other hand, it should be contended, that he was buried under a wall, thirty feet long, tipp'd over by a pack of hounds in full cry, in 1673, when he really was of that age, then some degree of embarrassment will arise from his mother being in that year at the country-seat of her pretended uncle Mordaunt; no kind of relationship subsisting between even the house of Norfolk and Peterborough, till some years afterwards.

Lady Elizabeth Dryden (according to Corinna,) next informs us, that her son having escaped this misfortune, in due time accepted a kind invitation from another uncle of her's, Cardinal Howard, and removed to Rome; where, in his twenty-third year, agreeably to his father's prediction, he met with another dreadful accident: however, notwithstanding his falling from the top of one of the Towers of the Vatican, five stories high, and nearly resembling the Monument, by which he was mashed to a mummy, he yet survived to tell this marvellous tale; being fated, it seems, to another kind of death. We cannot suppose a mother ignorant or forgetful of

8

In the Vatican there are said to be eleven thousand rooms; but there is no tower of any kind connected with it. This dreadful accident, Corinna tells us, happened to Charles Dryden, shortly after he had been in attendance on some ladies of the palace, the Pope's nieces. But unfortunately the Pope never entertains any females in the Vatican; nor have the ladies of Rome any opportunity of sceing his Holiness, except at church, in a procession, or on a journey.

the age of her own child: unluckily, however, her son, Charles, attained his twenty-third year in 1688; when he was in London, and might indeed have tumbled from the top of the Monument, but could not, without the legs of Garagantua, have ascended one of the supposed towers of the Vatican: nor did he visit Rome till some years afterwards. As for Cardinal Howard, under whose patronage it is very probable he went there, it has already been shewn that he was young Dryden's third cousin, and instead of being uncle, was scarcely second cousin to his mother.

To conclude these fantastick figments, we are told that this Lady was exceedingly apprehensive of her son's dying a violent death in his thirtythird or thirty-fourth year; which his father had predicted, and she feared the more, on account of the frequent challenges sent by her son to Lord Jefferies, in consequence of the outrage committed. by that nobleman, at the time of Dryden's funeral. What ground she had for apprehension from a rencounter between Lord Jefferies and her son, we have already seen; and if in 1702 she dreaded that he should die in his thirty-third or thirtyfourth year, her wits must have already left her; as those two years of his life had previously passed over without any signal calamity; for they were the years 1698 and 1699; which he spent either in excursions with his father into Northamptonshire, or sitting quietly by the fire-side in his house

in London.

On these absurd and ridiculous fictions I have, perhaps, dwelt too long: but absurd as they are, let it be remembered, that for above half a century they have been transmitted from book to book; a refutation, therefore, which may prevent their obtaining hereafter the slightest degree of notice, or being ever again admitted into any biographical work, cannot be entirely useless.

Though Corinna's account be wholly unworthy of credit, it cannot, however, be denied, that Dryden was weak enough to confide in the science of astrology, in which he was countenanced by some distinguished men of the last age and it is extremely probable that he had predicted at the birth of his eldest son, that some calamity would happen to him in his eighth and twenty-eighth year; and that both his predictions were fortuitously fulfilled. We know from his letter to him, written in September, 1697, that he had calculated his nativity; and he has himself told us, that every

Cibber's LIVES OF THE POETS, BIOGRAPHIA DRAMATICA, &c.

Robert Burton, author of the ANATOMY OF ME LANCHOLY, Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, George, Earl of Bristol, the first Earl of Shaftesbury, the Cardinals Richelieu, and Mazarin, &c.

Sir Isaac Newton, it is well known, in the early part of his life, was captivated by this idle and vain study: "There was a time, (as Mr. Spence has mentioned in his ANECDOTES, quoting the words of Dr. Lockier,) when he was possessed with the old fooleries of astrology ; and another, when he was so far gone in chemistry, as to be upon the hunt after the Philosopher's stone."

thing, to that time, had happened according to his prediction: from other passages it may be collected, that Charles Dryden had suffered much by some accidental fall at Rome: and a tradition is yet preserved in the family descended from our author's brother, that on the poet's death, his eldest son found in his pocket-book the horoscope in which several of the calamities of his life were predicted. Among these, however, could not have been enumerated any mischance likely to befal him in his thirty-third or thirty-fourth year, that is, in 1698 or 1699; because Dryden himself, speaking of the nativity which he had cast, assures his son, that towards the end of September, 1697, he would begin to recover his perfect health.-From a memorandum in one of the Manuscripts of Oldys, the Antiquary,' it should seem, that he had some confidence also in oneirocriticism, and sup

• Communicated by Lady Dryden, who derived her information from the widow of her grandfather, Edward Dryden, Esq.

3 "The story (says Oldys, in his Notes on Langbaine,) of Mr. Dryden's dream at Lord Exeter's at Burleigh, while he was translating Virgil, as Signor Verrio, then painting there, related it to the Yorkshire painter, of whom I had it, lies in the parchment-book in quarto, designed for his life." At a subsequent period Oldys addedNow entered therein :"-but where either the loose prophetick leaf, or the parchment-book now is, I know not. -Antonio Verrio, a Neapolitan painter, was employed at Burleigh by John, the fifth Earl of Exeter, from the time of the Revolution to the year 1698, in various works

posed that future events were sometimes prognosticated by dreams, as well as by the configuration of the stars.

John, our author's second son, was born probably in 1667 or 1668, and after having been initiated in classical learning at some inferior seminary, or under his father's care, was admitted a King's Scholar in the College of Westminster, in his fourteenth or fifteenth year, (1682,) and continued on that foundation till 1685, when he was elected to Oxford. Notwithstanding this circumstance, he does not appear to have been admitted a Student of Christ Church. About the time of his election, his father had become a convert to popery; to the tenets of which religion his sincere and disinterested attachment is evinced by a letter written at a late period of his life.Wishing therefore to breed his sons in his new faith,' he probably was unwilling that John should

during which time his noble patron allowed him a pension, with an equipage and servants to attend him.-In 1695 or 1696, Dryden spent part of the summer at Burleigh.

It appears from the Register of Westminster Scholars, that John Dryden, Jun., (with others,) was elected to a Studentship of Christ-Church, in 1685; but he never was a Student; for the admission-book of Students (which the Rev. Dr. Holmes, Canon of Christ-Church, has obligingly examined for the purpose of ascertaining this fact,) contains the names of all those who were elected from Westminster with him, but the name of Dryden does not there appear.