to madness near allied

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To Madness near Allied: Shaftesbury and His Place in the Design and Thought of "Absalom andAchitophel"Author(s): Ruth WallersteinSource: The Huntington Library Quarterly, Vol. 6, No. 4 (Aug., 1943), pp. 445-471Published by: University of California PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3815940Accessed: 22/04/2010 03:17

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To MadnessNear AlliedShaftesburyand His Place in the Design and

Thoughtof Absa/omand zchitophelBy RUTHWALLERSTEIN

HE character of Achitophel is at the center both of Dryden's1 political purpose and of his design in Absalom and Achitophel.To understand Achitophel is to understand the whole spirit ofthe poem; and, on the other hand, to see what part his characterplays in the design of it is to know in what light to read and inter-pret his character. Neither the aesthetic quality nor the thoughthas, however, been fully understood. To increase our understand-ing I propose, therefore, to sketch very briefly the design of thepoem, so as to show the general function in it of the characters,and next to analyze Achitophel and his background in detail.This examinationwill rest, first, upon an analysis of the ideas em-bodied in him, and then chiefly upon a historical analysis of theconcepts implied in the formal portrait of him. But at the sametime, for the particularrelevance of these general ideas to Dryden'sAchitophel, and for an understandingof the color and significanceof them as Dryden wishes them to affect his reader, I shall appealimplicitly to my view of Achitophel's place in the design of thewhole poem. To strengthen that view and to complete it, I shallconsider, besides Achitophel, that other principal "character"withwhich he is so closely integrated, the populace of London.

IIt has been saidrecently that Dryden lacked constructive power,

that he was unable to give form even to Absalom and Achitophel-the story is left hanging in mid-air, one's aesthetic experience isincomplete. Dryden's problem as a poet in this work was closelytied up with its thought. Absalom and Achitophel is an occasional

445


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446 HUNTINGTON LIBRARYQUARTERLYpiece, and, historically, the story could not be "completed." Thatfact conceivably made Dryden's task as an artist the harder.More-over, before he could embarkon his main design and tell his story,he had to establish his political perspective; in the face of pro-found public emotion in the other direction, he had to persuadehis readers that the question of order, the constitutional issue, wasmore significant than the religious issue. But, despite these "occa-sional" handicaps, aesthetically the poem is complete, and not tofeel it to be so is to approach it without understanding Dryden'sartistic aim and method. The design of the poem must not beviewed with hindsight, after we have observed the triumph ofthe Aristotelian conception of plot in The Rape of the Lock andin Tom Jones. It may be more justly seen by looking at Mac-Flecknoe,written some two years prior to it. In that poem, Drydenhad written a seminarrativesatire which effected its purpose notby a formal plot but by bringing together three narrativemotives:first, a burlesque situation, the choosing of a king, with a pageantin retrospect of his descent down the Thames to London, and hiscoronation; second, a formal character of Shadwell; third, as partof the coronation, a burlesque oration which is also a very seriouscomment on Shadwell's place in letters and his style.Of the elements in the design we may consider first the formalportrait, Dryden's first great character portrayal. The importancegiven to it in the poem relates Dryden intimately to literary tra-dition and to the thought of RenaissanceEngland. Though it mayowe something to the French fashion of actual characterportraits,it is of older origin and of a tradition long flourishing in England.This genealogy is made clear by the satiric point of view inMacFlecknoe, and by the use of the characters to develop thatview. Dryden's satire on Shadwell is no mere personal attack.It is the opening campaign in a renewed warfare upon the Dunces.During what one may now reasonably regard as a considerableperiod of forbearance toward Shadwell and his backers, Drydenhad been forming a clear idea of Shadwell as the type of folly, andof duncery in general as a well-defined aberration from reason.The idea of the dunce which Dryden evokes is squarely in thetradition of Erasmus' Praise of Folly, and of the Renaissance


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DRYDEN'S SHAFTESBURY 447thought of which Erasmuss so characteristic nd so influentialan example. n the spreadof the Renaissancedea of the fool, theformal iterarycharacter ad playeda majorpart.Manycharactersin seventeenth-centuryEnglish literaturereveal social attitudesand interests-among them not a few of Overbury's;many aremoralandexemplary, ike most of Fuller's.But the greatmajorityarea literaryembodiment f broad ntellectual nd ethicalattitudesand conceptions,seen from a psychologicalpoint of view; andtheseall revolveaboutthe ideaof rightreasonandwit. Jonson's,Butler's,Earle'sspringto mind asvariedexamples.The definitionand defense of "reason"n society is one of the chief motivesof the literarycharactern England.Moreover, he samething istrue in some measureof the historicalportraits. n the classicalhistorianswho were the patterns or the historicalportraitsof theseventeenthcentury, the conceptionof reason, houghin a moregeneralsense,also had a vitalpart, and it continuedto be a vitalassumption n those English historiansand writers of historicalreminiscencewho made the classicstheir models, though theirportraitswere drawnmore immediately rom experienceof lifethan the literaryportraitsandwere less categorical.Out of suchan intellectualheritageDryden drawshis monarchof the realmsof nonsense.Into the detail of Dryden'sview of the dunce-hisvanity,lack of wit andliteraryskill, andintellectualneptitude-we neednot go; it is enough to note his generalplaceamongthetypes of unreason.

That thiswas Dryden'saimandtradition n hisuse of the char-acter sconfirmed y thelaterportraitwhich he himselfconsideredhismasterpiece-Zimri.1Moreevidenceon the growthand model-ing of that character han we have on the portraitof Shadwellmakesits meaningespeciallyclear. We shall,therefore,considerit briefly.As Mr.de Beerhasshown,2Dryden'sportraitperfectsa sketch'Carl Van Doren, in his John Dryden (I920), has definedthe aesthetictraditionof the characters.E. S. de Beer, in "Absalomand Achitophel: Literary and His-torical Notes," Review of English Studies, XVII, 298-309,has recently given someimportantsource background.2Loc. cit.


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44ra8 HUNTINGTON LIBRARYQUARTERLYof Buckinghamwritten anonymously some years before. But,though the earlier portrait had already dwelt on Buckingham'schangefulness,Dryden makeshim the epitomeof the fool proper,in the Erasmian ense-the man whose mind lacks fixedideas andwhose manners ack fixed purpose,becausehe lacksthat reason,that ethical insight, upon which soundjudgmentand actionmustdepend.By suchtermsas "various," stiff n opinion,""faction"-terms not suggested n the earlierportrait-Dryden gives generalintellectualsignificance o the brilliantpicture of the individual.The universaland typical characterof Dryden's Zimriis all themore striking if, as the late ProfessorKaye suggested,3Drydenowedsomepointsof wit in hisportraito LaRochefoucauld's ure-ly personalportraitof Cardinalde Retz. If Dryden saw that por-trait, he owed to it also a stroke of Shaftesbury,distillingfromLa Rochefoucauld's ne individual he severaltraitswhich fittedhis two men and his two types of fool.To returnnow to the designof MacFlecknoe.The placeof theportrait n that scheme may be understood n its relationto theprincipal eminarrativemotiveof the poem.With a finishedplotin the Aristotelian enseDryden is not concerned.The aesthetictemper of the burlesque ituationand of the characterbecomesclear if we think of these elements n terms of the parallels nRenaissancepainting-parallels ike the great Triumphpaintings,or the group portraits.Examplesof the latter are Rembrandt's"Lesson n Anatomy,"and particularlyhe pictureswith biblicaland ethical import, like Raphael'scartoon of "ElymasStrickenBlind"orlikeLucasCranach's WomanTakenin Adultery,"withits flat, simpleconstructionand its type portraits in whom spirit-ual and intellectualattitudesare so clearly evinced): Christ,thelegal-spirited abbi, hehungrysoldier, heresponsibleity fathers.What such group picturesrequiredwas a severeeconomyin the

3Modern Language Notes, XXXIX, 251. For Buckingham: "II s'amuse a tout,et ne se plalt a rien,"and so on. For Shaftesbury,a negative definition which sug-gested Dryden's positive one: "I1a suscite les plus grands desordres de l'Etat,sans avoir un desseinforme de s'en prevaloir . . . I1a su neanmoinsprofiter avechabilite des malheurs publics pour se faire cardinal."The special relation of thispassageon purposelessmalice to Achitophel-a relation which makes it temptingto think that Dryden had seen it-will be clear if the reader remembers it inconnection with the passagesfrom Cardanthat will be cited later.


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DRYDEN'S SHAFTESBURY 449inventionof thegroup,a lucidconceptionof theintellectualmean-ing of each elementrepresented,and an arrangement r designrich in its own beauty, in variety, contrast,play of light andcolor-or, in the caseof literature, f stylesof expression-butanarrangement lanned,at the same time, primarilyto illuminatethe interpretation f the thought,and to illuminate t by vividembodimentn the characters.The parallelof thesepaintingsex-plainsAbsalomevenmorefruitfully thanMacFlecknoe.For Dry-den'spurpose n Absalom s to contrast wo pointsof view, twogreatpoliticalmovementsor theories,and,in orderto do this, toshow the two great figuresin whom they are embodied-andwhosefortunesareat issue n the actualpolitical ituation-in sucha way that admirationhall be raisedfor Charlesand all that herepresents, corn and disgust for Shaftesburyand his followers.In the center of the poem arethe two sceneswhich presentthecontrastmostvividly:Achitophel'semptation f Absalom,David'sspeech from the throne. Around these scenes are groupedthelesser characters-individual,actual persons yet revealing alsotypicalattitudes owardthe issues nvolved.In these formalpor-traits,Dryden setsbeforeour judgment he ethicalandsocialsig-nificanceof each characterand view, thus makingmanifestthethemeof the whole.4

IIZimri (consideredbriefly above) is a study in raillery,in theliterary raditionof Erasmus swell as in his intellectualradition.Achitophelsaportrait f fargreater cope,drawnwiththe serious-ness which his power and the magnitudeof his evil call for.Dryden'sindebtednesso Milton in many of the lines and tonesof theportrait, ndof thetemptation f Absalom,hasbeenpointedout by Verallin his lectureson Dryden andby Mr. Van Doren.Reminiscences f ParadiseLostbothsuggest hemockepicandre-inforce the parallelbetweenAchitophelandthe rebelangels.ForAchitophel s a rebelangel,whose sin is ambition ooted in pride.

4We may well remind ourselves here that, though ParadiseLost is a formallyconstructed epic plot, it is also deeply influenced by principles of design suchas I have been referring to-the contrastbetween the Deity and Satan,surround-ing, as it were, the story of Adam and Eve.


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450 HUNTINGTON LIBRARY QUARTERLYAnd the central place of pride as the destroyer of reason inmedieval, Renaissance,and seventeenth-century hought cannotbe exaggerated. t is that religiouslytinged conception of pride,rather han the more purely moraleighteenth-century iew of it,which Dryden suggests n the temptation cene: Achitophel is adevil who would destroyall orderto satisfyhis ambition.This is the view of himwhich dominates he generalplot of thepoem and the temptation.But the formalportraitof Shaftesbury,and particularly he lines on great wit, embodyanotheraspectofRenaissance hought, on the loss of reason-an aspectmore in-timately connected with contemporaryhistory and sociopoliticalfeeling thanthe theologicaland ethical conceptof pride. Drydenhad n mind n the conceptionof Achitophel, believe,a deliberateand seriousview of aberrationromreason,which he expectedhisaudience o understand ut which is less immediatelyplainto us.To it, lines I63-I72 offer a neglectedkey.In these lines, following the direct analysisof Shaftesbury'sboldness,sagacity,and turbulence,Dryden proceedsswiftly intothe brilliantpassageon Shaftesbury'smadness.The passagehasbeen implicitly treated by critics as a mere piece of railleryorvituperation,nargumentumd hominem.Butthe conception hatgreat wit is allied to madness s a centraltheme of Renaissancethought,boundup with the views of melancholy,of enthusiasm,andof imagination; nd in its variousdevelopmentst is an indexof changing social, ethical, and psychologicalviews. To clarifythe characterof Shaftesbury, herefore,I propose to sketch thebackgroundof the idea, and in this context to show Dryden'sprobable ources.At the heartof the Renaissanceeligiousandspeculative evivalwas a renewal of psychologicalethics,basedon introspectiveandempirical psychology. And in that renewal the Platonic andAristotelian onceptionof the union of geniusandmadness,neverlost sight of in medicine,developedrapidlyin forms that variedwith the generalvariations f psychology.The idea was


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DRYDEN'S SHAFTESBURY 451For Renaissance sychologywas conditionedandgiven directionby the factsof contemporaryntellectual xpansion ndskepticism,and of socialmisery,andby fearsfor the breakupof traditionalsociety. And the dread of intellectualdoubt and confusion,theforces of misery,andthe fears of chaos,all three, influenced hedevelopment f the theoryof greatwit andmadness.Speculationand observationon the connectionof geniusandmadnesshad twin roots in Plato and Aristotle.Plato had in anumberof passagesdeveloped he conceptionof the divine mad-ness which possessesmen at the height of contemplationor ofpoetic creation.This madnessPlotinushad taken to signify themysticalexperience.5 icino, in his commentary,had in turn in-terpreted he passage n Plotinusas describing he steps from thesensual o the philosophical r religious ife. The divinemadnessmightthereforebe regardedas mysticalor as ecstaticexperience,or simply as religiousgenius.Equally currentwas the view ofpoetic geniusas a divinemadnessor inspiration,houghperhapsthe view was most often acceptedto mean, as RichardWilleslimitedit in his defenseof poetry,6simply the mind workingatits greatest ntensity.The poeticconceptionwas, however,ratheraffectedby the moregeneraldevelopment hanaffecting t. Withthe religiousrevivalandthe renewalof Platonismn the late fif-teenth century and in the sixteenth,the conception of divinereligiousmadness s a pervasiveassumption, ven when not ex-plicit. However, the conception of the relation of genius tomadnessowes to Aristotle the psychologicaland physiologicalformwhich chieflydeterminedts development.Aristotle'sapproach o the problemwas purely empiricalandphysiological.Accepting as facts the same phenomenawhichPlatoaccepts,he asksin the firstproblemof the thirtiethgroupof problems(those connectedwith Prudence,Intelligence,andWisdom) why all who have become eminent in philosophyor

5See Ennead VI, Bk. 7, and Mr. Whittaker's comment on it in his The Neo-Platonists (I9oI).6Ricardi Willei Poematum Liber ad Guilielmum Bar. Burgerleium ('574). Itmust, I think, be regardedas only a small factor in the more serious conceptionof divine inspiration.


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452 HUNTINGTON LIBRARYQUARTERLYpolitics or poetry or the arts-and he includes such minds asEmpedocles, Plato, Socrates, and Herakles-have been subjectto fury, epileptic diseases,and in general to atrabilioustendenciesand disorders. His answer rests upon the hypothesis of the humors.On that basis he argues from the parallel observable in the in-fluence of wine. A measured quantity of wine enkindles andintensifies the powers of the mind; excess oversets it. So in nature,since bodily function works by heat, a tendency to the pre-dominance of black bile approaching the region of the intellectintensifiesthe power of the mind. The effect of the presence of theblack bile depends upon the individual temperamentand upon theamount of the bile and the conditions of its intensity or excess.An atrabilious temperament is thus conducive to genius; a mannot normally a poet may, with an oversupply of bile sufficient toproduce madness, become a poet at the same time; and super-abundance of black bile in those already atrabiliousaccounts forsibyls, soothsayers, inspired persons. Aristotle's analysis of theoperation of black bile covers the full range of its healthy anddisordered activity-all the way from the creative mind and themystical temperament to what we should call pathological de-pression and to suicide. One important manifestation of melan-choly occurs with regard to facing dangers. If a temperament iscold when fear comes, the fear is rendered worse; if hot, fearreduces the overheated temperament to a moderate condition andvanishes. Aristotle, we note, lists three aspects of genius boundup with melancholy: philosophical (which later becomes identifiedwith religious genius), poetic, and political (which he seems toillustrate in the form of courage).

It is in the political aspect that the germ of Dryden's Achitophelis manifestly present. But in reality the explanation of Dryden'stone and import, so different from those of Aristotle, is to be foundin the whole complex and its intervening development in theRenaissance. Before we consider that development as a whole,however, let us look at two accounts of genius and madnesswhichwere likely to have been among Dryden's actual sources. Theyclearly illustrate the change though they do not fully explain it.In Burton'sAnatomy of Melancholy, the whole complex appears,


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DRYDEN'S SHAFTESBURY 453but with the emphasis n melancholyratherthanon genius.Thepassage n Burtonthat is usuallyreferredto in commentaries nDryden7simply records a large variety of views as to whethergreatwit is causedby naturalmelancholyor by melancholyadust.The following passage,however,dealswith the influenceof thehumors n general:

Laurentius .. thinks this kind of melancholy,... to be that whichAristotlemeant, when he saidmelancholymen of all othersare mostwitty, which causeth many times divine ravishment,and a kind ofenthusiasmus,which stirreth them up to be excellent Philosophers,Poets, Prophets, &c....If it arisefrom choler adust,they are bold and impudent,and ofa more harebraindisposition,apt to quarreland think of such things,. . . furious, impatient in discourse, stiff, irrefragable, and prodigiousin theirtenets;and, if they be moved, mostviolent, . . Arnoldus adds,starkmadby fits, they sleep little, . . . (Guianerius) in their fits yozeshallhearthemspeakall mannerof languages, . . Avicenna and someof his adherents will have these symptoms, . . . to proceed from theDevil, ... but mostascribe t to the humour; .. Cardan,de rerum var.lib. 8. cap. IO, holdsthese men of all othersfit to be assassinates,old,hardy, fierce, and adventurous, o undertakeany thing by reason oftheir choler adust. This humour,saith he, prepares them to enduredeath tself,andallmannerof torments,with invinciblecourage, . . heascribesthis generosity, fury, or ratherstupidity, to this adustionofcholerandmelancholy:but I taketheserather o be mador desperate,than properly melancholy:for commonly this humour,so adust andhot, degeneratesnto madness.8Burton s closerto Drydenthan is Aristotle.His gatheringup ofmanythreads,withoutselectionor criticalanalysisof them,leaves,however,a confusedandinconsistent iew. Speakingof greatwitin the formof poetry,religion,prophecy,he still takesa favorableview toward melancholy and madness;but his deprecatingan-guageandtone in speaking f theunmanageableoldnessof melan-choly mightwell be the suggestionwhich touched off Dryden'simagination nd gave him his concept of politicalmadness.This part of Burtondependschiefly on JeromeCardan,and

7Pt. I, Sec. 3, Mem. 3.8Pt. I, Sec. 3, Mem. i, Subsec. 3.


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454 HUNTINGTON LIBRARYQUARTERLYvery likely Dryden, following the clue given by Burton (if theolder writer were not already known to him), tumed to Cardan.

In Cardan's De rerum varietate there is a group of reflections,all within a very few pages of each other, containing not only thepassage on boldness but many of the other elements of Dryden'sportrait of Shaftesbury. The passage is chiefly on politics and onenvironmental influence in the development of character. For,though Cardan'ssubject is medicine and science, he is keenly awareof the nothingness of the world, of the social disordersand suffer-ings of his day, and of the dangers of chaos. Raising the questionwhy many who lack philosophy yet bear great ills with equa-nimity, he attributestheir strength to atrabilis, which, when it ragesand occupies the highest stronghold of the mind, throws the mindfrom its station. Thus atra bilis makes us dare many things andenables us to undergo flagitia. Following the thread of this sug-gestion he is led on presently to speak of the opera mirabilia ofmelancholy in general, and in particular, among other effects, ofthe affections of the soul in those who do evil without hopeof advantage:amentes . . Ex corporevero initiumducunt, ab humorequodam quifex est sanguinis:atquehic eademfovet ex quibusetiamoritur, metus,cogitationes, supe[r]stitiones,ieiunia, labores; ex omnibus autem hisoritur. Sed idem praeterhaec facit tolerantiamcruciatuum,& futurapraevidere:quod etiamtestaturAristoteles.Sed &daemones llisviden-tur, ac illudi ab his se existimant.Sani vivunt . . Mirum est quantamhabeant n tormentispatientiam.9Such men would be great soldiers if their boldness equaled theirendurance.For insaniacears,hominema totastultitiaredimit.Onmen in that condition, Cardan proceeds, fear of punishment can-not act as a deterrent; and though, as not in the ordinary sense

9Bk. VIII, cap. 40, pp. 148 ff., in Hieronymi CardaniMediolanensisPhilosophiac Medici Celeberrimi Operum Tomus Tertius. That madnessdrives out reason-able fear was in more general terms a widely held conception, based doubtlesson some observed fact, as well as on rationalizingtheory. Kittredge has pointedout that Shakespeare, n Antony and Cleopatra,used this thesis, through Eno-barbus, n order to interpretAntony's conduct in the battles of the last two acts.Dryden, in his play, ignores that concept, concerning himself with softer motives.


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DRYDEN'S SHAFTESBURY 455moral agents, they ought to be exempt from punishment,yet,asthey areaccessible o no influenceof reason, hey aredangerousto the stateandshould be executedforthwith.

Afterconsidering ther,morefavorablemirabilia f melancholy,Cardan oesonto say hatthegiftsof melancholy renothereditary:sonsmaydegeneraten eithermentalorbodilyquality, acking hatmelancholyandtenuity of spiritswhich created heirfather'swit.One aspectof Cardan's old men is obviouslyat oddswith thecase of Shaftesbury-for "sanivivunt."But severalpages later inCardan s the clue to a moral nterpretationf Shaftesbury'swornphysique.Leavingthe questionof melancholyand going on tospeakof theills in general hatflesh s heir to, Cardandeploresmenunhappythroughthe gifts of nature.Particularlywretched arethose "quorum orporaab animisdiscordant, elutanimusegregiusin infirmocorpore,qui seipsumarrodit." n the next paragraph,with thatengaginghabit of associativedigressionwhich is partofCardan'srust in the imagination,he is led to speculatewhetherthere be pigmies.YFinally, a reflectionof Cardan's n the populace s noteworthybecauseof its placeamongthe otherreflections ustcited. What-everin humannature,Cardan ays,dependson law andcustom sviolentandsubject o motion; orhumanaffairsncreaseperpetuallyby motion,and fall spontaneously y the motionof others.Hencethestupidandunskilled repreferredo thebetter,sincethe crowdyields to motionaswood to the ax."Imperiumnim est vulgus,&omneinsensileceditviolentiae."It is not with Shaftesbury'sharacter lone but with his leader-ship of the populace hat Dryden is concerned.That fear of thepopulaceand of the actual disordersof contemporaryEuropewhich evidentlyunderliesCardan'shought in the passage romwhich I have drawn-a fear which explains he warping in him

'OApassagefrom Fuller'slife of Alva, in The Holy and Profane State, has alsobeen suggested as giving Dryden a hint for the lines on the pigmy body. Alva"was one of a lean body and visage, as if his eager soul, biting for anger atthe clog of his body, desired to fret a passagethrough it." Dryden might wellhave known both Fuller and Cardan.See also my earlier suggestion that he mayhave owed something, in this portrait, to La Rochefoucauld's character of Car-dinal de Retz.


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456 HUNTINGTON LIBRARYQUARTERLYof Aristotle's point of view-is also Dryden's fear; and, suggestiveas Cardan is in giving us the materialon which Dryden's imagina-tion played, we cannot understand the full force of Dryden'sAchitophel in the light of the single danger of melancholy depictedby Cardan.The portrait must be seen as part of the whole viewof reason with which Aristotle's concept and the idea of melan-choly had become entwined. To comprehend the full scope ofDryden's meaning we shall have to turn, therefore, from particularsources to the broader evolution of Aristotle's idea in the Renais-sance and to the more general history of the conception of melan-choly. In them is unfolded that pattern of social and intellectualfeeling which gives Dryden a tone so different from Aristotle, fromBurton, and from Cardan as well.1'

IIIIn the wide complication and evolution of Aristotle's idea, one gen-eral fact of Renaissance psychology comes constantly into play.Plato interpreted the divine madness in terms of psychologicalethics and metaphysics. Aristotle interpreted it in terms of purelyphysiological psychology; and thereby it became involved withthe whole medical and psychological tradition of the humors. InItalian neo-Platonic thought and in religious thought in general,the conception of the humors was reintegrated with spiritual orhumanistic psychology; this psychology had now, however (likethe more comprehensive issue of free will), a physiological sub-stratum. One-finds the idea of the union of great wit and madnessbound up, in its evolution, with a wide range of attempts to inter-pret the two aspects of man's nature-attempts ranging from thecrudest, most mehanical, and incoherent dualism, to sensitive andimaginative ethical insights. Broadly in humanistic psychology,which conceived of man's personality as an organization of verycomplex elements directed, when in a sound state, toward ideal

l"On the questionof inspirationor enthusiasm,Cardan'sview has severalaspects.He was himself a vitalist and set great store by ecstasy-thought that, with prac-tice, he might experience it as frequently and as readily as :the Indians. But, onthe other hand, he is the source cited by Reg:inaldScot for an instance of a poorservant who was redeemed from the belief in his wizardry and powers ofprophecy-and from execution-by a feeding up which dispelled his melancholy.


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DRYDEN'S SHAFTESBURY 457ends,the ideaappeared s a belief in a connectionbetweenvision,intellectualandartisticgenius,andpolitical courage,and an atra-bilious temperament.12But in the medicaltradition,melancholyappeared,quite differently, n associationwith commonmadnessandparticularlywith everysort of delusion.The melancholy em-perament eemedtherefore, n one view, as desirable;n another,as greatly to be feared. And as the attitude toward melancholychangedin psychologistsand ethicalwriters,the idea of melan-choly as a pathologicalcondition infected and confusedthe ideaof the atrabilious r melancholyas a normaltemperament.'3

In a simple humanistic orm, the Platonic-Aristotelianoncepthad evidentlywide currency, n the belief, first,that a melancholytemperaments conduciveto that play of wit, that energy whichis no less necessary han judgment o creativework, and, secondly,that seriousness s the condition of the most searchingwisdom.Barton Holyday, who probably representsa typical universityopinion,expresses he first view in his Technogamia r The Mar-riagesof the Arts,a comedy of I6I8. Of the four humorswhichare the attendants f the arts,Melancholico s Poeta'sman; and inthe final marriageof Poeta and Historia and the acceptanceof

l2Ficino, for instance, in his Vita Samarefers the passage in Plato's Timaeusconcerning the mind feeding on the contemplationof the divine to the physiolog-ical interpretationwhich he says all doctors accept. But he regards the concentra-tion of melancholy as probably arising from the intensity of the soul's effort inwithdrawing from the body. (De Triplici Vita [Florence(?), I4go(?)].)1'0ften the two ideas lay side by side without discrimination.Burton juxtaposesPlatonic statements and the purely medical tradition. Levinus Lemnius, in his DeHabitu et Constitutione Corporis, as translated by Thomas Newton in TheTouchstone of Complexions (158I), gives the usual histories of melancholydelusion and the many evil effects springing from the predominance of themelancholy temperament. But, he goes on to say, "they whose melancholy iswith heate qualified . . . have good wits and sharp judgements . . . as thoughenjoyned to some divine instinct or notion." Pontano in his De Rebus Coelestibus,discussingatra bilis as the temperamentcreatedby Saturn,notes that if it is fixed itmakes men keen of mind and proficient in the arts. (Bk IV, cap. 6.) Later, in

discussing the heating of atra bilis under Jupiter and Mercury, he describes thevaried effects as Aristotle had done by the parallel of wine. Greatnessin almostall functions of life-philosophy, poetry, public affairs-he attributes to theenkindling of this humor, "whence it was said by Seneca and has become aproverb that there is no genius without some kind of madness."(Bk. VI, caps. 7and 8.) Seneca had in fact said that even all great minds have some capacity forplayful folly.


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458 HUNTINGTON LIBRARYQUARTERLYPoeta nto a dignifiedplace in society by Ethicusand Polites (whoareviceroysof Metaphysicus),Melancholico, longwith Musicus,is for his "ingenuity"reed from servitudeandmade "joint-fellowwith ourselves." n the charactersof Wye Saltonstall'sPicturaeloquentes (I63 I), the melancholyman is depictedas the wisestmemberof society. But Holyday is clearly defendingmelancholyagainstattack.And by I635 a radicallydifferentpsychology hasprevailedwith Saltonstall.For in that year the second editionofhis work containsa pictureof the gay manwhosepower of railleryis far superior o the expostulationsf the melancholyman in rea-soningwith a friendandfar moreeffectiveas a cementof society.'4We cannot consider all the complex intellectualand socialdevelopmentswhichwere responsible or thatchange.But amongthem the developmentn the Renaissance f the theory of melan-choly itself, in its emotionaland ethicalsignificance, nd then thereaction againstthat development,played a largepart.The theme of melancholy,both as a normaltemperament ndattitudeand as a disordered ondition, s so deeply meditatedbythe Renaissance, ndthe observations n it by psychologist,doctor,religionist, dramatist, rtistare so numerousand often so sensitiveand acute, that one must assume, believe, that the fierce intel-lectualconflictandconfusionof the time, andthe painfuland bitterpoliticaland socialconditions,not only produceda deep sense ofthe nothingnessof the world and madethe "mystical" empera-ment unusuallyself-conscious,but also caused a large incidenceof melancholyand depressivedisorder.These facts were utilizedand alsointensifiedby the religious ife of the Renaissance.Melan-choly was an instrument or renewed meditationde contemptumundi, for renewed concentrationon self-examination nd onmystical religion.In mid-century,Henry More, though he wasas keenly awareas anyonein his time of the general dangersofexcessivemelancholyand of inordinatepossessionby passion,andasperceptiveas Burtonof the dangersof religiousmania,regardedhis own tendency to melancholyas a most fruitful source of

14I haveseenonly this secondeditionof Saltonstall,n which both charactersappear.


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DRYDEN'S SHAFTESBURY 459religious tenderness.'5To that developmentof melancholy thePlatonic view of the divine madnesscertainlycontributedmuch;but probablymoreimportantwasthe Christian mphasis pontherestlessnesswhich is the inevitableportion of a soul embodied nthisworld.The meditatiomelancholiaeecameamongneo-Platonists,here-fore, a special form of contemnptus ndi-a form of whichNicholasBreton'sMelancholyHumours16 s a beautifulexpressionin English.Melancholy s the inevitablerestlessnesswhich mustarise n the humansoulwhen passionhas diseased he imaginationandwhen reasonsbetrayedo thelife of theappetites.Melancholyis at once, to somedegree, the inevitablecondition of mortal ifeandthe fruit of surrendero the world; andat the sametime it isthe sourceof religiousawakening.Of thatview Boethius'Consola-tionsseemedto be a greatexample,andinnumerable xamplesofit in the formof reflectionson the uses of adversity ill sixteenth-and seventeenth-centuryiterature.Melancholy rom guilty con-science was regardedas a specificform of remorse,even by thosewho had the disease n mind.'7As such,it wasa commonargumentfor the religious ife.It was in this last view of melancholy hat there arose a tragicabusewhich did much to turn the tide of thought againstmelan-choly. For crude and insensitivemen responsible or religiousguidance,and also men suffering from depression, onfusedthetendency o pathologicalmelancholywith repentance ndtherefore

151nhis EnthusiaswusTriumphatushe always qualified his attackupon the falseenthusiasm of the enthusiastic sects by an insistence on the significance of trueecstasy.16London, i6oo. The volume was thought by Ben Jonson, it will be remembered,to be a just picture of human life, but not likely to be readily understood. Jonsonin one of his own poems had to lament that all gravity and self-questioning werein danger of being dismissed as melancholy (the disease).'7Levinus Lemnius offers amusing evidence of the various possible approachesto the matter. In his Touchstone of Complexions, he speaks of the disease as aform of remorse.In anotherbook (cited by G. F. Brett in his History of Psychol-ogy, II, I40) he takes a purely physiological view, pointing out that conscienceis more active in the morningand that men of physical occupationare less subjectto conscience than their betters.


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460 HUNTINGTON LIBRARYQUARTERLYencouragedt.Burtonaffordsabundantestimony o theprevalenceof the fixationof melancholy n religiousmadness,and the periodteemswith confessional amphlets f thetough-minded, hichmustbe regardedby theskeptical atheras caserecords n thehistoryofmanic-depressiveisorderhanasreligiousdocuments.'8 he failureto distinguishhe manicphaseandits impregnaionwith religiouscontent was certainlya chief contribution o inducingreligioushysterian people of littledisciplineandshallowreligious raining.Such confusionand such abusebrought a quickreactionfrommen of humane piritand wide experience,who saw the sufferingand the unrestwhich arosefrom the failure to recognizemelan-choly as a disease.John Wilkins in 1597 and RichardBaxter ni6 o, for instance,definewith broadcommonsensethe distinctionbetweenmelancholy,as the term had been popularizedn manydiscussions,ndrepentance; ndthey insist,with a genialhumanitywhich makesclear to us why in the end the abuseof melancholytook away the use of it, on the normalcharacterof the truestrepentance.'9 he significanceof melancholy,n itS deepermean-ing as the tragicsenseor as a contemplation f the seriousness ndtransiency f life,neverwholly died, andYoung'sNight Thoughtsillustrates he recurrence f it, in a sentimentalorm, as a renewedsearchfor emotion.But the abuse of melancholy,and the protestagainstthat abuse,were importantelements in establishing hedominant rust in cheer and in the socialsense,which prevailednthe laterseventeenthcenturyand which Shaftesbury umsup, inhisLetterConcerningEnthusiasm,whenbe says that we areneversounfitto thinkof religionaswhen we are n adversityor ill health,underafflictionor disturbance f mind-that underthese condi-

lsHelen White, English Devotional Literature (Prose), 1600-164o (I93I), con-tains abundant documents. The analysis of erring imagination m such cases byGerrard Winstanley, in mid-century, is a signal witness to the firmness withwhich Platonic psychology was still held and to the wide diffusion of it.'9The passage from Wilkins' sermon is cited by Sidney Thomas in ModernLanguage Notes, LVI, z62. The taskof the psychiatristwas evidently a heavy partof Baxter's pastoral care. In Bk. II of The Saints EverlastingRest he states thatin many gracious souls the act of repentance takes place so quickly that miseryis instantly forgotten. in the sense of mercy; and in Bk. III he devotes a longpassage to the difficulty of persuadingthe melancholy that they are sick ratherthan repentant.


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DRYDEN'S SHAFTESBURY 46Itionswe cannot hinkof it in goodhumorandwith calmof mind.20Baxterand Wilkinsweredealingn rationalermswith the long-recognizedreligiousproblemof accidie. And the intellectualnolessthanthe ethicalaspectof accidietook on freshurgencyin theRenaissanceand no doubt helped to bring the reactionagainstmelancholy.The confusedand inconsistentargumentsn whichthe Red Cross Knight rationalizeshis despairof salvationwellillustrate he mentalconfusionwhich accidiebrings o the personallife. The sameexperienceof accidiewas appliedas well, in theRenaissance,o the broaderproblemsof skepticismand religiousdivision.When Gianfrancesco ico, in his treatiseon the imagina-tion,pityinglyrefersthe skepticism f hisageto the deceptionsofthe imagination, oubtlesshe impliesalso to some extentthat theevilsof melancholynducethe temperamentn which the imagina-tion was particularly ctive.Important,however, as was the problemof balance n the in-dividualife in determiningmen'sattitude owardmelancholy, heproblemsof ecclesiasticalndsocialorderwere evenmorepower-ful in turningmen'smindsagainstmelancholy n any sense.Tragicsocialproblems adbeenamong hechiefincentives o thereligiousrevival.And the social, ecclesiastical, nd politicalviews of theenthusiastic ects gave to the idea of religious nspirationn theprivateindividualand to melancholy,as that which fosteredit,a new aspect.Since in medievaland Renaissancehought a justsociety was to be the fruit of men'sspiritual ife-the necessaryoutcome of every man'spersonalrelationto God-and since atthe same time an orderedsociety was the necessaryconditionof the individualspiritual ife, the primaryformulasfor orderwerereligiousandpsychological.When,therefore, ertain ormsofreligiousdevelopmented to disorder, he formulafor criticizingthem was likewisepsychological.When in dissentinggroupsthedoctrineof individualnspiration verflowed nto a cry for multi-form freedoms,even men of religiousintensity recognizedthedangersof the divinemadness.Enthusiasmi,hich hadbeen a gen-eraltermfor the highest ormof contemplation,s now applied o

20Citedby Oliver Elton as a typical view, in his essay on "Reasonand Enthu-siasm,"n EssaysandStudiesby Membersof the EnglishAssociation,VoLX (I924).


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462 HUNTINGTON LIBRARYQUARTERLYdirect and unmediated inspiration in the individual among theenthusiastic sects. Ben Jonson and John Donne are among earlyEnglish writers who decry enthusiasm as leading to ecclesiasticaland political chaos.

Such men distinguish between absorption in God and self-deception. Others, whose rational temper leads them to view withdistrust mysticism and passionate religion in any form, reinterpretthe psychological data and condemn enthusiasm utterly,21trainingtheir guns especially on melancholy. The prevalence of melan-choly humor is responsible for the self-deception-or deceptionby the devil-of enthusiasm. Henry More's attack, through anacute analysis, in his Enthusiasmus riumphatus, f the manic-depressive condition, is directed against that diseased melancholywhich, when something operated to seal the mind, filled the imag-ination with deceiving images and was thereby the cause of thefalse enthusiasm which was destroying the state.22Thus the wholeonslaught againstenthusiasm s centered upon melancholy. And thegeneral opinion which prevailed throughout the century is wellsummed up by Locke:Hence we see that in all ages men, in whom melancholy has mixedwith devotion, or whose conceit of themselveshas raised them intoan opinion of a greater familiarity with God . .. have flattered them-selves with the persuasion of an immediate intercourse with theDeity . . . This I take to be properly enthusiasm . . . rising from theconceits of a wanned or overweeningbrain.

Enthusiastswere not, however, solely responsible for the attackon melancholy, because it had been cultivated by others as well.A comment by Clarendonon Hampden is a very pregnant witness

21Mr. George Williamson has traced and interpretedmany of the seventeenth-century documents against enthusiasm, in "The Restoration Revolt againstEnthusiasm,"Studies in Philology, Vol. XXX, and Guy Steffanhas recendy shownthe primacy of political considerations n the views of Hobbes and Jeremy Tay-lor, in 'The Social Argument against Enthusiasm (065o-I66o)," in University ofTexas Studies in English ("University of Texas Publications,"No. 4126; i941).For later seventeenth- and eighteenth-century documents, see J. E. V. Crofts'sarticle on enthusiasm, in Eighteenth Century Literature:An Oxford Miscellany(Io0), and Oliver Elton's article, already referred to, on the same subject.

22The Aristotelian tradition is apparent. The zeal which the enthusiast feels isa "natural nebriation," n which the invention is quickened. Political enthusiasmis a special variety.


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DRYDEN'SSHAFTESBURY 463bothto the significance f melancholyasa religiousmotiveamongcertaingroupsof the educated,far into the century,and to thepoliticalconnotationswhich it was to carry.Hampden,Clarendontellsus, was early of jolly conversation,but afterwardretiredtoa morereservedand melancholic ociety.In these views of melancholythe conceptionof the normalhumorhasbeen almost ost in the disease.And, further,the con-tempt of melancholyhas coalesced with a distrustof the imag-ination-a distrust in which the manifold conceptionsof theimagination conceptionswhich in generalenrichedRenaissancepsychology) have withered, while aspects of the imaginationwhich once had been regardedas only diseased,dangerous,andunruly,haveoften come to be acceptedas the norm. This unionwith distrustof the imaginationn partexplains he course of theassaultupon melanch-oly,or when distrust of the imaginationpasses o thosewho areprimarily oncernedwith order,andwiththecontrolsof order,rather hanwith thepersonalife, the attacksupon imagination nd upon melancholycoalesce.23It was the conceptionof the imaginationheld by the religiousthinkersof the Renaissancendby the FlorentinePlatonistswhichwas takenoverby the criticsof the emotionalelement n religion,to give a psychologicalrationalizationo their fear of disorder.In allthe currentpsychologies,he imaginationwas the instrumentby which the mindwas connectedwith the externalworld. Butin the Renaissancepure psychologywas ancillaryto ethics andreligion,andits point of view was determinedby them,for theirends.The obviousconnectionof appetitewith the materialworld,

28The Renaissanceused the term "imagination" n almost as many senses aswe do now. In most humanistic thinkers the signification of the term in anyparticular case depends on the whole nexus of thought in which it appears.Only in one distinct sense, which may be isolated, did a distrust of it develop.As early as St. Augustine, a creative aspect and an evil aspect were juxtaposed.And a man might well be a great defender of the imagination,as Dryden was,and yet distrustthe uncontrolled fancy. The unresolved existence side by side, inSt. Augustine, of a creative and a distrustful view closely parallels the doubleviews I have cited of the theory of art and madness.And his distrustfulview,like others, draws on pathology and on dream data. It will be rememberedthatin the Aristotelian tradition of psychology intellection is phantasy, or notwithout phantasy. On this conception hung Pomponazzi'sdiscussion of the im-mortality of the soul.


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464 HUNTINGTON LIBRARY QUARTERLYthrough magesor senseperceptions,hadled Platoand the Stoicsand theirfollowers o deduce hatthese mageswerewhat ensnaredmen in restlessdesire for thingsand kept them from the happyconcentrationof thought,and that, in the strugglebetween theclaims of long-termand short-termends,the imaginationand itsdesireswere the agentsof short-termends and of deceptionasto value. Moreover,to classicaland early Christianpsychology,the readiestaccesses,next to introspection, o the complexanddeeply hidden movementsof the mind had been abnormalpsy-chology, dreams,andfever. But dreamsand delusionsare alwaysconcrete n theirexpression, ndthey aremost often disorderednrelationto factual experienceor to the waking arrangement fone'slife. Observation f thesedataconfirmed he ascetic schoolof thoughtin isolatingthe workingof consciousnessupon senseintuitionsfrom the processof conceptualthought and discourseand from conscious ethical intention or value judgment.Thefaculty thus isolatedbecame a force of evil, without principleof choice or order n itself.At firstthe ethicalview was not incompatiblewith a recognitionthat the imagination ada fruitfulfunction,of which artwas theinstrument.The fault lay, not in the imaginationtself,but in thesurrender f it to the passionsor in its disease.The primary tagein thought-or, as Ficino put it, the last descendingactivity ofthe soul-the imagination,might by art be orderedand mightserveas the very instrumentof reason n mastering he passions.Much ChristianNeoplatonismmay be summedup in Breton'spoems on melancholy.Passion and appetitehave confused theimagination,and have thereby effected a divorce between thesenses (the never-deceived ecipientsof objectivefacts) and thewits, or understanding the discursiveplay of the mindupon theobjectiveworld). The singulardistinctionof melancholypassionis that it bringsdisgustandrevolt against he other passionsandso effects the firststep in reducingthe imaginationagainto thedomination f reason.24

24This,for instance,is the view of Erasmus,and of Donne, and it is in essencethe view of Swift, playing an important part in his war against Cartesianismandspeculative thought on behalf of the moral nature of man.


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DRYDEN'S SHAFTESBURY 465But, to severerminds,not passionbut the imaginationtself isthe evil force;to yield in any way to the imagination, r to the

physiologicalactors n the unionof body and soulwhichfosteredtheimagination, as madness.Despite heachievementsf Christianart, GianfrancescoPico dellaMirandolawondered whethereventhe ordered magination,rainedto right habit,daredbe trustedor usedbeyondthe bare minimumnecessary o support ife. Andthisview wasacceptedeven by Michelangelo,n his last sonnets.25The junctionof distrustof the imaginationwith fear of melan-choly was aninevitable tep.In the physiologicalandpathologicalinterpretations f psychology which sixteenth-centuryreligionalwayssoughtto integratewith its metaphysical ndintrospectiveinterpretations,xcessiveheatand the blackhumorwere regardedas the stimulants f the imagination.When, therefore, he politicalviews and activitiesof the enthusiastsdirectedattentionagainstthem,distrust f theimaginationndhatredof "melancholy" nitedin takinga socialdirection,and the deludedimagination eemedthe norm.With the distrustof the imaginationwhich was especiallydi-rectedagainstheenthusiasticwasunitedanother, lightlydifferentview,whichgathered n its net not only enthusiastsut the "rascalmany"in general.The Renaissanceegardedoratory as the pre-eminentmeansfor creating a society. They recognized, ndeed,thatthe orator,with hisboundlesspoweroverthe emotions,mightcreate a false society. But one bad physiciandoes not invalidatethe art of medicine;and the imaginations the noble instrumentof social control. As public unrestspread,however, and as theinfluenceof popularpreaching ontributedo the growthof polit-ical consciousness n the multitude, the narrowerview of theimagination egan to prevail n the theoryof eloquenceas well asamong extreme religionists.Imaginationand emotion are con-demnedas centersof disordern the unreasonablemob to whosejudgmentaloneappeals houldbe made.26An Englishtreatiseof

25The change in Michelangelo'sview and in his art are defined by AnthonyBlunt n Artistic Theory in Italy, 1450-1600 (1940).26For documents on the distrust of the imagination in seventeenth-centuryEngland, see Williamson's article previously cited and two articles by Donald


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466 HUNTINGTONLIBRARYQUARTERLYthe mid-seventeenth century illustrates with great precision themannern whichtheshift in pointof view steadily orcedits way,evenin themidstof thegreatLaudian eligiousmovement.ThomasDuncan published n I648 his The Returnsof SpiritualComfort,a correspondence ith Lettice,Lady Falkland, n herspiritual ife.There is muchdoubt,he says,whethersheought at all to seekthe"'sensibleomforts"of religion-the cycle, thatis, of melancholy-repentanceand surrender f the world, and ecstatic assurance fthe Divine Love through religious devotions-not only becausesuch comfortsare less abidingandless profoundthan the imper-sonal and rational ove of God, but alsobecause, f the appealtothe imagination e allowedatall,two evils will follow: individuals,first,will be very open to the allurements f Rome,and then thesects, habituated by such appeals to trust in imagination, willbecome an easy prey to the eloquenceof those who would leadthem into politicalrevolt.Finally,the cause of science contributed ts shareto distrustofthe imagination.The dangerto science of imaginingas one willsis alreadyexplicit n Epicurus,n termswhich suggest that he hadin mnind, erhaps,the special dangers of the melancholy tem-perament."The theory of the union of great wit and madnesswas con-sidered, n connectionwith the whole complexof attitudes havebeen defining,by the widely read Spanish psychologist, JuanHuarte,in a passage lose to Aristotle n physiology but severelyF. Bond: "Distrust of Imagination in English Neo-classicism,"Philological Quar-terly, XIV, 54-69,and "The Neo-classical Psychology of the Imagination,"EnglishLiterary History, IV, 245-64. In the documents cited by Mr. Bond from the laterseventeenth century, the point of view has shifted very much from that of theearlier period in which the lines of the distrust were laid down. Reason andimagination are used in terms of a much narrower rationalistpsychology.

27Pure scientific distrust of the imagination and a humane scientific approachto the abusesof the imagination among the poor played, no doubt, a larger partin the broad general change of outlook than my brief comment would indicate.Reginald Scot's treatmentof melancholy as the cause, in the poor, ill, and under-nourished, of the belief that they are witches is notable. Henry More attributesthe belief in astrology (presumablyjudicialastrology is the abuse he has in mind)to enthusiasmor zeal of invention stimulatedby melancholy.


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DRYDEN'S SHAFTESBURY 467critical of Aristotle'sconcept. Huarte is a vehement empiricist,grotesquelymechanicaln his determinationo separatehe spheresof theology and science, and to establish he operationof Provi-dence throughnaturalcausationand particularlyhe operationofman'smind through the brain and the temperinghumors.HisExairende Ingenios28s generallyconsidereda text on vocationalguidance.Butwhat makesvocationalguidanceso importantn hiseyes, and what determineshis view, is not science itself, but thespectacleof religiousdivisionand socialandpoliticalchaos,spring-ing from the triumphof unreason.His tenth chapter, n whichhis discussion f greatwit and madness ccurs, s devotedto show-ing that the theory of divinity belongsto the understanding,hepractice (sermons, hat is) to the imagination-facultiesnot or-dinarily enjoyed, in high degree, by one man. He begins withextensivepraise, irst,of eloquence,as an art which holds societytogetherby presentingn beautiful ormthe rationalviewswhichphilosophyhas determined,and then of the power of designand ordering which the imaginationpossesses.From this praisehe launches abruptly into a lament for the chaos which hasbeen caused in England, France, and Germany by uncontrolledpreaching, nd ntoa violentattackuponthe imagination nd uponthe melancholyhumor which gives the imaginationts strength.Men of forcible imaginationare hot; they are eaten by pride,gluttony, luxury; and, says Aristotle,they are bad and vicious,abandoning hemselves o natural nclination.Man is the worstof creatures,becausehis wit and imaginationeach him ways todo ill. Yet Huarte n his own violent manner ooks to religionandto a reunifiedchurch for the salvationof society. And, despitehis attack on melancholyand the imagination, e cannot whollyignore Spanishmysticismand Platonism,nor, accordingly,whollycondemn he imagination nd the melancholy emperament.Aftera final vehementassertion hat it is repugnant o natureto find agreat wit (that is, understanding)accompaniedby much imag-ination, he reverseshimself suddenly to state that there may be

28The Examinationof Mens Wits. Translated out of the Spanish Tongue byM. Camillo Camilli.Englished out of his Italianby R. C. (i6I6).


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468 HUNTINGTON LIBRARYQUARTERLYone such in ten thousand. A man of melancholy adust is lecherous,proud, a blasphemer. He lives in a perpetual strife of vice andvirtue. Yet when the melancholy is cooled the faults may growto virtues. Men of melancholy are the best preachers, excel inpersuading and in all matters of wisdom, understanding, imagina-tion. The great example is St. Paul. Huarte's brief recognition ofthe religious genius is, however, quickly subordinated to his senseof the claims of order.

Huarte's tone has much of the color of Dryden's lines. ThatDryden had read him is not improbable. We have no means ofknowing, however, nor is it material that we should. Huarte inany event supplies an analogue which expresses vividly the con-text of Dryden's lines and which indicates how generally theirbackground was likely to be familiar. Other portraits of Shaftes-bury, at this time, accuse him of madness, but only in generalvituperation, using the term madness without special intellectualcontent. Dryden thinks of it in relation to the whole Renaissanceconception of social and political unreason.True, he does not namemelancholy as the cause of Shaftesbury's madness. And his ownmost significant notion of unreason is not a physiological one;rather, it is one of common sense, which opposes the broad judg-ment of educated and disciplined men of good will to irrationalinstinct, self-will, private judgment. But the idea of the humorswas running in his mind; it supplies a figure to describe the fac-tionalism of which Shaftesbury was a part, and, in his picture ofthe mob, he explicitly refers to their subjection to humor. Shaftes-bury's relation to the mob as Dryden pictures it falls into just sucha pattern as I have been describing, and in opening his portraitof the arch rebel with a conception of madnessso widely known,Dryden must have counted on evoking against Shaftesbury thatgeneral idea of unreason which had been most closely bound upwith history, and which wotuldcarry the broadest context of thedangers of unreason. At the same time, his allusion to the tragicreligious struggles of the age just passing is oblique in these lines.He did not wish to arouse old hatreds and oppression but to stressthe dangersof unreason,in which religious controversy had playeda large part, and to insist on the primacy of society and of the state.


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DRYDEN'S SHAFTESBURY 469IVThe poem'sportraitsof the Londonpopulaceand of the Presby-

terianshavethe same emphasis s the portraitof Achitophelandappeal o the same raditions. ince the CivilWarsthe mostnotabledepictionsof them had been Butler's.His attackupon HudibrasandRalpho, romthe point of view of commonsense,anticipatedmuch of Dryden's own social and humanistic onceptionof rea-son. Butler,however,looks upon theirpoliticalactionchiefly asthe outcome of their false religion. In Dryden the emphasissreversed.As ProfessorBredvoldobserves,Dryden acceptedthebeliefthatonlypoliticalunrestcouldbelooked orfromtheWhigs.In TheHind and thePanther, religiousargument, e wasto makethisintransigeancepecifically heoutcomeof theirreligiousviews;and even in Absalomn,e notices the arousingof the old, trueenthusiasticreed;but inAbsalomn,henhespeaksof theirreligion,he stresses ust those general ntellectual mplications, hose doc-trinairenotions,and thosebroadattitudesof mind, on the questionof the relativebalancebetweenthe individualand the social sidesof man'snature,which Butler had condemnednot as religiousabusesbut asabusesof reason n general.Theologicalandreligiousissuesbecomeonly illustrations f unreasonper se. Nevertheless,the pictureof the populace n many little touchesappeals o thesamebackgroundas the portraitof Shaftesbury-to the dangers,thatis,of enthusiasmndmelancholy.His charge hat the populaceis easy to rebel, swayedby constantmotion,subject to faction,outside the limits of reason,expresseshe greatbody of middle-and upper-classRenaissancehought about the rascalmany. Indescribing hem as governed by the moon, and in lines 785-88,the sameview is implied.For in the astrologyso widely prevalentin seventeenth-centuryEngland,29overnmentby the moon re-sulted in lunacy. It is of course through the humorsthat thestars operate upon men, and particularly hrough melancholy.In describing he Jews ironically as acting by "naturalnstinct,"Dryden probablywished also to suggest to his readersRalpho's

29See Don Cameron Allen, The Star-CrossedRenaissance (1942). In general,governmentby the moon resulted in instabilityand proneness to motion. See, forinstance,Burton'sAnatomy and Antony and Cleopatra.


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470 HUNTINGTON LIBRARY QUARTERLYinner light, that "dark lantern of the spirit, which none see bybut those that bear it." Yet, though the words remind the readerof all the wild religiosity evoked by the theory of personal in-spiration, Dryden by the choice of the term instinct appeals to theintellectual and political fruits of this unreason to discredit it,rather than to its outcome in religious history. And, while heevokes in this portrait (as in that of Shaftesbury) the history oftwo hundred years, the judgment which he asksupon that historyis not the judgment of religion and of the spiritual life, but thejudgment of society and of man's political nature-which hadearlier played only a secondary role.

With this view of Shaftesbury and of the populace of London,the central contrast of Achitophel and David is in perfect accord,and from it the appeal to the public to trust to the good will andgood sense of Charles, waiving the solution of abstract con-stitutional issues, takes on new meaning. As Dryden's politicalthought had become less speculative and less detached from con-temporary conditions, and more realistic, he was turning backinto earlier English tradition, just as he was in his conception ofcharacter.

To Mr. Bredvold's analysis of Dryden's political views onefurther point may be added which emphasizes the same fact. InAureng-zebe, Dryden imposes upon the conflict of love and honorand upon the conflict of the passions (which were the stuff of thatas of other heroic plays) a conflict in the ideals of kingship. Thedistinction which he there draws between kingship and tyranny-between the conqueror who sees the nation in the light of hisown lust for power; the king, driven by his passions, whose con-cern for the welfare of his people may therefore no longer berelied on; and the self-possessed man in whom reason controlspassion and to whom kingship is a trust-is central to the ethicof the play and is a chief element in determining our sympathyfor Aureng-zebe. Dryden's statement has not the religious andpsychological and metaphysical scope of many Renaissance ex-pressions of the conception, but the relation of his thought to the


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DRYDEN'S SHAFTESBURY 47Itraditionof Tudor and Stuartwriting on monarchy s manifest.It is theethicalportrait f reasonbalancingheportrait f unreason.Dryden'sappealaway from a constitutional r strictlypoliticalquestionto characterand to the principlesof orderwhich restin ethics,then,assumes ts naturalartisticembodimentn the con-trastsof AchitophelandDavidandof the centralopposedncidents,the temptationof Absalomand the speech from the throne.Drydenstoodwith many of the bestmindsof hisday in regard-ing the questions f "constitution"nd of politicaland socialorderas the real issue,and in thinkingthat the religious ssue was ca-pableof solutionby compromise ndtolerance f order were notdisturbed.Doubtlesshe, with the rest of his age,saw the complexhumanspiritin oversimpleerms,anddoubtless n theirexcessivefear of chaosthey extrudedmuch of the varied richnessand in-clusivenesswhich a great society ought to be able to achieve.There will alwaysbe many who will seethe ideasof AbsalomandAchitophelas a mere rationalization f Dryden's opportunism,and of the prejudices ndselfishness ndalarmsof his class.I, formy part,cannothelp feeling that,when D)ryden elatedhis viewsof the particulartrugglenot only to the prevailingdea of reasonand the statebut to a long ethicalandpsychologicalraditionandto a long experienceof humannature,he was helping to imposesomethingof disinterestednessndresponsibility n his own party.And he secured or his poem that detachment ndthatintangiblegenerosityof spirit which somehow informit, despite the sharp-ness of its satire;which give the emotionto its style; and whichplace it so far above the factionalism nd mere journalism f allthe otherpoemson its theme.

to madness near allied

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