Tonson, who seems to have considered the making of verses as much a manufacture as the making of

paper,

Each word and syllable brought to the scale,

And valued to a scruple in the sale;

for on one occasion we find him complaining bitterly, that he had not enough for his money. "If (says he,) the matter of fact as I state it be true, (and upon my word what I mention I can shew you in your letter,) then pray, Sir, consider, how much dearer I pay than you offered it to the other bookseller; for he might have had to the end of the story of Daphnis [Daphne] for twenty guineas, which is, in your translation, 759 lines; and then suppose twenty guincas more for the same number, (759 lines,) that makes for forty guincas 1518 lines; and all that I have for fifty guineas are but 1446: so that, if I have no more, I pay ten guineas above forty, and have seventy-two lines less for fifty, in proportion, than the other bookseller should have had for forty."!-Degrading as it may appear to our author, we must therefore now estimate his works, not by their value, but their bulk. At the rate already mentioned, his translation of Juvenal and Persius, to which he contributed about 3500 verses, would not have produced more than . 125.; but in consideration of the excellence of the original, as well as the translation, and that the latter was not a detached but an entire work, a hundred and fifty pounds may perhaps be estimated

as the profit of that undertaking. From the FABLES, we know, he derived but two hundred and sixty-eight pounds, fifteen shillings; (though afterwards, on that contract, a further sum became due to his representatives :) and for the two volumes of MISCELLANIES published within this period, the versions of Du Fresnoy and the first book of Tacitus, various Dedications, and some other productions, £.300. more may be allowed. To these several sums, which amount to £.2418. 15. O., we may add, perhaps, a sum of one thousand pounds, derived probably from the munificence of Lord Dorset, the Marquis of Normanby, the Duchess of Ormond, and his wealthy kinsman of Chesterton, whose noble present, in return for the Epistle addressed to him, he received about a month before his death; and whose liberality at a former period he also acknowledges, in a letter which has come to my hands since some of the preceding sheets were printed. At an average, therefore, supposing these statements to be correct, his annual income from all these sources, including his private estate, even during this distressful period of eleven years, was above .400. per annum. Yet his complaints were not without ground; for let it be remembered, that his three sons were now grown to man's estate, without any prospect of future provision, except what his little patrimony afforded; that when he made these complaints, he had no certain revenue but about £.120. per annum; and that the principal support of his family was

obtained by unceasing toil, rendered still more irksome by age and infirmities. "This is a business," (says he, in a letter to Tonson, in 1697,) of the greatest consequence in the world; for you know how I love Charles; and therefore I write to you with all the earnestness of a father. If I must die of over-study, I cannot spend my life better than in saving his."-Nor was the constant labour by which these sums were acquired, his only grievance: the greater part of his income being occasional and casual, was no small evil, and he must have experienced much embarrassment from the uncertainty of his revenue; in affluence perhaps for half the year, and during the other half often without a guinea. Instead of suffering him to earn a precarious and uncertain livelihood by laborious and incessant literary exertions, it surely would have been more noble in the ministers of King William' to have settled on him a pension equal in value to the salary of the offices which he had conscientiously relinquished; overlooking his former satires, and his present political and religious attachments, which latter, if at all attended to, entitled him to respect; and considering him only as one of the greatest poets which England had produced in many centuries; who, on that ground alone, at such an advanced period of life, had an indisputable claim to ease and independence. William, however, was no patron of poets; and Dryden received no

9.44 King William (says Lord Orford,) had so little leisure to attend to, or so little disposition to, men of wit,

favour whatsoever either from the prince on the throne, or those to whom the dispensation of the royal bounty was entrusted: and while he was thus neglected, he had the mortification to see the infamous and perjured Titus Oates countenanced by the Court, and rewarded with a pension of three hundred pounds a year, which he enjoyed to the time of his death. '

During this calamitous season of his life, it should be remembered to his honour, that his spirit was unbroken; and however he may have complained of distress and embarrassments, no regard to his interest could induce him to abandon his religious or political opinions; as is evinced by a paper written but six months before his death, in which he speaks of his situation and prospects with great dignity and fortitude. "What has

hindered me from writing to you, (says he, in a letter to a kinswoman,) was neither ill health, nor a worse thing, ingratitude; but a flood of little businesses, which yet are necessary to my subsistance, and of which I hoped to have given you a good account before this time: but the Court rather speaks kindly of me, than does any thing for me, though they promise largely; and perhaps they think, I will advance as they go backward; in

that when St. Evremont was introduced to him, the King said coldly, "I think you were a Major-General in the French service." ANECDOTES OF PAINTING, iii. 113.

This detestable miscrcant died in 1705; so that he received near five thousand pounds from the Exchequer.

which they will be much deceived, for I can never go an inch beyond my conscience and honour. If they will consider me as a man who has done my best to improve the language, and especially the poetry, and will be content with my acquiescence under the present Government, and forbearing satire on it, that I can promise, because I can perform it; but I can neither take the oaths. nor forsake my religion."*

Of Dryden's personal qualities and domestick manners, Congreve, who, during the last ten years of his life had lived in great familiarity with him, has left so minute an account, that however often transcribed, it must always make a part of this great poet's history. "He was," says Congreve, "of a nature exceedingly humane and compassionate; easily forgiving injurics, and capable of a prompt and sincere reconciliation with them who had offended him. Such a temperament is the only solid foundation of all moral virtues, and sociable endowments. His friendship, where he professed it, went much beyond his professions; and I have been told of strong and generous instances of it, by the persons themselves who received them; though his hereditary income was little more than a bare competency.

"As his reading had been very extensive, so was he very happy in a memory tenacious of every thing that he had read. He was not more pos

VOL. I.

Letter to Mrs. Steward, Nov. 7, 1699.

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