without grace, and poets without wit ;" and enriched the continuation of his poem with near two hundred lines, in which are found, beside the highly-finished portraits of Shadwell and Settle' under the names of OG and DoEG, the characters of Ferguson, a turbulent incendiary in the pay of Shaftesbury, under the name of JUDAS, and of Samuel Johnson under that of BEN JOCHANAN, with three or four other scribblers of less note, all wrought with equal felicity as those of ZIMRI and ACHITOPHEL.

In the same month in which the Second Part of ABSALOM appeared, was published his RELIGIO LAICI, a philosophical poem, which, though considered by Dr. Johnson as a composition of great excellence, seems to have been little read; for it did not in his life-time reach to a second edition. In this piece, which is addreffèd to a young friend of the author, who had recently translated Father Simon's "Critical History of the Old Testament,"

Settle, in addition to his other offences, had attacked our author in a Prologue to one of his plays, then entitled "THE EMPEROR OF Morocco, with the Death of Gayland:" which was acted at the Theatre Royal, on the 11th of March, 1681-2:

pocts, we all know, can change, like you, "And are alone to their own interest true; "Can write against all sense, nay ev'n their own : "The vehicle call'd pension makes it down. "No fear of cudgels, where there's hope of bread; "A well-fill'd paunch forgets a broken head.”

of whom I have only been able to discover that the initial letters of his names were H. D., though the subject is of so very different a nature from the political and personal controversy in which he had for some time been engaged, he yet contrived to find occasion for sarcasm, and to have one parting stroke at the hero of his recent satire; for it concludes with the following apology for the familiar style in which the poem is written:

"And this unpolish'd rugged verse I chose, "As fittest for discourse, and nearest prose ; "For while from sacred truth I do not swerve, "Tom Sternhold's or Tom Shadwell's rhyme will

serve."

Dryden's intimacy with Southerne, which appears to have continued uninterrupted till his death, probably commenced soon after the publi cation of the First Part of ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL; for in February, 1681-2, he furnished the young poct with the Prologue and Epilogue to his first play, called the LOYAL BROTHER. As the birth-place of this amiable man, who seems to have been much beloved by his contemporaries, has been mistated by Antony Wood, it may not be improper here to mention, that he was born in

In Dryden's MISCELLANIES, vol. ii. p. 452, 8vo. 1685, is a poem "on the late ingenious translation of Pere Simon's Critical History, by H. D. Esq. ;" and the work itself is advertised by Jacob Tonson, as translated by

H. D.

the county of Dublin, in the year 1659, as appears from the Register of the University of Dublin, where he was admitted a student in his seventeenth year, March 30, 1676. At the time, therefore,

3" 1676. Martii trigesimo die. Thomas Southerne, Pensionarius, filius Francisci Southerne, annum agens septemdecimum, natus in comitatu Dublinii, educatus apud Edw. Whitenhall, SS. Th. Doct. Tutor. Ægid. Pooly." Regr. Univer. Dublin.

Antony Wood having erroneously asserted that this poet was the son of George Southerne, of Stratford upon Avon, and was bred as a Servitor at Pembroke College, in Oxford, Southerne wrote the following letter to Dr. Richard Rawlinson, who above sixty years ago designed to publish a Continuation of Wood's work, for which he had collected many materials, now in the Bodleian library. The letter is preserved in Rawlinson's copy of the ATHENÆ OXONIENSES:

66 SIR,

"I received your letter, with Mr. Anstis's enclosed. This is to assure you, that I had no title to have my name in the ATHENE OXONIENSES; for I was born in Dublin, and bred up in the college of Dublin, and was never a Servitor, but spent my own money there: many better men have been Servitors, but I never was. What ever is mentioned of me in the last edition of that book, is scandalously false in fact or circumstance, in every particular: therefore you will do a justice to the truth and me, to leave me out of the edition, and make me some reparation for the abuse done me in that defamatory character.

"You mention plays that I wrote. If you have a mind to have the names of what I have wrote, I have ten in

that his first play was performed, he was but threeand-twenty. His second production, THE DISAPPOINTMENT, which appeared in April, 1684, had also the aid of our author's Muse, for to that piece he contributed a Prologue ; and in 1692 he soothed his friend in a consolatory paper of verses on the ill success of his WIVES EXCUSE, which he tells us was not damned, but dismissed with kind civility from the scene. In the preceding summer, so high was Dryden's opinion of his talents, that being unable from illness to finish CLEOMENES, he consigned it to the care of Southerne, who wrote one

print; viz. The Loyal Brother, or Persian P. :-The Disappointment, or Mother in Fashion :-Sir Anthony Love, or the Rambling Lady:-The Wives Excuse, or Cuckolds make themselves :-The Fatal Marriage, or the Innocent Adultery:-The Maids last Prayer, or Any Thing rather than fail:-The Fate of Capua:-Oronooko: The Spartan Dame:-Money the Mistress.

I must tell you that I was an Ensign upon the Duke of Monmouth's landing, in Earl Ferrers' regiment, and a Lieutenant in the regiment, before the Duke of Berwick had it; so that I turn'd soldier before the Revolution.If any thing I have said here will be of any use, more than leaving me out of that book, and doeing me justice in my character, you will much oblige, Sir,

"Your most humble Servant,

"THO. SOUTHERNE."

From Mr. Whyte's, Oilman, in

Tothill-street, against Dartmouth-street, Thursday, 17th of November, 1737.

half of the fifth act of that tragedy, and was with reason highly flattered by this mark of the author's confidence and esteem.

His friendship for Nat Lee, with whom he joined in writing two plays, commenced at an earlier period; for Lee, in 1674, wrote some encomiastick verses on THE STATE OF INNOCENCE, and our author repaid him by several Prologues, and an Epistle prefixed in 1677 to his RIVAL QUEENS. For this poct, who like our author, was bred at Trinity College in Cambridge, but at a later period, Dryden seems to have had great kindness; and probably he was not unworthy of it, for he was very generally called by his contemporaries"honest Nat Lee."

Whether from weariness and indisposition to the drama, as he hints in the Dedication of AURENGZEBE, or from a notion that his time might be more profitably employed, in 1683 our author discontinued writing for the stage. He appears about this time to have been much distressed, in consequence of the tardy payment of his salary; and now stood so high, even in the opinion of his adversaries, that they made him lucrative offers, for the purpose of silencing the powerful battery by which they had so much suffered: but these solicitations, however straitened in his circumstances, he had firmness enough to resist. Finding his embarrassments increasing, he thus modestly stated his merits and his claims, in a letter which seems to have been written at this period, and to have been ad