John Dennis (1657 - 6 January 1734), was an
EnglishEngland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the North Sea to the east, with the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
criticThe word critic comes from the Greek , "able to discern", which in turn derives from the word , meaning a person who offers reasoned judgment or analysis, value judgment, interpretation, or observation...
and dramatist, born in
Harrow, LondonHarrow is a town in the London Borough of Harrow, North West London. It is a suburb situated 12.2 miles west northwest of Charing Cross. It is one of the major metropolitan centres identified in the London Plan...
, the son of a saddler.
He was educated at
Harrow SchoolHarrow School, commonly known simply as "Harrow", is an independent school for boys situated in the town of Harrow, in north-west London. Harrow has educated boys since 1243 but was officially founded by John Lyon under a Royal Charter of Elizabeth I in 1572....
and Caius College, Cambridge, where he took his B.A. degree in 1679. In the next year he was fined and dismissed from his college for having wounded a fellow-student with a sword. He was, however, received at
Trinity HallTrinity Hall is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England. It is the fifth-oldest college of the university, having been founded in 1350 by William Bateman, Bishop of Norwich.- Foundation :...
, where he took his M.A. degree in 1683.
After travelling in France and Italy, he settled in London, where he became acquainted with
DrydenJohn Dryden was an influential English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright who dominated the literary life of Restoration England to such a point that the period came to be known in literary circles as the Age of Dryden.-Early life:Dryden was born in the village rectory of Aldwincle...
,
WycherleyWilliam Wycherley was an English dramatist of the Restoration period, best known for the plays The Country Wife and The Plain Dealer.-Biography:...
and others; and being made temporarily independent by inheriting a small fortune, he devoted himself to literature.
John Dennis (1657 - 6 January 1734), was an
EnglishEngland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the North Sea to the east, with the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
criticThe word critic comes from the Greek , "able to discern", which in turn derives from the word , meaning a person who offers reasoned judgment or analysis, value judgment, interpretation, or observation...
and dramatist, born in
Harrow, LondonHarrow is a town in the London Borough of Harrow, North West London. It is a suburb situated 12.2 miles west northwest of Charing Cross. It is one of the major metropolitan centres identified in the London Plan...
, the son of a saddler.
He was educated at
Harrow SchoolHarrow School, commonly known simply as "Harrow", is an independent school for boys situated in the town of Harrow, in north-west London. Harrow has educated boys since 1243 but was officially founded by John Lyon under a Royal Charter of Elizabeth I in 1572....
and Caius College, Cambridge, where he took his B.A. degree in 1679. In the next year he was fined and dismissed from his college for having wounded a fellow-student with a sword. He was, however, received at
Trinity HallTrinity Hall is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England. It is the fifth-oldest college of the university, having been founded in 1350 by William Bateman, Bishop of Norwich.- Foundation :...
, where he took his M.A. degree in 1683.
After travelling in France and Italy, he settled in London, where he became acquainted with
DrydenJohn Dryden was an influential English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright who dominated the literary life of Restoration England to such a point that the period came to be known in literary circles as the Age of Dryden.-Early life:Dryden was born in the village rectory of Aldwincle...
,
WycherleyWilliam Wycherley was an English dramatist of the Restoration period, best known for the plays The Country Wife and The Plain Dealer.-Biography:...
and others; and being made temporarily independent by inheriting a small fortune, he devoted himself to literature. The
Duke of MarlboroughJohn Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough was a prominent English soldier and statesman whose career spanned the reigns of five monarchs throughout the late 17th and early 18th centuries...
procured him a place as one of the queen's waiters in the customs with a salary of £20 a year. This he afterwards disposed of for a small sum, retaining, at the suggestion of
Lord HalifaxGeorge Savile, 1st Marquess of Halifax PC was an English statesman, writer, and politician.-Family and early life, 1633-1667:...
, a yearly charge upon it for a long term of years.
Neither the poems nor the plays of Dennis are of any account, although one of his tragedies, a violent attack on the French in harmony with popular prejudice, entitled
Liberty Asserted, was produced with great success at Lincoln's Inn Fields in 1704. His sense of his own importance approached mania, and he is said to have desired the Duke of Marlborough to have a special clause inserted in the Treaty of Utrecht to secure him from French vengeance. Marlborough pointed out that although he had been a still greater enemy of the French nation, he had no fear for his own security. This tale and others of a similar nature may well be exaggerations prompted by his enemies, but the infirmities of character and temper indicated in them were real.
Dennis is best remembered as a critic, and his earliest works, which lack the rancour that afterwards gained him the nickname of "Furius," are regarded as his best. They are:
- Remarks ... (1696), on Blackmore
Sir Richard Blackmore, , English poet and physician, is remembered primarily as the object of satire and as an example of a dull poet. He was, however, a respected physician and religious writer....
's epic of Prince Arthur;
- Letters upon Several Occasions written by and between Mr. Dryden, Mr. Wycherley, Mr. Moyle, Mr. Congreve and Mr Dennis, published by Mr Dennis (1696);
- two pamphlets in reply to Jeremy Collier's Short View;
- The Advancement and Reformation of Modern Poetry (1701), perhaps his most important work;
- The Grounds of Criticism in Poetry (1704), in which he argued that the ancients owed their superiority over the moderns in poetry to their religious attitude;
- Essay upon Publick Spirit (1711), in which he inveighs against luxury, and servile imitation of foreign fashions and customs;
- Essay on the Genius and Writings of Shakespeare in Three Letters (1712).
Dennis had been offended by a humorous quotation made from his works by
AddisonJoseph Addison was an English essayist, poet and politician. He was a man of letters, eldest son of Lancelot Addison...
, and published in 1713
Remarks upon Cato. Much of this criticism was acute and sensible, and it is quoted at considerable length by
JohnsonSamuel Johnson , often referred to as Dr. Johnson, was an English author who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, novelist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer. Johnson was a devout Anglican and political conservative, and has been...
in his
Life of Addison, but there is no doubt that Dennis was actuated by personal jealousy of Addison's success.
PopeAlexander Pope is a famous eighteenth century English poet, best known for his satirical verse and for his translation of Homer. He is the third most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, after Shakespeare and Tennyson. Pope is famous for his use of the heroic couplet.-...
replied in
The Narrative of Dr. Robert Norris, concerning the strange and deplorable frenzy of John Dennis ... (1713). This pamphlet was full of personal abuse, exposing Dennis's foibles, but offering no defence of
Cato. Addison repudiated any connivance in this attack, and indirectly notified Dennis that when he did answer his objections, it would be without personalities.
Pope had already assailed Dennis in 1711 in the
Essay on Criticism, as Appius. Dennis retorted by
Reflections, Critical and Satirical ... a scurrilous production in which he taunted Pope with his deformity, saying among other things that he was as stupid and as venomous as a hunch-backed toad. He also wrote in 1715
Remarks upon Mr Pope's Translation of Homer ... and
A True Character of Mr Pope. He accordingly figures in the
Dunciad, and in a scathing note in the edition of 1729 (Book I, 1, 106) Pope quotes his more outrageous attacks, and adds an insulting epigram attributed to
Richard SavageRichard Savage was an English poet. He is best known as the subject of Samuel Johnson's Life of Savage , on which is based one of the most elaborate of Johnson's Lives of the English Poets.-Early life:...
, but now generally ascribed to Pope.
More pamphlets followed, but Dennis's day was over. He outlived his annuity from the customs, and his last years were spent in great poverty. Bishop Atterbury sent him money, and he received a small sum annually from
Sir Robert WalpoleRobert Walpole, 1st Earl of Orford, KG, KB, PC and known before 1742 as Sir Robert Walpole, was a British statesman who is generally regarded as having been the first Prime Minister of Great Britain....
. A benefit performance was organized at the Haymarket (18 December 1733) on his behalf. Pope wrote for the occasion an ill-natured prologue which
CibberColley Cibber was a British actor-manager, playwright, and Poet Laureate. His colourful memoir Apology for the Life of Colley Cibber started a British tradition of personal, anecdotal, and even rambling autobiography...
recited. Dennis died within three weeks of this performance, on 6 January 1734.
His other works include several plays, for one of which,
Appius and Virginia (1709), he invented a new kind of thunder. The play was not a success and the management of the
Drury Lane TheatreThe Theatre Royal, Drury Lane is a West End theatre in Covent Garden, in the City of Westminster, a borough of London. The building faces Catherine Street and backs onto Drury Lane. The building standing today is the most recent in a line of four theatres at the same location dating back to 1663,...
withdrew it. But later at a performance of
MacbethThe Tragedy of Macbeth, commonly just Macbeth, is a play by William Shakespeare about a regicide and its aftermath. It is Shakespeare's shortest tragedy and is believed to have been written sometime between 1603 and 1607...
there Dennis found the thunder produced by his method and said,
- That is my thunder, by God; the villains will play my thunder, but not my play.
According to
Brewer'sBrewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, sometimes referred to simply as Brewer's — is a reference work containing definitions and explanations of many famous phrases, allusions and figures, whether historical or mythical....
entry (under the headword
thunder), this is the origin of the phrase, "to steal one's thunder".
Dennis was one of the first writers to bring to prominence the concept of the
sublimeIn aesthetics, the sublime In aesthetics, the sublime In aesthetics, the sublime (from the Latin sublimis ([looking up from] under the lintel, high, lofty, elevated, exalted) is the quality of greatness or vast magnitude, whether physical, moral, intellectual, metaphysical, aesthetic, spiritual or...
as an aesthetic quality. After taking the
Grand TourThe Grand Tour was the traditional travel of Europe undertaken by mainly upper-class European young men of means. The custom flourished from about 1660 until the advent of large-scale rail transit in the 1840s, and was associated with a standard itinerary...
of the Alps he published his comments in a journal letter published as
Miscellanies in 1693, giving an account of crossing the Alps where, contrary to his prior feelings for the beauty of nature as a "delight that is consistent with reason", the experience of the journey was at once a "pleasure to the eye as music is to the ear", but "mingled with Horrours, and sometimes almost with despair." The significance of his account is that the concept of the sublime, at the time a
rhetoricRhetoric is one of the arts of using language as a means to persuade. Along with grammar and logic or dialectic, rhetoric is one of the three ancient arts of discourse. From ancient Greece to the late 19th Century, it was a central part of Western education, filling the need to train public...
term primarily relevant to literary criticism, was used to describe appreciation for horror and harmony when visually experiencing nature.
He wrote a curious
Essay on the Operas after the Italian Manner (1706), maintaining that opera was the outgrowth of effeminate manners, and should, as such, be suppressed. His
Works were published in 1702,
Select Works (2 vol.) in 1718, and
Miscellaneous Tracts, the first volume only of which appeared, in 1727.
For accounts of Dennis see Cibber's
Lives of the Poets, Vol. 4; Isaac Disraeli's essays on Pope and Addison in the
Quarrels of Authors, and
On the Influence of a Bad Temper in Criticism in Calamities of Authors; and numerous references in Pope's Works.