a well-connected royalist clergyman and the niece of the playwrights Thomas
and Sir William Killigrew. To mention Anne in connection with her theatrical relatives and her famous obituarist is
neither to belittle her art nor to reach out automatically for masculine comparisons but to establish her good fortune in
being born into a cultured family, one which used its social influence in her favour and fostered the flowering of her