Radical Physicians and Conservative Poets in Restoration England: Dryden among the Doctors

R a d ica l P h ysicia n s a n d C o n serva tivemlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFE P o ets in R esto ra tio n E n g la n d : D ryd en a m o n g th e D o cto rs H U G H O R M S B Y - L E N N O N ... as in Physic, so in Poetry Charles Gildon, M iscellaneous L etters a n d E ssays I “W ith what do you prepare yourself. . . when you write?” Bayes asks Smith in the Duke of Buckingham’s satiric play T h e R ehearsal, “Pre­ pare myself! W hat the Devil does the Fool mean?” Smith wonders. Literary critics have been wondering ever since, for the answer given by Bayes (who personates Dryden) appears to have little relevance to what is now generally accepted about Dryden’s literary practice: “W hy, I’l tell you, now, what I do. If I am to write familiar things, as Sonnets to A rm id a , and the like, I ever make use of Stew’d Prunes only; but, when I have a grand design in hand, I ever take Physick, and let blood; for when you would have pure swiftness of Thought and Fiery flights of Fancy you must have a care of the pensive part. In fine, you must purge the Belly.”1 Is Buckingham’s allusion to the two therapeutic cornerstones of Galenic medical practice— blood-letting and purging— a shaft of misdirected irony, or does it have a point? That other enemies of Dryden, Shadwell for example, made the same 389 390 / WVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA H U G H O R M S B Y - L E N N O N jibe has merely confirmed for modem commentators the way in which such seemingly baseless libels assume an ineradicable life of their own.2 Yet further corroboration, albeit late, for Dryden’s peculiar medicoliterary habits has come from the essayist Charles Lamotte. “I once thought that this was pure Waggery and Banter by the Author of that diverting Play,” he writes, initially as sceptical as many of his twentieth-century successors. “But,” he adds, “I have been told since, by a Person of good Credit, and who was acquainted with Mr. D ryd en , that it was actually true, and that when he was about any considerable work, he used to purge his Body, and clear his Head, by a Dose of Physic.”3 Most recently, marginalia in the hand of one who had an intimate knowledge of Restoration literary mores have come to light in the Van Pelt Fourth Quarto of T h e R ehearsal. “Dryden’s own words,” our as yet unidentified expert on the period’s drama writes next to what we had thought was Buckingham’s banter about A rm id a , Stew’d Prunes, and the Fiery flights of Fancy.4 In physical distress, no less than in his unorthodox search for inspi­ ration, Dryden was sure to turn to the time-honored Galenic remedies: the mundane remnants of Dryden’s personal correspondence which have survived indicate that the poet was, at least in later life, some­ thing of a valetudinarian, and we frequently see him “deep in doctors, ‘pothecaryes & Nurses.”5 After he had caught an ague during a par­ ticularly trying coach journey, he writes to Mrs. Steward that he took “twice the bitter draught, with Sena in it, & [loosed] at least twelve Ounces of blood by Cupping in my neck.”6 Apparently concerned about his bowel movements, Dryden asked his publisher Tonson to pass on a message to his wife: “. . . for feare the few Damsins should all be gone, desire her to buy me a Sieve full.”7 Buckingham’s waggery about the Stew’d Prune is confirmed. Must we convict Dryden on a charge of “pseudo-science and credul­ ity” in the era of W illiam Harvey, whose discovery of “The C ircling streams, once thought but pools, of blood” Dryden himself had cele­ brated?8 Modem critics generally agree with Jean Riolan, Harvey’s Galenic opponent from the ultra-conservative Parisian Faculty of Medicine, that the discovery...