Amaryllis; or, the Third Idyllium of Theocritus, paraphras'd The Epithalamium of Helen and Menelaus, from the Eighteenth Idyllium 393 394 The Ninth Ode of the First Book of Horace The Twenty-ninth Ode of the Third Book of Horace; paraphrased in Pindarick Verse, and inscribed to the Right Hon. Laurence, Earl of phoses Pygmalion and the Statue, out of the Tenth Book of Ovid's Metamorphoses 455 Cinyras and Myrrha, out of the Tenth Book of Ovid's Metamorphoses 457 Ceyx and Alcyone, out of the Eleventh Book of Ovid's Metamorphoses 463 Æsacus transformed into a Cormorant. From the Eleventh Book of Ovid's The Speeches of Ajax and Ulysses; from Ovid's Metamorphoses, Book XIII 483 The Fable of Acis, Polyphemus, and Galatea. From the Thirteenth Book Of the Pythagorean Philosophy; from the Fifteenth Book of Ovid's The First Satyr. In Dialogue betwixt the Poet and his friend or Monitor The Second Satyr. Dedicated to his friend Plotius Macrinus, on his INTRODUCTION THE text of Dryden's poems as printed in England, whether in his own time or after his death, has never been in a satisfactory state. There is no edition wholly free from errors, and most editions contain many gross blunders. Only one of the editors has really collated the original editions, and even he seems not always to have compared Dryden's translations with the original works. Badly as Dryden's editors have served him, the author himself is not wholly blameless. It was his misfortune that he could not always see his works through the press. Thus he was in Wiltshire while Annus Mirabilis was printing, and before his return the book had come out and some copies had been sold. The list of errata, for which he found room on a fly-leaf, was so hurriedly made that itself is full of false references. But errors were more often due to Dryden's fault than to his misfortune. That he could be careful in correcting the press he showed in the case of the Epistle to John Driden, a work for which he had a special affection, as the child of his old age and the encomium of his ancient race. But the last of his publications, the very volume which contains this epistle, has, in other poems, some glaring errors of the press. Some of these, and others in other works, were silently corrected in subsequent editions. It needed no Bentley to detect the husband of Eurydice in a line which Dryden allowed to appear in this form : Had Orphans sung it in the neather Sphere. But there are cases in which the true reading may reasonably be a matter of doubt. Thus in Eleonora the original text gives: And some descending Courtier from above Had giv'n her timely warning to remove. The word 'Courtier ', or, as Dryden would have said, the word of 'Courtier', was changed by Broughton into 'Courier', and Todd denounced the original reading as a laughable error of the press'. The original reading is defended by Christie and Dr. Saintsbury, and there is something to be said on either side. In Palamon and Arcite a line in the original appeared as Rich Tap'stry spread the Streets and Flowers the Pots adorn. The earlier editors changed 'Pots' into 'Posts', and, although Dr. Saintsbury prefers the original reading, the passage cited in my note seems to show that they were right. Many of the poems were republished soon after Dryden's death, some in a collection and some in volumes of Miscellanies. Jacob Tonson, who had succeeded Herringman as Dryden's publisher, was also the publisher of these early posthumous editions. Whom he employed to see the books through the press does not appear. The work was not well done, and some of the corruptions which were then allowed to defile the text have appeared in every later edition. The first editor with a name was Thomas Broughton, who published two incomplete collections, one in 1741, the other in 1743. Broughton introduced new errors, and some of these have held their ground in the published texts. In 1760 four volumes of the poems appeared under the editorship of Samuel Derrick. Derrick, who in his poetical character is the louse of Johnson's famous epigram, as an editor is styled by Dr. Saintsbury' the accursed'. What right Dr. Saintsbury had to throw this stone will appear hereafter. That Derrick deserved it is unhappily true. In his edition the game of corruption went merrily on. Not satisfied with accidental errors, Derrick took upon himself to alter Dryden's text, and always altered it for the worse. From his volumes other editions were printed, and in spite of the boasts of later editors, some of his abominations are still printed as the genuine work of Dryden. In 1808 appeared Walter Scott's complete edition of the works of Dryden. It was unfortunate that the great poet and man of letters hardly suspected the existence of corruption in the text. It is astonishing that he should have passed many passages which on the face of them did not make sense. Nor was there much improvement in the Wartons' edition of 1811. To one of the poems in it were appended some notes by Todd, a textual critic of some capacity, who corrected a few, but only a few, of Derrick's mistakes. Mitford's Aldine edition of 1832 is bad, and was hardly made better by Mr. Richard Hooper, who claims to have revised it in 1866 and again in 1891. Mr. Richard Bell's edition, which appeared in 1854, was quite in Derrick's manner, and added many fresh errors to a corrupt text. And so the melancholy tale goes on. The first, and, down to the present century, the only serious attempt to present a correct text was made by William Dougal Christie. His edition, which does not contain the translations from Greek and Latin poets, appeared in 1870. Christie had zeal and industry, and was a man of undoubted ability. He was at the pains to consult and in some cases to collate the original editions. That his collation was not as complete or as accurate as he implies is evident from the errors which he allowed to stand in his text. In fact, some evil spirit seems to have dogged the steps of Dryden's editors, and may well raise apprehension in one who ventures to add himself to their number. Some of the blunders in Christie's text are so absurd, so ruinous to sense, that it is hard to see how he passed them even without a collation, and inconceivable that he could have left them if once a collation had called his attention to them. As an editor he had two faults: he was not sure in judgement, and he seems to have had no ear. When Dryden wrote If they, through Sickness, seldom did appear, Christie remarks that 'Theatre' was pronounced with the a long. An Universal Metempsychosis, Christie gives a stress both to the penultimate and to the antepenultimate of the last word in the line. From a line in The Wife of Bath's Tale, But, not to hold our Proffer in Scorn, a syllable has undoubtedly dropt out. Christie filled the gap with a word which gives no sense. This lack of judgement sometimes makes it doubtful whether he carelessly followed an error of his predecessors, or actually misunderstood his text. An example may be found in the line from Cymon and Iphigenia which is cited below. Christie's want of ear, very manifest in his notes, made him overlook some errors which would certainly have roused Dryden's indignation. Scott's edition was republished in 1883 and the following years as revised and corrected by Dr. George Saintsbury. However well Dr. Saintsbury may have deserved of Dryden in other respects, it must be regretfully declared that his work on the text was worse than useless. It is true that in some of the poems his text is a great improvement on Scott's, but the improvement is due, not to Dr. Saintsbury, but to Christie. Dr. Saintsbury acknowledges to some extent his obligation to his predecessor, but he claims to have made a collation of the original editions. It |