John Dryden (1631–1700) is little appreciated these days. When the 18-volume “Cambridge History of English Literature” first appeared (1907–1921), the volume on his entire era was titled “The Age of Dryden.” But who now much reads Dryden — the poet who established the heroic couplet (a rhymed pair of pentameter lines) as a major device for English poetry? On his birthday today, August 9 — also the birthday of the 20th-century poet Philip Larkin, as the Sun noted in an appreciation — it seems worth offering a few of Dryden’s lines.

Alexander Pope (1688–1744) was his successor as the great writer of heroic couplets, and Dryden lacked Pope’s talent for memorability, the ability to form poetic lines that stick in the mind (which is why we quote such lines from Pope as “To err is human, to forgive, divine” and “Fools rush in where angels fear to tread” more often than Dryden’s “We first make our habits, then our habits make us” and “Great wits are to madness near allied”). But when we fail to read Dryden, we forget how fluid and enormously productive he was. 

What we also lose is his ability to present intelligent thoughts in poetry. Dryden wrote “To My Dear Friend Mr. Congreve on his Comedy Call’d the Double Dealer” as an occasional piece in 1694, praising his young friend, the playwright William Congreve (1670–1729), for reinvigorating comedy on the English stage. But in the beginning of the poem, from lines 3 to 14, Dryden puts a perfectly compressed form of an idea we’ve all had about the history of human arts.

The early creators of an art, this idea goes, are robust and strong, with a primitive energy that fills their work:  “Strong were our sires; and as they fought they writ, / Conqu’ring with force of arms, and dint of wit. / Theirs was the giant race, before the Flood.” As an art continues, however, it gains sophistication—but it loses that early energy: “Our age was cultivated thus at length; / But what we gained in skill we lost in strength,” Dryden writes, and adds a biblical analogy: “Our builders were, with want of genius, curst; / The second temple was not like the first.”

This theory of the history of art is probably more facile than true. Dryden himself argues that Congreve has overcome the divide between energy and sophistication. But everyone interested in an art — from jazz and rock ’n’ roll to novel writing and ballet — has had the thought that the early practitioners had a freedom and strength that can never be recaptured: “what we gained in skill we lost in strength.” And no one ever gave a better description of that thought than Dryden.

from To My Dear Friend Mr. Congreve on his Comedy Call’d the Double Dealer
by John Dryden

Well then; the promis’d hour is come at last; 
The present age of wit obscures the past: 
Strong were our sires; and as they fought they writ, 
Conqu’ring with force of arms, and dint of wit; 
Theirs was the giant race, before the Flood; 
And thus, when Charles return’d, our empire stood. 
Like Janus he the stubborn soil manur’d, 
With rules of husbandry the rankness cur’d: 
Tam’d us to manners, when the stage was rude; 
And boisterous English wit, with art endu’d. 
Our age was cultivated thus at length; 
But what we gained in skill we lost in strength. 
Our builders were, with want of genius, curst; 
The second temple was not like the first: 
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. 
In easy dialogue is Fletcher’s praise: 
He mov’d the mind, but had not power to raise. 
Great Jonson did by strength of judgment please: 
Yet doubling Fletcher’s force, he wants his ease. 
In differing talents both adorn’d their age; 
One for the study, t’other for the stage. 
But both to Congreve justly shall submit, 
One match’d in judgment, both o’er-match’d in wit. 
In him all beauties of this age we see; 
Etherege’s courtship, Southern’s purity; 
The satire, wit, and strength of manly Wycherly. 
All this in blooming youth you have achiev’d; 
Nor are your foil’d contemporaries griev’d; 
So much the sweetness of your manners move, 
We cannot envy you because we love. 
Fabius might joy in Scipio, when he saw 
A beardless Consul made against the law, 
And join his suffrage to the votes of Rome; 
Though he with Hannibal was overcome. 
Thus old Romano bow’d to Raphael’s fame; 
And scholar to the youth he taught, became.… 

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With “Poem of the Day,” The New York Sun offers a daily portion of verse selected by Joseph Bottum with the help of the North Carolina poet Sally Thomas, the Sun’s associate poetry editor. Tied to the day, or the season, or just individual taste, the poems will be typically drawn from the lesser-known portion of the history of English verse. In the coming months we will be reaching out to contemporary poets for examples of current, primarily formalist work, to show that poetry can still serve as a delight to the ear, an instruction to the mind, and a tonic for the soul.