To My Dear Friend Mr. Congreve by John Dryden

Excerpted from an article in Magill’s Survey of World Literature, Revised Edition

First published: 1694 (collected in John Dryden: The Major Works, 2003)

Type of work: Poem

The Work

Although “To My Dear Friend Mr. Congreve” is formally a verse epistle, it is representative also of Dryden’s numerous panegyrics, or poems of praise. Written during his final decade, it demonstrates his inclination to praise younger contemporaries and reflects Dryden’s mastery of the heroic couplet. Readily divided into two sections, the epistle employs two of Dryden’s most important poetic conventions: the conservative metaphor of the temple and the concept of succession, in this poem applied to the kingdom of letters.

In the first part, the poem praises Congreve by placing him within the context of English literary history. While Dryden grants the Elizabethan dramatists transcendent genius, he views their dramas as irregular and crude. The second great period of drama, the early Restoration, brought polish and refinement to the drama, or, in Dryden’s words, better manners, yet this improvement had its price:

Our age was cultivated thus at length,But what we gain’d in skill we lost in strength.Our builders were with want of genius cursed;The second temple was not like the first.

The elegant balance and aphoristic expression of the passage are succeeded by a bold chiasmus and further development of the temple metaphor, celebrating the achievement of a dramatist one generation younger than Dryden:

Till you, the best Vitruvius, come at length;Our beauties equal, but excel our strength.Firm Doric pillars found your solid base;The fair Corinthian crowns the higher space:Thus all below is strength, and all above is grace.

Dryden endows the younger Congreve with the wit and genius of the Elizabethans and the polish and refinement of the Restoration dramatists. The comparison to the Roman architect Vitruvius is followed by another to the youthful Roman general Scipio Africanus to emphasize Congreve’s early achievement.

Before renewing the panegyric in the poem’s second part, Dryden becomes personal and speaks of his own career. Typically, he writes about himself with restraint; the numerous autobiographical passages in Dryden’s poetry and prose reveal more about his reactions to events and less about the events themselves. In writing of himself, he couches his experience within the mythic context of literary succession; having been poet laureate, he had occupied a throne of letters. Writing of his loss of the laureateship, Dryden asserts that he could have been content had the office gone to Congreve. Instead, it went to his old enemy Thomas Shadwell. Despite this anomaly, he continues, Congreve’s merits will elevate him to a throne in the kingdom of letters. Comparing Congreve with Shakespeare, he predicts a long and illustrious career for the youthful dramatist. Dryden, like a deposed monarch, recognizes that his own career is drawing to its close and asks Congreve to defend his memory against attacks that are certain to follow after his death.

The poem stands as an example of Dryden’s generous praise, couched within a mythic context of his own invention. Ironically, Congreve retired from playwriting in 1700, and while his brilliant comedies remain alive today, his dramatic range was limited to the comedy of manners. He lived to fulfill Dryden’s request, leaving a poignant memoir of the poet as a preface to the 1717 edition of Dryden’s dramas.

Bibliography

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