It must be admitted,
that he sacrificed to the Belial or Asmodeus of the age, in his
writings; and that he formed his taste upon the licentious and gay
society with which he mingled. But we have the testimony of one who knew
him well, that, however loose his comedies, the temper of the author was
modest;[58] his indelicacy was like the forced impudence of a bashful
man; and Rochester has accordingly upbraided him, that his
licentiousness was neither natural nor seductive. Dryden had
unfortunately conformed enough to the taste of his age, to attempt that
"nice mode of wit," as it is termed by the said noble author, whose name
has become inseparably connected with it; but it sate awkwardly upon his
natural modesty, and in general sounds impertinent, as well as
disgusting. The clumsy phraseology of Burnet, in passing censure on the
immorality of the stage, after the Restoration, terms "Dryden, the
greatest master of dramatic poesy, a monster of immodesty and of
impurity of all sorts." The expression called forth the animated defence
of Granville, Lord Lansdowne, our author's noble friend. "All who knew
him," said Lansdowne, "can testify this was not his character. He was so
much a stranger to immodesty, that modesty in too great a degree was his
failing: he hurt his fortune by it, he complained of it, and never could
overcome it. He was," adds he, "esteemed, courted, and admired, by all
the great men of the age in which he lived, who would certainly not have
received into friendship a monster abandoned to all sorts of vice and
impurity.
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