spoken of is Tom Brown,) I am informed, he was in favour with the Earl of Dorset ; who invited him to dinner on a Christmas-day, with Mr. Dryden and some other gentlemen famous for learning and ingenuity (according to his lordship's custom); when Mr. Brown, to his agreeable surprise, found a bank-note of £.50. under his plate, and Mr. Dryden at the same time was presented with another of £.100." Lord Dorset, it is well known, delighted in such acts of munificence, and this mode of dispensing pecuniary favours was not uncommon in the last age:' but it is somewhat extraordinary, that he should have brought together two persons who could have had so little

* Historical Account of the most considerable English Poets, 8vo. 1720, p. 16.-It appears from one of our author's letters, that he had received a visit from Lord Dorset, and had dined with him, early in Nov. 1699.

In Sir Bulstrode Whitelocke's Account of the splendid Masque given by the four Inns of Court, Feb. 2, 1633-4, which cost twenty thousand pounds, (a manuscript formerly in the possession of the late Dr. Moreton of the British Museum, and quoted by Dr. Burney, HIST. OF MUSICK, iii. 376,) speaking of the musicians, he says, "For the musicke, which was particularly committed to my charge, I gave to Mr. Ives and to Mr. Lawes 100l. a peece for their rewards. For the four French gentlemen, the Queen's servants, I thought that a handsome and liberall gratifying of them would be made known to the Queen, their mistris, and be well taken by her. I therefore invited them one morning to a collation at St. Dunstan's taverne, in the great room, the Oracle of Apollo, where each of them

cordiality towards each other, as Brown and our author. Dryden, however, must have been flattered by the great difference between the two donations; and he appears to have entertained no illwill towards Brown, speaking of him in one of his letters with perfect unconcern, as a mere pamphleteer, who wrote against him solely for the purpose of getting a little money.

From the month of August, 1689, to the time of his death, a period of near eleven years, we must, it appears, consider Dryden possessed of no other income but that which was derived from his own small estate, aided by the occasional bounty of his noble friends, and his own literary exertions. In this period he brought out five plays, the profits of which amounted probably to five hundred pounds the author's third night' producing

had his plate layd by him, covered, and the napkin by it; and when they opened their plates, they found in each of them forty pieces of gould, of their master's coyne, for the first dish; and they had cause to be much pleased with this surprisall."

• We can hardly suppose that Lord Dorset was in. duced to invite Brown to his table, by the following lines in "The [pretended] Petition of Tho. Brown to the Lords of the Council," written some years before:

"But if

"Then pardon Tom Brown,

"And let him write on;

you had rather convert the poor sinner, "His foul railing mouth may be stopp'd with a dinner." When the house was quite full, an author gained somewhat more; for at this time the theatre in Drury

usually about seventy pounds, and the play itself being sold to the bookseller for thirty guineas."

Lane held such a number of persons as produced a hun. dred and thirty pounds (the price of admission to the boxes being half a crown; see Dryden's Prologue to THE MISTAKES, 1690); and the nightly charges of the house, as they are called, did not exceed thirty pounds. In 1709 the charges were £40. In 1750 they were £.60.; and at present they are £.200.

Southerne is supposed to have been the first dramatick author, who had two benefits, on the production of a new play. In the Dedication of Sir ANTONY LOVE, a comedy, in 1691, he speaks of his being interested in the third and sixth representation of that piece. The custom, however, does not appear to have been immediately established, for in 1696 the author of THE TREACHEROUS BROTHERS should seem, from his Epilogue, to have had only one benefit:

See't but three days, and fill the house the last, :: "He shall not trouble you again in haste."

Yet in the very next year in the Prologue to BOADICEA, the sixth night is mentioned, as belonging to the poet as well as the third.

. Whether, however, Dryden had the advantage of two representations of his ARTHUR, CLEOMENES, and Love TRIUMPHANT, or not, (for DoN SEBASTIAN and Aм. PHITRYON preceded this regulation,) his profits should seem not to have exceeded the sum mentioned in the text; for in a letter to his son in 1697, he mentions that he was employed on a play called THE CONQUEST OF CHINA BY THE TARTARS, which had been put into his hands by the author, Sir Robert Howard. "It will cost me," he adds, "six weeks study, with the probable be-.

Nothing, perhaps, more strongly shews the great fertility of his mind, than his having written near one hundred Prologues and Epilogues, for the most part of extraordinary excellence; having never been assisted by a friend with this kind of decoration to any of his own plays, except in two instances; and having supplied the contemporary

nefit of an hundred pounds." Perhaps indeed, he here meant only to speak of the theatrical profits, exclusive of the copy-money. In the Preface to CLEOMENES, however, he says, "the reward I have from the stage is so little, that it is not worth my labour."

The following receipt is copied from the original, which was found among Mr. Tonson's papers:

"Oct. y 6th, 1691.

"Receiv'd the sum of Thirty Guinneys, for which I resigne to Mr. Tonson all my right in the printing y сору of CLEOMENES, a tragedy.

"Witnesse

my hand,

JOHN DRYDEN."

"John Dryden, Jun."

Pope does not seem to have known that Dryden had ever received so much money for the copy of a play; for speaking of him to Mr. Spence, (as that gentleman has mentioned in his ANECDOTES,) he said, "For some time he wrote a play at least every year; but in those days ten broad pieces was the usual highest price for a play, and if they got £.50. more in the acting, 'twas reckoned very well."-This, perhaps, was the case in part of the time of Charles the Second; but afterwards, we see a larger sum was given; and in the middle of the reign of Queen Anne the common price of the copy-right of a play was fifty pounds.

dramatists with above forty pieces, of this difficult species of composition. His price for a Prologue or Epilogue is said by Dr. Warburton to have been originally four guineas; till being asked by Southerne to write one, he required six; "Not, (said he,) young man, out of disrespect to you, but the players have had my goods too cheap." This story, Warburton says,' was told by Southerne to him and Pope, nearly at the same time. In the Life of Southerne, however, published shortly afterwards by Shiels and the younger Cibber, on the testimony of a gentleman who had been personally acquainted with that poet, the sums are said to have been five and ten guineas; and Dr. Johnson with more probability supposes, that Dryden's original price for a Prologue was two guineas, and that from Southerne he demanded three: so difficult is it to elicit truth from any traditional tale.

By his translation of Virgil he got at the least twelve hundred pounds. Of his other works it is not easy to ascertain the price; but from the letters which passed between him and his bookseller, it may be collected, that he usually received fifty guincas for about fifteen hundred lines.

7 In a note (first pulished in 1751,) on Popes's lines on Southerne's birth-day, 1742:

May Tom, whom heaven sent down to raise "The price of Prologues and of Plays," &c. • See p. 237.