display of the native bent and disposition of Dryden's mind. He could not restrain himself from argument and satire, on a subject that would have induced most youthful poets to luxuriate in elegiac complaints, and to indulge themselves in florid descriptions of departed excellence; more especially to enlarge upon that incident which gave a romantic interest to the death of Hastings; its taking place a day previous to that which had been designed for his marriage: the names of Marvell, Denham, and Cotton, are found in the list of contributors, and R. Brown was, I believe, the collector of the volume.

Some commendatory verses were prefixed by Dryden to the poems of John Hoddesden, in 1650, which Malone has inserted in his life. The four lines which I now extract, give no promise of the correct ear, or command of language, that was hereafter to give such harmony and variety to the English couplet, as no succeeding poets have ever excelled, and even Pope himself scarcely hoped to rival:

And, making heaven thy aim, hast had the grace
To look the Sun of Righteousness i' th' face,
What may we hope, if thou goest on thus fast,
Scriptures at first, enthusiasms at last.

During his residence at college, nothing concerning him has been recorded, but that he suffered a temporary disgrace for disobedience and contumacy. His name does not appear in the list of the contributors to the verses which the university composed upon public occasions; he

1 Malone has given the order for putting Dryden out of commons, from the Conclusion Book, in Trinity College, see p. 221. That J. Dryden be put out of commons for a fortnight, at least; and that he goe not out of the college,

obtained no fellowship, but he took his bachelor's degree at the regular time in January, 1653, and was M. A., by dispensation, in 1657. Malone accounts for his not contributing to the Oliva Pacis, in 1654, from his being absent from college, to attend his father in his illness. Owing to some cause of dislike, with which we are not acquainted, he never in after life mentioned his university with affection or respect. In one of his late prologues, a contrast unfavourable to Cambridge is thus strongly portrayed:

Oxford to him a dearer name shall be,
Than his own mother university;

Thebes did his green unknowing youth engage,
He chooses Athens in his riper age.

That this compliment to Oxford was as sincere as it was elegant, has been doubted or denied by Dryden's contemporaries; and he is accused of having ridiculed, among the wits in town, that learning which, on the Banks of Isis, he had mentioned with reverence and esteem; but the charge, I believe, is unfounded; amid the poetical and political squabbles, petty intrigues, libels, lampoons and satires of the time, it is not safe to take assertion for truth.

By the death of his father, our poet succeeded to an estate in Blakerly, in Northamptonshire. Two thirds of the whole were devised to him, worth about £60 a year, and one third to the widow for the term of her life. Ten sisters, and his three brothers, were provided from a separate

excepting to sermons, without express leave from the master, or vice-master; and that at the end of the fortnight, he read a confession of his crime, in the hall, at dinner time, at three fellowes table.'

bequest of about £1200. The old gentleman is supposed to have been a zealous and severe presbyterian ;-some of Dryden's political adversaries asserted that his family were anabaptists, but it is reasonably supposed that the accusation was one incapable of proof, and that the term of 'bristled baptist' was a calumny, invented by those whose enmity was too bitter to be always accompanied by truth.

Dryden had now nearly attained his twentyfourth year, and was in possession of his patrimony; yet he appears without reluctance to have retired to the restraints and seclusion of an academic life. He had a cousin, Honor Driden, who was a rich and celebrated beauty. The youthful poet was attracted by these combined charms, and paid, though unsuccessfully, his addresses to her. She sent him a present of a silver inkstand, which he 'received from her fair hand,' and which called forth, in 1655, the next slight specimen of his poetical powers.1 Here he runs a parallel between the excellencies of his 'fair Valentine,' and the properties of sealing wax:

You fairest nymph are wax. Oh! may you be
As well in softness as in purity,

Till fate and your own happy choice reveal
Whom you so far shall bless to make your seal.

Having now resided seven years at Cambridge, he removed to London about the middle of the

1 In Malone's note on the date of this letter, is a highly amusing instance of his persevering and minute exactness. The lady had erased the two latter figures, 16(55), lest they should discover her age, but Malone, by viewing them through a microscope, rendered her caution vain, and convicted her of being 18. Dryden's Prose W. ii. p. 3.

year 1687. That he was obliged to quit the university, from having traduced the son of a nobleman in a libel, is supposed to be nothing more than the calumnious assertion of a mean and enraged antagonist. He had resided for three years beyond the usual period, and we should rather inquire what could have induced him to remain so long at any rate, it is an unsupported charge, coming from a very suspicious quarter.

Dryden1 settled in London under the protection of his kinsman Sir Gilbert Pickering, a stanch republican, who was nominated one of the king's judges in 1649, and who was one of the thirtyeight councillors of state named by the Rump parliaments to supply the place of the executive power after the king's death. Our Poet is said to have been clerk or secretary to his kinsmanthat he was a member of one of the committees― a sequestrator or committee-man, does not, I think, clearly appear; for the words from which Malone draws his inference seem to me to bear

1 In a satirical pamphlet, 'The reasons for Mr. Bayes changing his religion,' 4to. 1688, p. 14. The following pas sage occurs, alluding to Dryden at the time-Bayes. After some years spent in the university, I quitted all my preferment there, to come and reside at the imperial city, because it was likely to prove a scene of more advantage and business, and likewise because it was the fittest place in the whole island for a monarch to settle his court, issue out orders for his subjects at home, and entertain a commerce with his allies abroad. At first I struggled with a great deal of persecution, took up with a lodging which had a window no bigger than a pocket looking-glass, dined at a threepenny ordinary enough to starve a vocation tailor, kept little company, and clad in homely drugget, and drank wine as seldom as a Rechabite or the Grand Seignior's confessor. Much about this time, Mr. Crites, as you may well remember, I made my first addresses in panegyric, and to Oliver Cromwell,' &c.

a different interpretation, and to refer rather to his protector, than himself. He is said to have favored the sects of anabaptists, and independents, whose religious opinions some of his relations had zealously adopted. In 1659, he published his heroic stanzas on the death of Oliver Cromwell, which were subsequently joined to those of Waller and Sprat. They consist of thirty-seven stanzas, written in the measure, and somewhat in the manner of Gondibert. The flow of his versification was improved, and his command of poetical language more extended, but he still confined his ambition to subtleties of thought, quaint allusions, and unexpected combinations of remote images. His ideas are labored, and his inventions curious. No marks are yet discovered of the luxuriance of early genius, or the overflow of a mind full of poetry: nor are there any traces in his language from which we may collect that his curiosity had been directed to the study of the great poets who flourished in the preceding age. His poetry was in the general style of the times in which he lived; it did not partake of any individual character, nor was it controlled by any presiding genius. It

The full

1 The first edition, 1659, 4to., is extremely rare. title is 'A poem upon the death of his late Highness Oliver, Lord Protector of England, Scotland, and Ireland, written by Mr. Dryden, London, printed for William Wilson, and are to be sold in Willgard's, near little St. Bartholomew's Hospital.' This edition does not materially differ from later, excepting that the spelling is modernized and the title abridged. Many years after one of Dryden's mean and malignant antagonists reprinted this Elegy with the hope of making Dryden appear an apostate. The title is An Elegy on the Usurper Oliver Cromwell, by the author of Absalom and Achitophel.