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For Mrs. Steward,

All Cotterstock, near Oundle,

in the county of Northton, These.

To be left with the Postmaster of Oundle.

MADAM,

LETTER XXIX.

TO MRS. STEWARD.

Candlemas-Day, 1698 [-9.]

OLD men are not so insensible of beauty, as it may be, you young ladies think. For my own. part, I must needs acknowledge that your fair eyes* had made me your slave before I receiv'd your fine presents. Your letter puts me out of doubt that they have lost nothing of their lustre, because it was written with your own hand; and not heareing of a feavour or an ague, I will please my self with the thoughts that they have wholly left you. I wou'd also flatter my self with the hopes of waiting on you at Cotterstock some time next summer; but my want of health may perhaps hinder me. But if I am well enough to travell as farr northward as Northamptonshyre, you are sure of a guest, who has been too well us'd, not to trouble you again.

* Mrs. Steward was at this time but twenty-seven, and very handsome. Soon after the Revolution, she was esteemed one of the finest women that appeared at Queen Mary's Court.

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My sonn, of whom you have done me the favour to enquire, mends of his indisposition very slowly; the ayr of England not agreeing with him hetherto so well as that of Italy. The Bath is propos'd by the Doctours, both to him and me: but we have not yet resolv'd absolutely on that journey; for that city is so closs and so ill situated, that perhaps the ayr may do us more harm than the waters can do us good for which reason we intend to try them heer first; and if we find not the good effect which is promis'd of them, we will save our selves the pains of goeing thether. In the mean time, betwixt my intervalls of physique and other remedies which I am useing for my gravell, I am still drudgeing on: always a poet, and never a good one. I pass my time sometimes with Ovid, and sometimes with our old English poet, Chaucer; translateing such stories as best please my fancy; and intend besides them to add somewhat of my own: so that it is not impossible, but ere the summer be pass'd, I may come

• Here, it is observable, our author speaks of himself with that modesty, which was natural to him, and truly part of his character. It was only among the Criticks in Coffee-houses, or in his letters to his bookseller, or when he was decried and run down by his adversaries, that he considered it necessary to keep up a proper port, and not to abate a jot of his poetical pretensions. In those cases, he seems to have thought it fair to follow the example, and adopt the language, of Horace,-Sume superbiam quasitam meritis. See vol. i. part i. P. 477.

down to you with a volume in my hand,' like a dog out of the water, with a duck in his mouth.As for the rarities you promise, if beggars might be choosers, a part of a chine of honest bacon wou'd please my appetite more than all the marrow puddings; for I like them better plain; having a very vulgar stomach.-My wife and your Cousin, Charles, give you their most humble service, and thanks for your remembrance of them. I present my own to my worthy Cousin, your husband, and am, with all respect,

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In Bridges's HISTORY OF NORTHAMPTONSHIRE, vol. ii. p. 438, the following passage is found. The author is speaking of Cotterstock:

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"Mr. Steward hath here a good estate, and a seat built by Mr. Norton. At this house Mr. Dryden wrote his FABLES, and spent the two last summers of his life."

We here see, how lightly traditional stories run round the world. On examination, I believe, they will very generally be found, like this account, to be compounded of truth and falsehood. In the autumn of the year 1698, Dryden made an excursion from Tichmarsh to Cotterstock, and appears to have passed a few weeks there;

LETTER XXX.

TO MRS. STEWARD.

Thursday, Feb. 9th.-98 [-9].

MADAM,

FOR this time I must follow a bad example, and send you a shorter letter than your short one: you were hinder'd by dancers, and I am forc'd to dance attendance all this afternoon after a troublesome business, so soon as I have written this, and scal'd it. Onely I can assure you that your father and mother and all your relations are in health, or were yesterday, when I sent to enquire of their welfare.-On Tuesday night we had a violent wind, which blew down three of my chimneys, and dismantled all one side of my house, by throwing down the tiles. My neighbours, and indeed all the town, suffer'd more or less; and some were kill'd. The great trees in St. James's Park are many of them torn up from the roots; as they were before Oliver Cromwell's death, and the

and in 1699 he spent full six weeks at the same house. Perhaps in that time he wrote two or three hundred verses of the volume afterwards published with the title of FABLES; but that probably was the utmost; for he himself has told us, that in his visits to the country his object was, to unweary himself, not to drudge.

In a small MS. Common-place book written by Archbishop Sancroft, (in the Bodleian Library, 64. Z. p. 125,) is the following entry:

late Queen's: but your father had no damage.—I sent my man for the present you design'd ine; but he return'd empty-handed; for there was no such

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Sep. 3, 1658. The blustring tyrant, OLIVER, in a whirlwind left the world; dying, as he had lived, in a storm :-buried at a greater charge than the greatest English Kings in the peaceablest times."

Sancroft knew him well, and has painted him in his true colours, in an admirable covert satire, published anonymously in 1652, under the title of MODERN POCIES, taken from Machiavel, Borgia, and other choise Authors, by an eye-witnesse.

The storm that preceded Cromwell's death is mentioned by several historians, and has been recorded in verse by Waller but it is not equally well known that the death of another blusterer was attended with the same circumstance.

"On the other side (says Dr. Tanner, afterwards Bishop of St. Asaph,) is a cocval note of an old MS. belonging to our cathedral, [Norwich] at the odd exit of the great Cardinal Wolsey, not mentioned, I think, in Cavendish, or any of the Historians; much like OLIVER'S wind.

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"Ad finem Annalium Bartholomæi Cotton, MS. in Bibl. Eccl. Cath. Norvic. habetur hæc notitia.

"Anno Xti 1530, nocte immediate sequente quartum diem Novembris, vehemens ventus quasi per totam Angliam accidebat; et die proximé sequente, quinto sc. die ejusdem mensis, circa horam primam post meridiem, captus erat Dns Thomas Wolsye, Cardinalis, in ædibus suis de Cahowe [1. Cawood] infra diocesin suam Eboracensem; et postea in itinere suo versus Londiniam vigilik S" Andreæ prox. sequente apud Leycestriam moriebatur: quo die ventus quasi Gehennalis tunc fere per totam Angliam re-accidebat; cujus vehementiâ apud Leystoff

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