T. S. Eliot and John Dryden: A Study in Relationship

Abstract

T . S. E L I O T A N D J O H N D R Y D E N : A S T U D Y I N R E L A T I O N S H I P DAVID MACAREE University of British Columbia O n e feature of Thomas Steams Eliot’s activity as literary critic, poet, and dramatist on which commentators are generally agreed — however widely they may differ in detail — is the extent of his reliance on what he saw as the living tradition embodied in a number of figures drawn from the artistic heritage of Western Europe whose contributions enriched that continuing intellectual current which flowed on to succeeding generations. Study of their works, in his view, invoked, as he himself said, “not only. . . the past­ ness of the past, b u t. . . its presence.” 1 This tradition he saw as primarily classical Greek and Roman in origin, with infusion of an oriental — mostly Judaic — ■ religious strain that powerfully modified later sensibility through the Renaissance period and into modem times. Contributors to the tradition from Italy, France, and England all came under his critical scrutiny: Dante, Shakespeare and the Jacobean dramatists, John Donne, Baudelaire, and the French symbolist poets like Jules Laforgue may be mentioned because his interest in them has received considerable attention from commentators and critics alike; one such figure, however, has suffered relative neglect: John Dryden. It is almost as though mere mention of this name causes a certain uneasiness, verging sometimes on hostility, among those who have written on Eliot’s literary relationships. In fact, they seem to consider as some sort of aberration their subject’s interest in, and enthusiasm for Charles II’s Poet Laureate. For Dryden engaged his successor’s attention during more than four decades, from the latter’s early references to him in an essay of 1920, “The Perfect Critic,” and a review of Mark Van Doren’s study, The Poetry of John Dryden, in the Times Literary Supplement of 9 June 1921. After this beginning other articles and talks of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s followed, supplemented by extended reference in critical articles continuing into the 1950s and 1960s, with one of his last lectures, in 1961, returning to consideration of Dryden as critic. In all these pieces Eliot dealt with Dryden’s literary attainments as poet, or dramatist, or critic, and in many he laid stress also on the influence that his sevenE n g lish Stu d ies in C anada, xiii, i, March 1987 teenth-century predecessor had on the ages following his, if not on the whole subsequent development of English as a vehicle of expression. The sheer amount of such critical comment is impressive. Not only did Eliot devote a number of essays, addresses, and reviews to Dryden’s work in various genres, he also, on more than one occasion, used his subject’s name as the label for an era in his more general surveys of English literature: for instance in his chapter on Shakespearian criticism that appeared in Harley Granville-Barker’s compilation, A Companion to Shakespeare Studies, as well as in his own collection of 1932-33 Harvard Lectures, The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism. These, however, were by no means the first manifestations of interest in his subject, both having been antedated by his article in the Times Literary Supplement, his preface to the reproduction of the 1668 edition of Dryden’s Essay of Dramatic Poesy (1928), and his BBC talks of 1930 and 1931 published in The Listener. As already mentioned, his earliest extended comment appeared as a TLS review article, an article in which Eliot’s enthusiasm is obvious from its opening remark: “ If the prospect of delight be wanting (which alone justi­ fies the perusal of poetry) we may let the reputation of Dryden sleep in the manuals of literature” (SE 305). Next, this essay became the opening piece in a slim volume published in 1924 under the significant title, Homage to John Dryden, where it was buttressed by a study of Andrew Marvell and another on the metaphysical poets, the essay that, ironically enough, con­ tained the criticism...