The whole animation of these compositions arises from a profusion of ludicrous and affected comparisons. "To secure one's chastity," says Bayes, "little more is necessary than to leave off a correspondence with the other sex, which, to a wise man, is no greater a punishment than In 1693 appeared a new version of Juvenal it would be to a fanatic person to forbid seeing and Persius. Of Juvenal he translated the first, The Cheats and The Committee; or for my Lord third, sixth, tenth, and sixteenth satires; and of Mayor and Aldermen to be interdicted the sight Persius the whole work. On this occasion he of The London Cuckolds." This is the general introduced his two sons to the public as nursestrain, and therefore I shall be easily excusedlings of the Muses. The fourteenth of Juvenal the labour of more transcription.

It is related by Prior, that Lord Dorset, when, as chamberlain, he was constrained to eject Dryden from his office, gave him from his own purse an allowance equal to the salary. This is no romantic or incredible act of generosity; a That this poem was never written is reasonhundred a-year is often enough given to claims ably to be lamented. It would doubtless have less cogent by men less famed for liberality. improved our numbers, and enlarged our lanYet Dryden always represented himself as suf-guage; and might, perhaps, have contributed by fering under a public infliction; and once par-pleasing instructions to rectify our opinions, and ticularly demands respect for the patience with purify our manners.

Buckinghamshire gave him a tablet, inscribed only with the name of DRYDEN.

He married the Lady Elizabeth Howard, daughter to the Earl of Berkshire, with cir cumstances, according to the satire imputed to Lord Somers, not very honourable to either party: by her he had three sons, Charles, John, and Henry. Charles was usher of the palace to Pope Clement the XIth; and visiting England, in 1704, was drowned in an attempt to swim across the Thames at Windsor.

Halifax and the Bishop of Rochester, who absolutely refused to do any thing in it. In this distress Dr. Garth sent for the corpse to the College of Physicians, and proposed a funeral by subscription, to which himself set a most noble example. At last a day, about three weeks after Mr. Dryden's decease, was appointed for the interment. Dr. Garth pronounced a fine Latin oration, at the College, over the corpse; which was attended to the Abbey by a numerous train of coaches. When the funeral was over, Mr. Charles Dryden sent a challenge to the Lord John was author of a comedy called "The Jefferies, who refusing to answer it, he sent Husband his own Cuckold." He is said to have several others and went often himself; but could died at Rome. Henry entered into some relineither get a letter delivered nor admittance to gious order. It is some proof of Dryden's sinspeak to him; which so incensed him, that he cerity, in his second religion, that he taught it to resolved, since his Lordship refused to answer his sons. A man, conscious of hypocritical prohim like a gentleman, that he would watch fession in himself is not likely to convert others; an opportunity to meet and fight off-hand, and, as his sons were qualified, in 1693, to apthough with all the rules of honour; which his pear among the translators of Juvenal, they must Lordship hearing, left the town; and Mr. have been taught some religion before their faCharles Dryden could never have the satisfac- ther's change. tion of meeting him, though he sought it till his death with the utmost application."

This story I once intended to omit, as it appears with no great evidence; nor have I met with any confirmation, but in a letter of Farquhar; and he only relates that the funeral of Dryden was tumultuary and confused.*

Supposing the story true, we may remark, that the gradual change of manners, though imperceptible in the process, appears great when different times, and those not very distant, are compared. If at this time a young drunken lord should interrupt the pompous regularity of a magnificent funeral, what would be the event, but that he would be justled out of the way, and compelled to be quiet? If he should thrust himself into a house he would be sent roughly away; and what is yet more to the honour of the present time, I believe that those, who had subscribed to the funeral of a man like Dryden, would not, for such an accident, have withdrawn their contributions.f

He was buried among the poets in Westminster Abbey, where, though the Duke of Newcastle had in a general dedication prefixed by Congreve to his dramatic works, accepted thanks for his intention of erecting him a monument, he lay long without distinction, till the Duke of

*An earlier account of Dryden's funeral than that above cited, though without the circumstances that preceded it, is given by Edward Ward, who in his "London Spy," published in 1706, relates, that on the cccasion there was a performance of solemn music at the

College, and that at the procession, which himself saw, standing at the end of Chancery-lane, Fleet-street, there was a concert of hautboys and trumpets. The day of Dryden's interment, he says, was Monday, the 13th of May, which, according to Johnson, was twelve days after his decease, and shows how long his funeral was in suspense. Ward knew not that the expense of it was defrayed by subscription; but compliments Lord Jefferies for so pious an undertaking. He also says, that the cause of Dryden's death was an inflammation in his toe, occasioned by the flesh growing over the nail, which, being neglected, produced a mortification in his leg.-H.

In the register of the College of Physicians, is the following entry: "May 3, 1700. Comitiis Censoriis ordinariis. At the request of several persons of quality, that Mr. Dryden might be carried from the College of Physicians to be interred at Westminster, it was unanimously granted by the President and Censors."

This entry is not calculated to afford any credit to the narrative concerning Lord Jefferies.-R.

Of the person of Dryden I know not any account; of his mind, the portrait, which has been left by Congreve, who knew him with great familiarity, is such as adds our love of his manners to our admiration of his genius. "He was," we are told, "of a nature exceedingly humane and compassionate, ready to forgive injuries, and capable of a sincere reconciliation with those who had offended him. His friendship, where he professed it, went beyond his profession. He was of a very easy, of very pleasing access; but somewhat slow, and, as it were, diffident in his advances to others: he had that in nature which abhorred intrusion into any society whatever. He was therefore less known, and consequently his character became more liable to misapprehensions and misrepresentations: he was very modest, and very easily to be discountenanced in his approaches to his equals or superiors. As his reading had been very extensive, so was he very happy in a memory tenacious of every thing that he had read. He was not more possessed of knowledge than he was communicative of it; but then his communication was by no means pedantic, or imposed upon the conversation, but just such, and went so far, as, by the natural turn of the conversation in which he was engaged, it was necessarily promoted or required. He was extremely ready and gentle in his correction of the errors of any writer who thought fit to consult him, and full as ready and patient to admit the reprehensions of others, in respect of his own oversights or mistakes."

To this account of Congreve nothing can be objected but the fondness of friendship and to have excited that fondness in such a mind is no small degree of praise. The disposition of Dryden, however, is shown in his character rather than as it operated on the more important parts as it exhibited itself in cursory conversation, of life. His placability and his friendship indeed were solid virtues; but courtesy and good humour are often found with little real worth. Since Congreve, who knew him well, has told us no more, the rest must be collected as it can from other testimonies, and particularly from those notices which Dryden has very liberally given us of himself.

The modesty which made him so slow to ad vance, and so easy to be repulsed, was certainly

no suspicion of deficient merit, or unconscious- | were, Carte has not told, but certainly the conness of his own value: he appears to have vivial table at which Ormond sat was not surknown, in its whole extent, the dignity of his rounded with a plebeian society. He was inown character, and to have set a very high value deed reproached with boasting of his familiarity on his own powers and performances. He pro- with the great: and Horace will support him bably did not offer his conversation, because he in the opinion that to please superiors is not the expected it to be solicited and he retired from lowest kind of merit. a cold reception, not submissive, but indignant, with such deference of his own greatness as made him unwilling to expose it to neglect or violation.

His modesty was by no means inconsistent with ostentatiousness; he is diligent enough to remind the world of his merit, and expresses with very little scruple his high opinion of his own powers; but his self-commendations are read without scorn or indignation; we allow his claims, and love his frankness.

Tradition, however, has not allowed that his confidence in himself exempted him from jealousy of others. He is accused of envy and insidiousness; and is particularly charged with inciting Creech to translate Horace, that he might lose the reputation which Lucretius had given him.

The merit of pleasing must, however, be esti mated by the means. Favour is not always gained by good actions or laudable qualities. Caresses and perferments are often bestowed on the auxiliaries of vice, the procurers of pleasure, or the flatterers of vanity. Dryden has never been charged with any personal agency unworthy of a good character: he abetted vice and vanity only with his pen. One of his enemies has accused him of lewdness in his conversation; but if accusation without proof be credited, who shall be innocent?

His works afford too many examples of dissolute licentiousness and abject adulation; but they were probably, like his merriment, artificial and constrained; the effects of study and meditation, and his trade rather than his plea

sure.

Of this charge we immediately discover that Of the mind that can trade in corruption, and it is merely conjectural; the purpose was such can deliberately pollute itself with ideal wickedas no man would confess; and a crime that ad-ness for the sake of spreading the contagion in mits no proof, why should we believe? society, I wish not to conceal or excuse the depravity. Such degradation of the dignity of genius, such abuse of superlative abilities, cannot be contemplated but with grief and indignation. What consolation can be had, Dryden has afforded, by living to repent, and to testify his repentance.

He has been described as magisterially presiding over the younger writers, and assuming the distribution of poetical fame; but he who excels has a right to teach, and he whose judgment is incontestable may without usurpation

examine and decide.

Congreve represents him as ready to advise and instruct; but there is reason to believe that his communication was rather useful than entertaining. He declares of himself that he was saturnine, and not one of those whose sprightly sayings diverted company; and one of his censurers makes him say,

Nor wine nor love could ever see me gay; To writing bred, I knew not what to say. There are men whose powers operate only at leisure and in retirement, and whose intellectual vigour deserts them in conversation; whom merriment confuses, and objection disconcerts: whose bashfulness restrains their exertion, and suffers them not to speak till the time of speaking is past; or whose attention to their own character makes them unwilling to utter at hazard what has not been considered, and cannot be recalled.

Of dramatic immorality he did not want examples among his predecessors, or companions among his contemporaries; but, in the meanness and servility of hyperbolical adulation, I know not whether, since the days in which the Roman emperors were deified, he has been ever equalled, except by Afra Behn in an address to Eleanor Gwyn. When once he has undertaken the task of praise, he no longer retains shame in himself, nor supposes it in his patron. As many odoriferous bodies are observed to diffuse perfumes from year to year, without sensible diminution of bulk or weight, he appears never to have impoverished his mint of flattery by his expenses, however lavish. He had all the forms of excellence, intellectual and moral, combined in his mind, with endless variation: and, when he had scattered on the hero of the day the golden shower of wit and virtue, he had ready for him, whom he wished to court on the morrow, new wit and virtue with another stamp. Of this kind of meanness he never seems to decline the practice, or lament the necessity: he considers the great as entitled to encomiastic homage, and brings praise rather as a tribute than a gift, more delighted with the fertility of his invention, than mortified by the prostitution of his judgment. It is indeed not certain, that on these occasions his judgment much rebelled against his interest. There are minds which easily sink into submission, that look on grandeur with undistinguishing reverence, and discover no defect where there is ele

Of Dryden's sluggishness in conversation it is vain to search or to guess the cause. He certainly wanted neither sentiments nor language; his intellectual treasures were great, though they were locked up from his own use. "His thoughts," when he wrote, "flowed in upon him so fast, that his only care was which to choose, and which to reject." Such rapidity of composition naturally promises a flow of talk; yet we must be content to believe what an enemy says of him, when he likewise says it of himself. But, whatever was his character as a companion, it appears that he lived in familiarity with the highest persons of his time. It is re-vation of rank and affluence of riches. lated, by Carte, of the Duke of Ormond, that he used often to pass a night with Dryden, and those with whom Dryden consorted; who they

With his praises of others and of himself is always intermingled a strain of discontent and lamentation, a sullen growl of resentment, or a

querulous murmur of distress. His works are undervalued, his merit is unrewarded, and "he has few thanks to pay his stars that he was born among Englishmen." To his critics he is sometimes contemptuous, sometimes resentful, and sometimes submissive. The writer who thinks his works formed for duration, mistakes his interest when he mentions his enemies. He degrades his own dignity by showing that he was affected by their censures, and gives lasting importance to names, which, left to themselves, would vanish from remembrance. From this principle Dryden did not often depart; his complaints are for the greater part general; he seldom pollutes his pages with an adverse name. He condescended indeed to a controversy with Settle, in which he perhaps may be considered rather as assaulting than repelling; and since Settle is sunk into oblivion, his libel remains injurious only to himself.

But what remains will be so pure, 'twill bear
Th' examination of the most severe.

Blackmore, finding the censure resented, and the civility disregarded, ungenerously omitted the softer part. Such variations discover a writer who consults his passions more than his virtue; and it may be reasonably supposed that Dryden imputes his enmity to its true cause.

Of Milbourne he wrote only in general terms, such as are always ready at the call of anger, whether just or not: a short extract will be suf ficient. "He pretends a quarrel to me, that I have fallen foul upon priesthood; if I have, I am only to ask pardon of good priests, and am afraid his share of the reparation will come to little. Let him be satisfied that he shall never be able to force himself upon me for an adversary; I contemn him too much to enter into competition with him.

"As for the rest of those who have written against me, they are such scoundrels that they deserve not the least notice to be taken of them; Blackmore and Milbourne are only distinguished from the crowd by being remembered to their

Among answers to critics no poetical attacks, or altercations, are to be included; they are like other poems, effusions of genius, produced as much to obtain praise as to obviate censure. These Dryden practised, and in these he ex-infamy." celled.

Trapp is angry that he calls the sacrificer in the "Georgics" the holy butcher: the translation is not indeed ridiculous; but Trapp's anger arises from his zeal, not for the author, but the priest; as if any reproach of the follies of paganism could be extended to the preachers of truth.

Dryden, indeed, discovered in many of his Of Collier, Blackmore, and Milbourne, he writings an affected and absurd malignity to has made mention in the preface of his "Fa- priests and priesthood, which naturally raised bles." To the censure of Collier, whose remarks him many enemies, and which was sometimes may be rather termed admonitions than criti-as unseasonably resented as it was exerted. cisms, he makes little reply; being, at the age of sixty-eight, attentive to better things than the claps of a playhouse. He complains of Collier's rudeness, and the "horse-play of his raillery ;" and asserts, that, "in many places he has perverted by his glosses the meaning" of what he censures; but in other things he confesses that he is justly taxed; and says, with great calmness and candour, "I have pleaded guilty to all thoughts or expressions of mine that can be truly accused of obscenity, immorality, or profaneness, and retract them. If he be my enemy, let him triumph; if he be my friend, he will be glad of my repentance." Yet, as our best dispositions are imperfect, he left standing in the same book a reflection on Collier of great asperity, and indeed of more asperity than wit.

Dryden's dislike of the priesthood is imputed by Langbaine, and I think by Brown, to a repulse which he suffered when he solicited ordination but he denies, in the preface to his "Fables," that he never designed to enter into the church; and such a denial he would not have hazarded, if he could have been convicted of falsehood.

Malevolence to the clergy is seldom at a great distance from irreverence of religion, and Dryden affords no exception to this observation. His writings exhibit many passages, which, with all Blackmore he represents as made his enemy the allowance that can be made for characters by the poem of "Absalom and Achitophel," and occasion, are such as piety would not have which he thinks a little hard upon his fanatic admitted, and such as may vitiate light and patrons:" and charges him with borrowing the unprincipled minds. But there is no reason for plan of his "Arthur" from the Preface to Ju- supposing that he disbelieved the religion which venal, "though he had," says he, "the base-he disobeyed. He forgot his duty rather than ness not to acknowledge his benefactor, but instead of it to traduce me in a libel."

The libel in which Blackmore traduced him was a "Satire upon Wit;" in which, having lamented the exuberance of false wit and the deficiency of true, he proposes that all wit should be recoined before it is current, and appoints masters of assay, who shall reject all that is light or debased.

'Tis true, that when the coarse and worthless dross Is purg'd away, there will be mighty loss; E'en Congreve, Southern, manly Wycherly, When thus refin'd will grievous sufferers be. Into the melting pot when Dryden comes, What horrid stench will rise, what noisome fumes! How will he shrink, when all his lewd allay And wicked mixture shall be purg'd away!" Thus stands the passage in the last edition; but in the original there was an abatement of the censure, beginning thus:

disowned it. His tendency to profaneness is the effect of levity, negligence, and loose conversa tion, with a desire of accommodating himself to the corruption of the times, by venturing to be wicked as far he durst. When he professed himself a convert to popery, he did not pretend to have received any new conviction of the fundamental doctrines of Christianity.

The persecution of critics was not the worst of his vexations; he was much more disturbed by the importunities of want. His complaints of poverty are so frequently repeated, either with the dejection of weakness sinking in helpless misery, or the indignation of merit claiming its tribute from mankind, that it is impossible not to detest the age which could impose on such a man the necessity of such solicitations, or not to despise the man who could submit to such solicitations without necessity