Volume 9 — ASTRÆA REDUX. A POEM.
Reading edition
After so many years of civil war and domestic tyranny, the Restoration, an almost hopeless event, established the crown upon the head of the lawful successor, and the government upon its original footing. Dryden, among the numerous, I had almost said innumerable, bards,[31] who celebrated, or attempted to celebrate, this surprising event, distinguished himself by the following poem, to which he has given the apt name of Astræa Redux, from the hopes of justice and liberty returning with the lawful king.
The tone of praise, which Dryden has adopted, exhibits his usual felicity. There do not here occur any of these rants about the antiquity of the royal line,[32] and the indefeasible right of the lawful successor, which are the common topics of the herd, who offered poetical congratulation to the restored monarch. Dryden rejoices with the chastised triumph of one, that had not forgot what it was to mourn. He looks back, as well as forwards; and it is upon the past sufferings of the people, and of the monarch, that he grounds the hope and expectation of their future happiness. The poet was perhaps sensible, that the claim of loyal merit was rather new in his family and person, and ought not therefore to be expressed with the extravagant colouring of the cavaliers. He ventures indeed upon prophecy, although past experience might have taught him it was dangerous ground. One prediction, however, has been (magno licet intervallo) accomplished to its fullest extent in our own age:
Your much-loved fleet shall, with a wide command, Besiege the petty monarchs of the land.
The poem exhibits the taste which belongs to the earlier class of Dryden's compositions, bearing the same marks of attachment to the stile of Waller and Davenant. Some of the similes are brought out with singular ingenuity. Nothing can be more elegant than the turn he gives to the slow, gentle, and almost imperceptible manner, in which the great change which he celebrates was accomplished:
—— —— While we The effect did feel, but scarce the manner see. Frosts, that constrain the ground, and birth deny To flowers that in its womb expecting lie, Do seldom their usurping power withdraw, But raging floods pursue their hasty thaw; Our thaw was mild, the frost not chased away, But kindly lost in heat of lengthened day.
On the other hand, it is surely unnecessary to point out to the reader the confusion of metaphor, where Virtue is said to dress the wounds of Charles with laurels;[33] the impertinent antithesis of finding "light alone in dark afflictions;" and the extravagance of representing the winds, that wafted Charles, as out of breath with joy. These, and other outrageous flights of wit, have been noticed and blamed by Johnson. I am not certain whether that great critic is equally just, in severely censuring the passage in which there is a short allusion to Heathen mythology.[34] Where the tender, the passionate, or the sublime, ought to prevail, an allusion to classical fiction seldom fails to interrupt the tone of feeling which the author should seek to preserve; but in a poem, of which elegance of expression and ingenuity of device are the principal attributes, an allusion to the customs of Greece, or of Rome, while it gives a classic air to the composition, seems as little misplaced, as an apt quotation from the authors in which they are recorded.
The first edition of this poem is printed in folio by J. M. for Henry Herringman, 1660. It affords few and trifling corrections.