The text of Dryden's poems as printed in England, whether in his own time or after his death, has never been in a satisfactory state. There is no edition wholly free from errors, and most editions contain many gross blunders. Only one of the editors has really collated the original editions, and even he seems not always to have compared Dryden's translations with the original works.
Badly as Dryden's editors have served him, the author himself is not wholly blameless. It was his misfortune that he could not always see his works through the press. Thus he was in Wiltshire while Annus Mirabilis was printing, and before his return the book had come out and some copies had been sold. The list of errata, for which he found room on a fly-leaf, was so hurriedly made that itself is full of false references. But errors were more often due to Dryden's fault than to his misfortune. That he could be careful in correcting the press he showed in the case of the Epistle to John Driden, a work for which he had a special affection, as the child of his old age and the encomium of his ancient race. But the last of his publications, the very volume which contains this epistle, has, in other poems, some glaring errors of the press. Some of these, and others in other works, were silently corrected in subsequent editions. It needed no Bentley to detect the husband of Eurvdice in a line which Dryden allowed to appear in this form:
Had Orphans sung it in the neather Sphere.
But there are cases in which the true reading may reasonably be a matter of doubt. Thus in Eleonora the original text gives: And some descending Courtier from above Had giv'n her timely warning to remove.
The word 'Courtier', or, as Dryden would have said, the word of 'Qourtier', was changed by Broughton into 'Courier', and Todd denounced the original reading as 'a laughable error of the press'. The original reading is defended by Christie and Dr. Saintsbury, and there is something to be said on either side. In Palamon and Arcite a line in the original appeared as
Rich Tap'stry spread the Streets and Flowers the Pots adorn.
