be matriculated as a member of the University, and chose rather to place him under the private tuition" of Obadiah Walker, Master of University College, at that time, a concealed, and in the following year, an avowed, papist, with whom I suspect he remained till the Revolution; soon after which event, Walker was ejected from the Mastership of that college. Such at least is the In a lampoon of the last age, in the form of a Dialogue in Bedlam, between Oliver's mad Porter, Sir Roger L'Estrange, and Dryden, (STATE POEMS, iii. 241.) the writer foolishly attributes our author's conversion to the arguments urged by one of his sons in favour of popery: "Men best themselves 'gainst open focs defend, The admission-book of University College has been examined, but it does not appear that John Dryden, Jun. was a regular member of that college; nor was he ever matriculated in the University of Oxford. 7 See Wood's ATHEN. OXON. vol. ii. col. 933.About the end of March, 1686, says Wood, "Mr. Walker became a bye-word among the protestants in Oxon and elsewhere; was abused to his face, when met in the publick streets and lanes; and had songs made of him (Obadiah,Avemaria,) by the connivance of the Magistrates. After Mr. Walker had declared [himself a papist], he had private mass in his lodgings, till such times as he could make and furnish a chapel within the limits of his college; which being done according to his mind, by converting two lower rooms on the east side of the quadrangle suggestion of a lampoon published at that period. Dryden has told us, that his second son left England, when he ought to have begun the study of for that purpose, he opened it for a publick use, on Sunday the 15th of August, 1686; to which resorted some scholars, some inhabitants of Oxon, and many troopers quar. tered therein: but the junior scholars, and the mobile, look. ing upon it as a foppery, diverse affronts were given to the priest and auditory." In October, 1689, Obadiah Walker was committed to the Tower; but in the following January, having been brought into the King's Bench by Habeas Corpus, he was enlarged upon bail. Being, however, excepted in the Act of General Pardon passed in the following May, he probably fled from England, and died abroad. He was the author of a book entitled "The Greek and Roman History illustrated by Coins and Medals," 8vo. 1692; a Treatise on Education; and various other works. In "The [pretended] Address of John Dryden, Laureate, to his Highness the Prince of Orange," folio, 1689, (which is in Mr. Bindley's Collection, and was published, as appears from a manuscript note by Mr. Luttrell, January 30, 1688-9,) are the following lines: "But if, great Prince, my feeble strength shall fail, "My heirs th' unfinish'd subject shall complete;- 66 Design'd for a new Bellarmine Goliah, "Under the great Gamaliel, Obadiah, of his native language. He probably went to Rome, with his elder brother, about the end of the year 1692, when he was about four-and-twenty; and after having spent some time there, became an officer of the Pope's household, officiating as deputy to his brother Charles, after his departure from Italy about the middle of the year 1698. Previously to his leaving England, he translated the fourteenth Satire of Juvenal, which makes part of the version published by Dryden; and, while he resided at Rome, he wrote a comedy entitled THE HUSBAND HIS OWN CUCKOLD, which was acted at the Theatre in Lincoln's-Inn Fields, in "This youth, Great Sir, shall your fame's trumpet blow, "When I, a poor weak pillar of the land, "Now growing old, and [an] crumbling into sand." Oldys mentions in his Manuscript Notes on Langbaine, that he had two copies in manuscript of Dryden's "Poem to King William," with a discourse prefixed, containing "An Apology for his past Life and Writings, dedicated to the Lord Dorset ;" which he rightly supposed to have been an imposition on the world in Dryden's name, and to have been written with a view of ridiculing him.— This poem, however, and that above quoted, should seem to have been different; for to the latter, which contains only six pages, and the titlepage, there is no discourse prefixed. 9 His name appears as a witness to a contract between his father and Jacob Tonson, dated October 6th, 1691, which will be found in a subsequent page. the winter of the year 1696, under his father's care, who assisted him with a Prologue, as Congreve did with an Epilogue. It was published in the summer of that year,' with a Preface by our author. The younger John does not appear to have ever visited England, after he first left it. At the time of his father's death, he certainly was in Italy; and about six months afterwards, in com-` pany with Mr. Cecil, probably a younger son of John, the fifth Earl of Exeter, he made a tour to Sicily and Malta, of which his account, after remaining many years in manuscript, was published in 1776. Soon after his return to Rome from that excursion, (January 28, 1701, N. S.) he is said to have died there, of a fever. Erasmus-Henry, the third son, was born May: 2, 1669, and admitted a Scholar at the CharterHouse, on the nomination of Charles the Second, 'It was advertised as published, in the London Ga-. zelte, No. 3200, July 23, 1696. In the Dedication of this piece (dated Rome, August 20, 1695,) to his uncle Sir Robert Howard, the author delivers an opinion which we find at a subsequent period in Rowe's Life of Shakspeare: "Shakspeare," says young Dryden, "among all the writers of our nation, may stand himself as a Phœnix,' the first and last of his order; in whom bounteous nature wonderfully supplied all the parts of a great poet and . excellent orator, and of whom alone one may venture boldly to say, that had he had more learning, perhaps he might have been less a poet." February 5, 1682-3.* In their Register is an entry, by which I learn that he left the House on the 2d of November, 1685, and was "elected to the University;" yet it does not appear that he became a member of either Oxford or Cambridge, probably from the same cause which prevented his brother John from accepting a Studentship of Christ Church. Like his brothers, he also went to Rome; and I do not find that he returned to Eng land before his father's death. He is said by Mrs. Thomas, whose fictions have been already detected, to have been a priest, and domestick chaplain to Mary, Duchess of Norfolk; whom she has untruly represented as his near relation. By this lady we are also told, that he was allowed a liberal salary by the Duchess, and thirty pounds a year by the college in Flanders, where she tells us he was bred. But all these circumstances were mere inventions. He was not a minister of religion, but a Captain in the Pope's Guards; and probably re * See p. 149, n. 4. See p. 415. About the time Mrs. Thomas became acquainted with Dryden, he was in the habit of visiting the Duchess of Norfolk; a circumstance which probably gave rise to this fiction. • Mr. Spence mentions in his ANECDOTES, that Pope said to him," Dryden had three or four sons; John, Erasmus, Charles, and perhaps another. One of them was a Priest, and another a Captain in the Pope's Guards." But he was deceived by our author's younger son having two Christian names; for Dryden certainly had but three |