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DRY DE N.

OF the great poet whofe life I am about to delineate, the curiofity which his reputation muft excite will require a difplay more ample than can now be given. His contemporaries, however they reverenced his genius, left his life unwritten; and nothing therefore can be known beyond what casual mention and uncertain tradition have fupplied.

JOHN DRYDEN was born August 9, 1631, at Aldwinkle near Oundle, the fon of Erafmus Dryden of Titchmerfh; who was the third fon of Sir Erasmus Dryden, baronet, of Canons Ashby. All these places are in Northamptonshire; but the original stock of the family was in the county of Huntingdon.

He is reported by his last biographer, Derrick, to have inherited from his father an estate of two hundred a year, and to have been bred, as was faid, an Anabaptist. For either of these particulars no authority is given. Such a fortune ought to have fecured him from that poverty which feems always to have oppreffed him; or, if he had wafted it, to have made him ashamed of publishing his neceffities. But

though

though he had many enemies, who undoubtedly examined his life with a fcrutiny fufficiently malicious, I do not remember that he is ever charged with wafte of his patrimony. He was indeed fometimes reproached for his firft religion. I am therefore inclined to believe that Derrick's intelligence was partly true, and partly erroneous.

From Weftminfter School, where he was inftructed as one of the King's fcholars by Dr. Busby, whom he long after continued to reverence, he was in 1650 elected to one of the Westminster scholarships at Cambridge *.

Of his fchool performances has appeared only a poem on the death of Lord Haftings, compofed with great ambition of fuch conceits as, notwithstanding the reformation begun by Waller and Denham, the example of Cowley ftill kept in reputation. Lord Haftings died of the fmall-pox; and his poet has made of the puftules firft rofebuds, and then gems; at laft exalts them into ftars; and fays,

No comet need foretell his change drew on,
Whofe corpfe might feem a conftellation.

At the univerfity he does not appear to have been eager of poetical diftinction, or to have lavished his early wit either on fictitious fubjects or publick occafions. He probably confidered, that he, who proposed to be an author, ought first to be a student. He obtained, whatever was the reafon, no fellowship in the College. Why he was excluded cannot now be known, and it is vain to guefs; had he thought

*He went off to Trinity College, and was admitted to a Bachelor's Degree in 1653. H.

himself injured, he knew how to complain. In the life of Plutarch he mentions his education in the College with gratitude; but, in a prologue at Oxford, he has thefe lines:

Oxford to him a dearer name shall be

Than his own mother-university;

Thebes did his rude, unknowing youth engage:
He chooses Athens in his riper age.

It was not till the death of Cromwell, in 1658, that he became a public candidate for fame, by publifhing Heroic Stanzas on the late Lord Protector; which, compared with the verfes of Sprat and Waller on the fame occafion, were fufficient to raife great expectations of the rifing poet.

When the King was reftored, Dryden, like the other panegyrifts of ufurpation, changed his opinion, or his profeffion, and publifhed ASTREA REDUX a poem on the happy Restoration and Return of his mast facred Majesty King Charles the Second.

The reproach of inconftancy was, on this occafion, fhared with fuch numbers, that it produced neither hatred nor difgrace! if he changed, he changed with the nation. It was, however, not totally forgotten when his reputation raifed him enemics.

The fame year, he praifed the new King in a second poem on his reftoration. In the ASTREA was the line,

An horrid ftillness first invades the ear,
And in that filence we a tempelt fear-

for which he was perfecuted with perpetual ridicule, perhaps with more than was deferved. Silence is indeed mere privation; and, fo confidered, cannot

invade;

invade; but privation likewife certainly is darkness, and probably cold; yet poetry has never been refufed the right of afcribing effects or agency, to them as to pofitive powers. No man fcruples to fay that darkness hinders him from his work; or that cold has killed the plants. Death is also privation; yet who has made any difficulty of affigning to Death a dart and the power of striking?

In fettling the order of his works there is fome difficulty; for, even when they are important enough to be formally offered to a patron, he does not commonly date his dedication; the time of writing and publishing is not always the fame; nor can the firft editions be eafily found, if even from them could be obtained the neceffary information.

The time at which his firft play was exhibited is not certainly known, because it was not printed till it was, fome years afterwards, altered and revived; but fince the plays are faid to be printed in the order in which they were written, from the dates of fome, thofe of others may be inferred; and thus it may be collected, that in 1663, in the thirty-fecond year of his life, he commenced a writer for the ftage; compelled undoubtedly by neceffity, for he appears never to have loved that exercife of his genius, or to have much pleafed himfelf with his own dramas.

Of the ftage, when he had once invaded it, he kept poffeffion for many years; not indeed without the competition of rivals who fometimes prevailed, or the cenfure of criticks, which was often poignant and often just; but with fuch a degree of reputation. as made him at leaft fecure of being heard, whatever might be the final determination of the publick.

His first piece was a comedy called the Wild Gallant. He began with no happy auguries; for his performance was fo much difapproved, that he was compelled to recall it, and change it from its imperfect ftate to the form in which it now appears, and which is yet fufficiently defective to vindicate the criticks.

I wish that there were no neceffity of following the progrefs of his theatrical fame, or tracing the meanders of his mind through the whole feries of his dramatick performances; it will be fit, however, to enumerate them, and to take efpecial notice of thofe that are distinguished by any peculiarity, intrinfick or concomitant; for the compofition and fate of eight-and-twenty dramas include too much of a poetical life to be omitted.

In 1664, he published the Rival Ladies, which he dedicated to the Earl of Orrery, a man of high reputation both as a writer and as a ftatefman. In this play he made his effay of dramatick rhyme, which he defends, in his dedication, with fufficient certainty of a favourable hearing; for Orrery was himfelf a writer of rhyming tragedies.

He then joined with Sir Robert Howard in the Indian Queen, a tragedy in rhyme. The parts which either of them wrote are not diftinguished.

The Indian Emperor was published in 1667. It is a tragedy in rhyme, intended for a fequel to Howard's Indian Queen. Of this connection notice was given to the audience by printed bills, diftributed at the door; an expedient fuppofed to be ridiculed in the Rehearful, when Bayes tells how many

reams

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