works of Antony, the third Earl of Shaftesbury, in various places exhibit ;"" who never seems to have forgotten or forgiven Dryden's contemptuous mention of his father,' and his masterly portrait of the first Earl.

Among the French men of letters, however, who lamented Dryden, we must not enumerate Boileau, though he was the most distinguished writer of that time, and had been highly commended by our author on many occasions; for though he said, he was extremely pleased to find by the publick papers, that such extraordinary honours had been paid to a poet in England, by a publick and splendid funeral, he at the same

9 CHARACTERISTICKS, vol. i. p. 156. vol. iii. p. 189, n. Edinb. 121no. 1758.

"Great wits are sure to madness near allied,
"And thin partitions do their bounds divide :
"Else, why should he, with wealth and honour blest,
Deprive his age the needful hours of rest;
Punish a body which he could not please,

Bankrupt of life, yet prodigal of case?

"And all, to leave what with his toil he won, To that unfeather'd two-legg'd thing, a son; Got while his soul did huddled notions try, "And born a shapeless lump, like anarchy." This unfeather'd two-legg'd thing (which, however, is only Aristotle's definition of man,) was married several years before these lines were written; for his son, Antony, the author of the CHARACTERISTICKS, was born at Exeter-House, in the Strand, in which his grandfather , then resided, Feb. 26, 1670-71. Antony, the second lord, died in 1699.

time, with an affectation unworthy of so great a writer, asked, who this poet was, and pretended never before to have heard of his name. His countrymen, however, at this very time were purchasing the engraved portrait of that obscure and unknown versifier with great avidity.'

From various passages in our author's works it may be collected, that his union with Lady Elizabeth Howard was far from contributing to his domestick happiness. His invectives against the married state are frequent and bitter, and were continued to the latest period of his life. Her wayward and unhappy disposition, which was the

Life and Posthumous Works of Arthur Mayn. waring, Esq. 8vo. 1715. p. 17.

Poem to the memory of Mr. Dryden, printed for C. Brome, fol. 1700.

See the opening of ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL. In his Dedication of ELEONORA, (1692,) he says, "the exteriours of mourning, a decent funeral, and black habits, are the usual stint of common husbands; and perhaps their wives deserve no better than to be mourned with hypocrisy and forgot with case." About two years afterwards in a letter to Dennis, he says, " Mr. Wycherley is full as competent an arbitrator [to decide on the propriety of a common friend's intended marriage]; he has been a bachelor and married man, and is now a widower: yet I suppose he will not give any large commendations to his middle state." But his most bitter invective against the connu bial state is contained in the following lines, addressed to his kinsman, not long before his own death:

"Minds are so hardly match'd, that even the first,

Though pair'd by heaven, in paradise were curs'd;

occasion of much disquiet to her husband, perhaps may be in some degree attributed to that distemper of mind, which at length ended in the total derangement of her understanding. In conse quence of her conduct both before and after her marriage, she was so little respected by his relations, that many of them lived in no kind of inti"For man and woman, though in one they grew, "Yet, first or last, return again to two: "He to God's image, she to his was made,

So farther from the fount, the stream at random stray'd. "How could he stand, when, put to double pain, "He must a weaker than himself sustain ?

"Each might have stood perhaps; but each alone;
"Two wrestlers help to pull cach other down.
"Not that my verse would blemish all the fair;

46

But yet if some be bad, 'tis wisdom to beware; "And better shun the bait, than struggle in the snare. "Thus have you shunn'd, and shun, the married state, Trusting as little as you can to fate."

Such is our author's representation of that condition of life, in which his kinsman happened to be placed; the colouring of which, as well as of the other passages referred to, may in some degree have taken a tint from his own domestick unhappiness. But one who had surveyed life with a still more penetrating eye than Dryden, speak ing of that state on which he is so lavish of encomiums, has observed, that" in general, even ill-assorted marriages are preferable to cheerless celibacy."" To live, (adds the same writer, in another place,) without feeling or exciting sympathy, to be fortunate without adding to the felicity of others, or afflicted without tasting the balm of pity, is a state more gloomy than solitude: it is not retreat, but exclusion, from mankind. Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures."

macy with her, confining their intercourse to mere visits of ceremony; nor does she appear to have ever accompanied our author in his excursions to Northamptonshire and other counties. In the latter part of his life he frequently visited his friends and relations near Oundle, and his kinsman at Chesterton in Huntingdonshire; but Lady Elzabeth, for so she was always called, remained in London.

Of her person no authentick account has been transmitted to us, nor has any portrait of her been hitherto discovered; but, if we may believe a lampoon of the last age," her ill conditions were in no degree compensated by any personal attraction.

Soon after Dryden's death, she became insane,"

' Communicated by Lady Dryden, from the information of her aunt-in-law, the late Lady Dryden, who died at Canons-Ashby, May 7, 1791, aged above eighty; and from the widow of her grandfather, Edward Dryden, Esq., which lady died in London in 1761, aged eightyfour, and had been personally acquainted with our author and his wife.

6 THE TORY POETS, 4to. 1682.

The following Epitaplı, intended for his wife, is ascribed to Dryden, in MS. Harl. 7316, p. 189:

"Here lies my wife; here let her lie:
"She's now at rest,and so am I."

Though there is no evidence that these lines were written
by him, they yet shew that the received opinion of the
last
age was, that little harmony subsisted between them.
Whoever was the writer, the thought is not original, being
evidently suggested by a well-known old French epitaph:

་་

'C'y gist ma femme: O, qu'elle est bien "Pour son repos,-ct pour le mien !"'

and was confined under the care of a female attendant," to whom her dower out of his paternal estate at Blakesley was regularly paid for her use : a very scanty provision, to which perhaps some

According to Mrs. Thomas, who is entitled to little credit, she became insane about the year 1703. To ascertain this fact, the Lord Chancellor, at my request, was pleased to order the proper officer to examine whether any commission of lunacy wasissued against her; but none was found. The following authentick extract, however, proves that she was a lunatick, though it does not fix the time when her mind became deranged. In 1713 a sum of money becoming due by Tonson to Dryden's estate, on his printing a second edition of THE FABLES, and all Dryden's sons being then dead, Anne, Lady Sylvius, (the youngest daughter of Lady Elizabeth Dryden's brother, the Honourable William Howard, and widow of Sir Gabriel Sylvius, Knt. who was Privy Purse to James II., and Envoy Extraordinary to the Court of Denmark at the time of the Revolution,) doubtless for the purpose of receiving this money for the benefit of her aunt, obtained letters of administration to the effects of the poet, unadininistered by his son Charles; of which the following minute is preserved in the Prerogative-Office:

"Vicesimo octavo die Maii, 1713, emanavit commissio domina Annæ Sylvius, viduæ, nepti ex fratre, et proxi mæ consanguineæ prænobilis et honorandæ fæminæ domina Elizabethæ Dryden, viduæ relicta Johannis Dryden, nuper parochiæ St Annæ Westm' in com. Mid. arm. defuncti, habentis, &c. ad administranda bona jura et credita dicti defuncti, (per Carolum Dryden, filium dicti de functi, modo etiam demortuum, inadministrata,) in usum ct beneficium, et durante lunacia, dictæ prænobilis et honorandæ fæminæ domina Elizabethæ Dryden, relictæ dicti Johannis Dryden defuncti, de bene, &c. jurat."