Hammond - The Poems of John Dryden: Volume Five: 1697-1700

Longman Annotated English Poets

GENERAL EDITORS: JOHN BARNARD AND PAUL HAMMOND

FOUNDING EDITOR: F. W. BATESON

. John Dryden by Sir Godfrey Kneller (c. 1698).
Reproduced by permission of the Master and Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge.

THE POEMS OF

JOHN DRYDEN

Volume V

16971700

EDITED BY

PAUL HAMMOND

AND

DAVID HOPKINS

First published 2005 by Pearson Education Limited

Published 2014 by Routledge

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ISBN 13: 978-0-582-49214-1 (pbk)

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Set by 35 in 10.5/11.5pt Bembo

Contents

180 Of the Pythagorean Philosophy (from Ovids Metamorphoses XV)

The present volume, which comprises the poems that Dryden composed and published between 1697 and his death in 1700, principally Fables Ancient and Modern, together with those poems that were published posthumously, finishes the project begun in 1995 to provide a fully annotated edition of Drydens poems. The edition is complete except for his translation of Virgil, which was excluded from the original plan for this edition because of its length, but we hope that it may be possible to add it in the future. The editorial procedures for this final volume are broadly those set out in the Introduction to Volume I. The work for Volume V has been divided between us: Professor Hopkins edited the Dedication and Preface to Fables, the translations from Ovid and Homer and some shorter pieces (nos. 15862, 166, 184, 1879, 1914), and compiled the indexes; while Professor Hammond edited the translations from Chaucer and Boccaccio and some shorter pieces (nos. 164, 183), and provided the two appendices. But we have checked and revised each others work, and take joint responsibility for the result.

The annotation of Drydens translations has presented us with a problem of approach. Drydens versions of Ovid and Homer generally pay close attention to the Latin or Greek, and it is clear that he turned for assistance and inspiration to a range of editorial commentaries on the original poem, together with as many translations as he could assemble. Our annotation of these poems is therefore quite detailed, and we have provided as much information about Drydens sources, interpretative decisions, and working methods as we could, without overwhelming the reader with a mass of unassimilable detail. But Drydens translations of Chaucer and Boccaccio proceed rather differently: here he often paraphrases sections of the text, even though he retains a sharp eye for significant detail, and he sometimes adds substantial passages. The annotation to these poems therefore charts the broader relationship of Drydens poem to its original, and marks as additions only those lines that do not have an explicit equivalent of some kind in the original. Although our approach to annotation is not, therefore, uniform throughout the volume, we hope that it will be found to be appropriate to the character of the respective texts.

We are glad to acknowledge the advice and assistance that we have received from various colleagues: Dr Catherine Batt, Mrs Tiziana Buxton, the late Mrs Elsie Duncan-Jones, Mr Alec Jeakins, Dr Harry Johnstone, the late Professor D. F. McKenzie, Dr Tom Mason, Dr Neville Morley, Dr and Mrs David Pilch, Mr Michael Richardson, Mr Eric Southworth, Revd P. Unsworth, Professor P. G. Walsh, Professor James A. Winn. We are particularly grateful to Dr Richard Bates, Dr John Mason, Dr Tom Mason, and Dr Robin Sowerby for permission to cite material from their unpublished doctoral theses. We must also thank the staff of the following libraries for their courteous assistance: the Bodleian Library, Oxford, Bristol University Library, the British Library, and Leeds University Library (especially the Department of Special Collections, including the Brotherton Collection). Special thanks are due to the British Academy for the financial support which it has provided, in the form of a research grant awarded to Professor Hammond, and a Research Readership awarded to Professor Hopkins. Professor Hopkins is indebted to the Master and Fellows of St Peters College, Oxford, for electing him to honorary membership of their Senior Common Room, thus providing a most congenial environment in which important parts of his research could be conducted. Professor John Barnard, general editor of the series, commissioned the edition, and has patiently supported its progress to completion.

Our partners, Dr Nicholas Jagger and Mrs Sandra Hopkins, have helped us in ways which we cannot adequately express.

We dedicate the editorial portion of this volume to the memory of H. A. Mason. Both of us had the privilege to be his pupils, and it was from him that we learnt to admire Drydens translations, particularly his Fables. He was an exacting critic, a man of formidably wide learning which was deployed in the service of searching humanistic concerns. As a scholar of Dryden, his special contribution was to call attention to the translations as the poems where Dryden was often engaged most imaginatively with the deepest human questions; and he showed in extraordinary detail how Dryden consulted myriad commentaries, translations, and parallel passages in other poets as he composed these poems. Although he published some thoughts on Drydens Homer in To Homer through Pope (1972), and a series of articles on Drydens Horace in The Cambridge Quarterly, much of his detailed research remains unpublished. During the late 1960s and early 1970s he compiled a comprehensive archive of the sources relating to Drydens The First Book of Homers