"For my own part, (says he,) I never could shake off the rustick bashfulness which hangs upon my nature; but, valuing myself as little as I am worth, have been afraid to render even the common duties of respect to those who are in power. The ceremonious visits which are generally paid on such occasions, are not my talent. They may be real even in courtiers; but they appear with such a face of interest, that a modest man would think himself in danger of having his sincerity mistaken for his design. My congratulations keep their distance, and pass no further than my heart. There it is that I have all the joy imaginable, when I see true worth rewarded, and virtue uppermost in the world.""

To the eulogy of Congreve, who, agreeably to this representation, has described him as the most modest man he ever knew, may be added that of Lord Lansdowne, in his vindication of his friend from the charge brought against him by Burnet; who in his History, under the year 1669, has said, that the playhouses were at that time "become nests of prostitution," and that "the stage was defiled beyond all example, Dryden, the great master of dramatick poesy, being a monster of immodesty and of impurity of all sorts." All who knew him, replied Lord Lansdowne, can testify, this was not his character. "He was so much a stranger

6 Dedication of TROILUS AND CRESSIDA to Robert, Earl of Sunderland, 1679.

to immodesty, that modesty in too great a degree was his failing. He hurt his fortune by it; he was sensible of it; he complained of it, and never could overcome it." So far from meriting such a character, he was the very reverse; "a man of regular life and sober conversation, as all his acquaintance can vouch."-The Bishop's youngest son, indeed, contended, that the immodesty censured by his father was not opposed to modesty, but to chastness; and that this expression, as well as the words-impurity of all sorts, " could only be meant of his dramatick poesy, of which alone the Bishop was speaking."-However inapplicable

7" A Letter to the Author of Reflexions Historical and Political,' [written by John Oldmixon,] occasioned by a Treatise in Vindication of General Monk, and Sir Richard Granville, &c. By the Right Hon. George Granville, Lord Lansdowne;" 4to. 1732, p. 5.-He was (adds the noble writer,) esteemed, courted, and admired, by all the great men of the age in which he lived, who would certainly not have received into friendship a mon. ster, abandoned to all sorts of vice and impurity. His writings will do immortal honour to his name and country, and his poems last as long, if I may have leave to say it, as the Bishop's sermons, supposing them to be equally excellent in their kind."

Remarks upon the Right Hon. the Lord Lansdowne's Letter to the Author of "the Reflections Historical and Political;" as far as relates to Bishop Burnet. 4to. 1732, p. 26. [By Thomas Burnet, Esq. who had published the first volume of his father's History in 1724. He was afterwards (1741) made a Judge of the Common Pleas, and died in 1751.]

to the point in question Lord Lansdowne's reasoning may have been, his character of Dryden strongly confirms what Congreve and others have said on the same subject; for which purpose chiefly it has been here introduced. As to the licentiousness of some of our author's comedies, of which almost every writer of the time, following the example of the Court,' was as guilty as Dryden, his best defence must ever be that which Dr. Johnson has made for him,—that "he lived to repent, and to testify his repentance." The younger Burnet's assertion, however, that the poet's moral character

See our author's Epilogue to The Pilgrim :

"- - But sure a banish'd Court, with lewdness fraught, "The seeds of open vice, returning, brought : "Thus lodg'd, as vice by great example thrives, "It first debauch'd the daughters and the wives. "London, a fruitful soil, yet never bore "So plentiful a crop of horns before. "The poets, who must live by Courts, or starve, "Were proud so good a government to serve; "And mixing with buffoons and pimps profane, "Tainted the stage for some small snip of gain; "For they, like harlots under bawds profest, "Took all the ungodly pains, and got the least. "Thus did the thriving malady prevail; "The Court its head, the Poets but the tail. "The sin was of our native growth, 'tis true; "The scandal of the sin was wholly new :

Misses there were, but modestly conceal'd; "Whitehall the naked Venus first reveal'd; "Who standing, as at Cyprus, in her shrine, "The strumpet was adored with rites divine."

in private life was here not in contemplation, and that he was censured only as a dramatick poet, may justly be questioned; for in that case, his father should have written, " the plays of Dryden, the great master of dramatick pocsy, abounding in immodesty and impurities of all sorts:" and the Bishop's own words elsewhere may also be urged in favour of a larger interpretation; for in his Defence of the Reflections on Varillas, where Dryden's dramatick writings were certainly not in contemplation, he had said of our author-" It is true he had somewhat to fink from, in matter of wit; but as to his morals, it is scarce possible for him to grow a worse man than he was.” The first part of Burnet's History, containing the paffage in question, it should be remembered, was written recentibus odiis, about ten or twelve years after Dryden's celebrated controversial poem had exhibited him in no very favourable light; and it is not unreasonable to suppose that this circumstance was not entirely forgotten by the HISTORIAN OF HIS OWN TIME, when our poet was selected from the whole tribe of dramatick offenders, and represented as the person to whom principally the licentiousness of the stage was imputable, in such strong yet ambiguous terms, that whether the man was not intended to be censured as well as the poet, may yet be a question among criticks.

See p. 196.

• Under the name of the BUZZARD, in THE HIND AND THE PANTHER.

How great soever Dryden's modesty may have been, he was fully sensible of his powers, and on many occasions very frankly avowed his confidence in his own abilities; which he felt, and did not disguise, at a time when he was yet but a candidate for fame, in the rudiments of his poetry, with out a name or reputation in the world." The passages of this kind which are found in his works, are strongly confirmed by a story which the late Lord Chief Justice Marlay, who died above forty years ago, was fond of relating, and has been communicated to me by my friend, the Lord Bishop of Waterford, his only surviving son. His father became a Templar about the time that the famous Ode for St. Cecilia's day was produced; and being desirous of seeing the Wits, and hearing their conversation, began at an early period to frequent Will's Coffee-House, to which they resorted. ALEXANDER'S FEAST, not long after its appear

See the Epistle prefixed to ANNUS MIRABILIS, 1667: "And this, Sir, I have done with that boldness, for which I will not stand accountable to any of our little criticks, who perhaps are not better acquainted with him [Virgil] than I am."

4 The Right Hon. Anthony Marlay, who was succes. sively Attorney-General, Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer, and Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench in Ireland. He died in 1757.-This anecdote and a few other particulars here mentioned, I communicated some years ago to the editor of the BIOGRAPHIA DRAMATICA; which is noticed only to prevent the gentle critick from supposing it to have been borrowed from that work.