inferior in poetry, was so pathetick a reader of his own scenes, that I have been informed by an actor who was present, that while Lee was reading to Major Mohun at a rehearsal, Mohun, in the warmth of his admiration, threw down his part, and said, Unless I were able to play it as well as you read it, to what purpose should I undertake it?"-Rowe was so excellent a reciter of his compositions, that Mrs. Oldfield used to say-that she had no occasion for any other study, than hearing him read her part in any of his plays. Of Goldsmith's deficiency in this respect, I can "It is very odd, what some of Mr. Dryden's friends have often repeated of him, that there was no man who read poetry with a worse grace than himself; so that a stranger would have hardly believed, him the author of one tolerable good verse." If we may credit a ballad written to ridicule the words and musick of the opera entitled ALBION AND ALBANIUS, (probably by some partisan of Shaftesbury,) Dryden had no car for musick. These are two stanzas of it: "Bayes, thou would'st have thy skill thought universal, Though thy dull ear be to musick untrue; "Then whilst we strive to confute the Rehearsal, "Leave making operas, and writing lyricks, "And still remember the breathing the vein." We learn from the MENAGIANA, (i. 312. Amst. 1762,) that the great French dramatick poet, Corneille, read his own verses as ill as Dryden. speak from my own knowledge; for several years ago I was in company with him and Dr. Johnson; and after dinner, the conversation happening to turn on this subject, Goldsmith maintained that a poet was more likely to pronounce verse with accuracy and spirit, than other men. He was immediately called upon to support his argument by an example; a request with which he readily complied; and he repeated the first stanza of the ballad beginning with the words" At Upton on the hill," with such false emphasis, by marking the word on very strongly, that all the company agreed he had by no means established his position. Thomson read so ill, that Mr. Doddington, his patron, once snatched a poem out of his hands, while he was reading it, saying, "You booby, you do not understand your own Of Dryden's petty habits, a few have been transmitted to us. He was so great a taker of snuff, that, as I have heard from a very respectable lady now living, whose father, when a boy, had seen him, no box, however capacious, could serve him he therefore carried a copious supply From a paper concerning Thomson, communicated to Dr. Johnson by Sir David Dalrymple, Bart. (Lord Hailes,) from the information of Lady Murray, a near relation of Lord Binning, in whose family Thomson lived for some time. of snuff loose in his waistcoat-pocket; and he was so curious respecting it, that he generally prepared it himself. We are told that Michael Angelo, while he was employed on his famous piece, of which the subject is the Last Judgment, took no kind of sustenance but bread and wine; lest the fumes of animal food should cloud his fancy, and abate the fire of his imagination. On the same principle, Price Eugene is said to have carried his snuff in the same manner; but his pocket was lined with tin. 4 Key to THE REHEARSAL. See also "The Reasons of Mr. Bayes's changing his religion," Part I. The next that comes upon the stage is the melancholy Spaniard; ... and the truth on't is, though I ought to have shewn him some civility, for that divine, that immortal, invention of making snuff, yet," &c. So in a Satire on the Poets, by Prior, written about the year 1689: Sidley, indeed, and Rochester might write, "For their own credit, and their friends' delight; "As in their fortunes, in their writing too: See also p. 490, n. 8.; and Dryden's Letter to Tonson, written about Déc. 1697. Dryden, as Dr. Lamotte'' was informed by a per son of credit who was acquainted with our author, when he was about to engage in any considerable work, used to purge his body and cleanse his head by physick; and Lamotte's account, as well as the supposed allusion to this practice in THE REHEARSAL, derive some confirmation from a letter written to Jacob Tonson by our poet in the country, in which he desires a large provision of damascenes to be made for his own use. He was fond of fishing; an amusement, which for those who, like Dryden, love quiet and retirement, has very strong attractions. To enjoy this pastime, in his excursions to Wiltshire, where, as we have seen, he had a small estate, he sometimes s Essay upon Poetry and Painting, p. 103. 8vo. 1730, See his Letter to Tonson, dated Sep. 13, [1695.] 7.44 I am not (says he, in the Dedication of AURENGZEBE,) formed to praise a Court, who admire and covet nothing but the easiness and quiet of retirement. I naturally withdraw my sight from a precipice; and, admit the prospect be never so large and goodly, can take no pleasure even in looking on the downfal, though I am sccure from the danger. Methinks, there is something of a malignant joy in that excellent description of Lucretius: • Suave mari magno,' &c. I am sure, his master, Epi. curus, and my better master, Cowley, preferred the soli tude of a garden, and the conversation of a friend, to any ̈ consideration, so much as a regard,-of those unhappy people whom, in our own wrong, we call THE GREAT. . I can be contented with an humbler station in the Temple of Virtue, than to be set on the pinnacle of it." visited Mr. Jones, of Ramsbury, in that county, a gentleman whose liking to this diversion induced him to collect a fishing-party every summer, into which D'Urfey, the poet, was admitted; though Dryden held his piscatory powers as cheap as his poetical; a circumstance to which Fenton alludes in his very elegant Epistle to Mr. Lambard: "By long experience, D'Urfey may no doubt "Ensnare a gudgeon, or sometimes a trout; "Yet Dryden once exclaim'd, in partial spite, "He fish!'—because the man attempts to write." Spence, who lived in great intimacy with Pope, * Warton's Pope, vol. vii. p. 108. The last letter written by our author to Mrs. Steward, -but three weeks before his death,-shows that Fenton's conjecture in the following lines of the same Epistle, was almost literally true: "Be this their care, who studious of renown, "Toil up th' Aonian steep, to reach the crown: "His ear had a more lasting itch than mine, "For the smooth cadence of a golden line." Garth, in the Preface to his Ovid, published in the same year, (1717,) has nearly the same thought as that of Fenton in the eighth of these verses. Alluding to our |