The preparation of a new edition of the Virgil, which appeared in 1698,
occupied nine days only, after which Dryden began seriously to consider
to what he should next address his pen. The state of his circumstances
rendered constant literary labour indispensable to the support of his
family, although the exertion, and particularly the confinement,
occasioned by his studies, considerably impaired his health. His son
Charles had met with an accident at Rome, which was attended with a
train of consequences perilous to his health; and Dryden, anxious to
recall him to Britain, was obliged to make extraordinary exertions to
provide against this additional expense. "If it please God," he writes
to Tonson, "that I must die of over-study, I cannot spend my life better
than in preserving his." It is affecting to read such a passage in the
life of such a man; yet the necessities of the poet, like the
afflictions of the virtuous, smooth the road to immortality. While
Milton and Dryden were favoured by the rulers of the day, they were
involved in the religious and political controversies which raged around
them; it is to hours of seclusion, neglect, and even penury, that we owe
the Paradise Lost, the Virgil, and the Fables.

Among other projects, Dryden seems to have had thoughts of altering and
revising a tragedy called the "Conquest of China by the Tartars,"
written by his ancient friend and brother-in-law, Sir Robert Howard. The
unkindness which had arisen between them upon the subject of blank verse
and rhyme, seems to have long since passed away; and we observe, with
pleasure, that Dryden, in the course of the pecuniary transactions about
Virgil, reckons upon the assistance of Sir Robert Howard, and consults
his taste also in the revisal of the version.[29] But Dryden never
altered the "Conquest of China," being first interrupted by the
necessity of revising Virgil, and afterwards, perhaps, by a sort of
quarrel which took place between him and the players, of whom he speaks
most resentfully in his "Epistle to Granville," upon his tragedy of
"Heroic Love," acted in the beginning of 1698.[30]

The success of Virgil encouraged Dryden about this time to turn his eyes
upon Homer; and the general voice of the literary world called upon him
to do the venerable Grecian the same service which the Roman had
received from him. It was even believed that he had fixed upon the mode
of translation, and that he was, as he elsewhere expresses it, to "fight
unarmed, without his rhyme."[31] A dubious anecdote bears, that he even
regretted he had not rendered Virgil into blank verse, and shows at the
same time, if genuine, how far he must now have disapproved of his own
attempt to turn into rhyme the Paradise Lost. The story is told by the
elder Richardson, in his remarks on the tardy progress of Milton's great
work in the public opinion.[32] When Dryden did translate the First Book
of Homer, which he published with the Fables, he rendered it into rhyme;
nor have we sufficient ground to believe that he ever seriously
intended, in so large a work, to renounce the advantages which he
possessed, by his unequalled command of versification. That in other
respects the task was consonant to his temper, as well as talents, he
has himself informed us. "My thoughts," he says, in a letter to Halifax,
in 1699, "are at present fixed on Homer; and by my translation of the
first Iliad, I find him a poet more according to my genius than Virgil,
and consequently hope I may do him more justice, in his fiery way of
writing; which, as it is liable to more faults, so it is capable of more
beauties than the exactness and sobriety of Virgil. Since it is for my
country's honour, as well as for my own, that I am willing to undertake
this task, I despair not of being encouraged in it by your favour." But
this task Dryden was not destined to accomplish, although he had it so
much at heart as to speak of resuming it only three months before his
death.[33]

In the meanwhile, our author had engaged himself in making those
imitations of Boccacio and Chaucer, which have been since called the
"Fables;" and in spring 1699, he was in such forwardness, as to put into
Tonson's hands "seven thousand five hundred verses, more or less," as
the contract bears, being a partial delivery to account of ten thousand
verses, which by that deed he agreed to furnish, for the sum of two
hundred and fifty guineas, to be made up three hundred pounds upon
publication of the second edition. This second payment Dryden lived not
to receive. With the contents of this miscellaneous volume we are to
suppose him engaged, from the revisal of the Virgil, in 1697, to the
publication of the Fables, in March 1699-1700. This was the last period
of his labours, and of his life; and, like all the others, it did not
pass undisturbed by acrimonious criticism, and controversy. The dispute
with Milbourne we noticed, before dismissing the subject of Virgil; but
there were two other persons who, in their zeal for morality and
religion, chose to disturb the last years of the life of Dryden.

The indelicacy of the stage, being, in its earliest period, merely the
coarse gross raillery of a barbarous age, was probably of no greater
injury to the morals of the audience, than it is to those of the lower
ranks of society, with whom similar language is everywhere admitted as
wit and humour. During the reigns of James I. and Charles I. this
licence was gradually disappearing. In the domination of the fanatics,
which succeeded, matters were so much changed, that, far from permitting
the use of indelicate or profane allusions, they wrapped up not only
their most common temporal affairs, but even their very crimes and
vices, in the language of their spiritual concerns. Luxury was _using
the creature_; avarice was _seeking experiences_; insurrection was
_putting the hand to the plough_; actual rebellion, _fighting the good
fight_; and regicide, _doing the great work of the Lord._ This
vocabulary became grievously unfashionable at the Reformation, and was
at once swept away by the torrent of irreligion, blasphemy, and
indecency, which were at that period deemed necessary to secure
conversation against the imputation of disloyalty and fanaticism. The
court of Cromwell, if lampoons can be believed, was not much less
vicious than that of Charles II., but it was less scandalous; and, as
Dryden himself expresses it,

  "The sin was of our native growth, 'tis true;
  The scandal of the sin was wholly new.
  Misses there were, but modestly concealed,
  Whitehall the naked Goddess first revealed;
  Who standing, as at Cyprus, in her shrine,
  The strumpet was adored with rites divine."

This torrent of licentiousness had begun in some degree to abate, even
upon the accession of James II., whose manners did not encourage the
same general licence as those of Charles. But after the Revolution, when
an affectation of profligacy was no longer deemed a necessary attribute
of loyalty, and when it began to be thought possible that a man might
have some respect for religion without being a republican, or even a
fanatic, the licence of the stage was generally esteemed a nuisance. It
then happened, as is not uncommon, that those, most bustling and active
to correct public abuses, were men whose intentions may, without doing
them injury, be estimated more highly than their talents. Thus, Sir
Richard Blackmore, a grave physician, residing and practising on the
sober side of Temple-Bar, was the first who professed to reform the
spreading pest of poetical licentiousness, and to correct such men as
Dryden, Congreve, and Wycherly. This worthy person, compassionating the
state to which poetry was reduced by his contemporaries, who used their
wit "in opposition to religion, and to the destruction of virtue and
good manners in the world," resolved to rescue the Muses from this
unworthy thraldom, "to restore them to their sweet and chaste mansions,
and to engage them in an employment suited to their dignity." With this
laudable view he wrote "Prince Arthur, an Epic Poem," published in 1695.
The preface contained a furious, though just, diatribe,
against the licence of modern comedy, with some personal reflections
aimed at Dry den directly.[34] This the poet felt more unkindly, as Sir
Richard had, without acknowledgment, availed himself of the hints he had
thrown out in the "Essay upon Satire," for the management of an epic
poem on the subject of King Arthur. He bore, however, the attack,
without resenting it, until he was again assailed by Sir Richard in his
"Satire upon Wit," written expressly to correct the dissolute and
immoral performances of the writers of his time. With a ponderous
attempt at humour, the good knight proposes, that a _bank for wit_
should be established, and that all which had hitherto passed as
current, should be called in, purified in the mint, re-coined, and
issued forth anew, freed from alloy.

This satire was published in 1700, as the title-page bears; but Mr.
Luttrell marks his copy 23rd November 1699.[35] It contains more than
one attack upon our author. Thus, we are told (wit being previously
described as a malady),

  "Vanine, that looked on all the danger past,
  Because he 'scaped so long, is seized at last;
  By p----, by hunger, and by Dryden bit,
  He grins and snarls, and, in his dogged fit,
  Froths at the mouth, a certain sign of wit."

Elsewhere the poet complains, that the universities,

      "debauched by Dryden and his crew,
  Turn bawds to vice, and wicked aims pursue."

Again, p. 14--

  "Dryden condemn, who taught men how to make,
  Of dunces wits, an angel of a rake."

But the main offence lies in the following passage:--

  "Set forth your edict; let it be enjoined,
  That all defective species be recoined;
  St. E--m--t and R--r both are fit
  To oversee the coining of our wit.
  Let these be made the masters of essay,
  They'll every piece of metal touch and weigh,
  And tell which is too light, which has too much allay.
  'Tis true, that when the coarse and worthless dross
  Is purged away, there will be mighty loss.
  E'en Congreve, Southerne, manly Wycherly,
  When thus refined, will grievous sufferers be.
  Into the melting-pot when Dryden comes,
  What horrid stench will rise, what noisome fumes!
  How will he shrink, when all his lewd allay,
  And wicked mixture, shall be purged away?
  When once his boasted heaps are melted down,
  A chest-full scarce will yield one sterling crown.
  Those who will D--n--s melt, and think to find
  A goodly mass of bullion left behind,
  Do, as the Hibernian wit, who, as 'tis told,
  Burnt his gilt feather, to collect the gold.
       *       *       *       *       *
  But what remains will be so pure, 'twill bear
  The examination of the most severe;
  'Twill S--r's scales, and Talbot's test abide,
  And with their mark please all the world beside."

These repeated attacks at length called down the vengeance of Dryden.
who thus retorted upon him in the preface to the Fables:--

"As for the City Bard, or Knight Physician, I hear his quarrel to me is,
that I was the author of 'Absalom and Achitophel,' which he   thinks, is
a little hard on his fanatic patrons in London.

"But I will deal the more civilly with his two poems, because nothing
ill is to be spoken of the dead; and, therefore, peace be to the manes
of his 'Arthurs.' I will only say, that it was not for this noble knight
that I drew the plan of an epic poem on King Arthur, in my preface to
the translation of Juvenal. The guardian angels of kingdoms were
machines too ponderous for him to manage; and therefore he rejected
them, as Dares did the whirl bats of Eryx, when they were thrown before
him by Entellus: yet from that preface, he plainly took his hint; for he
began immediately upon the story, though he had the baseness not to
acknowledge his benefactor, but, instead of it, to traduce me in a
libel."

Blackmore, who had perhaps thought the praise contained in his two last
couplets ought to have allayed Dryden's resentment, finding that they
failed in producing this effect, very unhandsomely omitted them in his
next edition, and received, as will presently be noticed, another
flagellation, in the last verses Dryden ever wrote.

But a more formidable champion than Blackmore had arisen, to scourge the
profligacy of the theatre. This was no other than the celebrated Jeremy
Collier, a nonjuring clergyman, who published, in 1698, "A Short View of
the Immorality and Profaneness of the Stage." His qualities as a
reformer are described by Dr. Johnson in language never to be amended.
"He was formed for a controvertist; with sufficient learning; with
diction vehement and pointed, though often vulgar and incorrect; with
unconquerable pertinacity; with wit in the highest degree keen and
sarcastic; and with all those powers exalted and invigorated by the just
confidence in his cause.

"Thus qualified, and thus incited, he walked out to battle, and assailed
at once most of the living writers, from Dryden to Durfey. His onset was
violent: those passages, which while they stood single, had passed with
little notice, when they were accumulated and exposed together caught
the alarm, and the nation wondered why it had so long suffered
irreligion and licentiousness charge."

Notwithstanding the justice of this description, there is a strange
mixture of sense and nonsense in Collier's celebrated treatise. Not
contented with resting his objections to dramatic immorality and
religion, Jeremy labours to confute the poets of the 17th century, by
drawing them into comparison with Plautus and Aristophanes, which is
certainly judging of one crooked line by another. Neither does he omit,
like his predecessor Prynne, to marshal against the British stage those
fulminations directed by the fathers of the Church against the Pagan
theatres; although Collier could not but know, that it was the
performance of the heathen ritual, and not merely the action of the
drama, which rendered it sinful for the early Christians to attend the
theatre. The book was, however, of great service to dramatic poetry,
which, from that time, was less degraded by licence and indelicacy.

Dryden, it may be believed, had, as his comedies well deserved, a
liberal share of the general censure; but, however he might have felt
the smart of Collier's severity, he had the magnanimity to acknowledge
its justice. In the preface to the Fables, he makes the _amende
honorable._ "I shall say the less of Mr. Collier, because in many things
he has taxed me justly; and I have pleaded guilty to all thoughts and
expressions of mine, which can be truly argued of obscenity,
profaneness, or immorality, and retract them. If he be my enemy, let him
triumph; if he be my friend, as I have given him no personal occasion to
be otherwise, he will be glad of my repentance. It becomes me not to
draw my pen in the defence of a bad cause, when I have so often drawn it
for a good one." To this manly and liberal admission, he has indeed
tacked a complaint, that Collier had sometimes, by a strained
interpretation, made the evil sense of which he complained; that he had
too much "horse-play in his raillery;" and that, "if the zeal for God's
house had not eaten him up, it had at least devoured some part of his
good manners and civility." Collier seems to have been somewhat pacified
by this qualified acknowledgment, and, during the rest of the
controversy, turned his arms chiefly against Congreve, who resisted, and
spared, comparatively at least, the sullen submission of Dryden.[36]

While these controversies were raging, Dryden's time was occupied with
the translations or imitations of Chaucer and Boccacio. Among these, the
"Character of the Good Parson" is introduced, probably to confute
Milbourne, Blackmore, and Collier, who had severally charged our author
with the wilful and premeditated contumely thrown upon the clergy in
many passages of his satirical writings. This too seems to have inflamed
the hatred of Swift, who, with all his levities, was strictly attached
to his order, and keenly jealous of its honours.[37] Dryden himself
seems to have been conscious of his propensity to assail churchmen. "I
remember," he writes to his sons, "the counsel you gave me in your
letter; but dissembling, although lawful in some cases, is not my
talent; yet, for your sake, I will struggle with the plain openness of
my nature, and keep in my just resentments against that _degenerate
order_."[38] Milbourne, and other enemies of our author, imputed this
resentment against the clergy, to his being refused orders when he
wished to take them, in the reign of Charles, with a view to the
Provostship of Eton, or some Irish preferment.[39] But Dryden assures
us, that he never had any thoughts of entering the Church. Indeed, his
original offences of this kind may be safely ascribed to the fashionable
practice, after the Restoration, of laughing at all that was accounted
serious before that period.

And when Dryden became a convert to the Catholic faith, he was, we have
seen, involved in an immediate and furious controversy with the clergy
of the Church of England. Thus, an unbeseeming strain of raillery,
adopted in wantonness, became aggravated, by controversy, into real
dislike and animosity. But Dryden, in the "Character of a Good Parson,"
seems determined to show that he could estimate the virtue of the
clerical order. He undertook the task at the instigation of Mr. Pepys,
the founder of the Library in Magdalen College, which bears his
name;[40] and has accomplished it with equal spirit and elegance; not
forgetting, however, to make his pattern of clerical merit of his own
jacobitical principles.

Another very pleasing performance, which entered [into] the Miscellany
called "The Fables," is the epistle to John Driden of Chesterton, the
poet's cousin. The letters to Mrs. Steward show the friendly intimacy in
which the relations had lived, since the opposition of the Whigs to King
William's government in some degree united that party in conduct, though
not in motive, with the favourers of King James. Yet our author's strain
of politics, as at first expressed in the epistle, was too severe for
his cousin's digestion. Some reflections upon the Dutch allies, and
their behaviour in the war, were omitted, as tending to reflect upon
King William; and the whole piece, to avoid the least chance of giving
offence, was subjected to the revision of Montague, with a deprecation
of his displeasure, an entreaty of his patronage, and the humiliating
offer, that, although repeated correction had already purged the spirit
out of the poem, nothing should stand in it relating to public affairs.
without Mr. Montague's permission. What answer "full-blown Bufo"
returned to Dryden's petition, does not appear; but the author's
opposition principles were so deeply woven in with the piece, that they
could not be obliterated without tearing it to pieces. His model of an
English member of parliament votes in opposition, as his Good Parson is
a nonjuror, and the Fox in the fable of Old Chaucer is translated into a
puritan.[41] The epistle was highly acceptable to Mr. Driden of
Chesterton, who acknowledged the immortality conferred on him, by "a
noble present," which family tradition states to have amounted to
ВЈ500.[42] Neither did Dryden neglect so fair an opportunity to avenge
himself on his personal, as well as his political adversaries. Milbourne
and Blackmore receive in the epistle severe chastisement for their
assaults upon his poetry and private character:

  "What help from art's endeavours can we have?
  Guibbons but guesses, nor is sure to save;
  But Maurus sweeps whole parishes, and peoples every grave,
  And no more mercy to mankind will use
  Than when he robbed and murdered Maro's muse.
  Wouldst thou be soon despatched, and perish whole,
  Trust Maurus with thy life, and Milbourne with thy soul"

Referring to another place, what occurs upon the style and execution of
the Fables, I have only to add, that they were published early in spring
1700, in a large folio, and with the "Ode to Saint Cecilia." The epistle
to Driden of Chesterton, and a translation of the first Iliad, must have
move than satisfied the mercantile calculations of Tonson, since they
contained seventeen hundred verses above the quantity which Dryden had
contracted to deliver. In the preface, the author vindicates himself
with great spirit against his literary adversaries; makes his usual
strong and forcible remarks on the genius of the authors whom he had
imitated; and, in this his last critical work, shows all the acumen
which had so long distinguished his powers. The Fables were dedicated to
the last Duke of Ormond, the grandson of the Barzillai of "Absalom and
Achitophel," and the son of the heroic Earl of Ossory; friends both, and
patrons of Dryden's earlier essays. There is something affecting in a
connection so honourably maintained; and the sentiment, as touched by
Dryden, is simply pathetic. "I am not vain enough to boast, that I have
deserved the value of so illustrious a line; but my fortune is the
greater, that for three descents they have been pleased to distinguish
my poems from those of other men; and have accordingly made me their
peculiar care. May it be permitted me to say, that as your grandfather
and father were cherished monarchs, so I have been esteemed and
patronised by the grandfather, the father, and the son, descended from
one of the most ancient, most conspicuous, and most deserving families
in Europe."

There were also prefixed to the "Fables," those introductory verses
addressed to the beautiful Duchess of Ormond,[43] which have all the
easy, felicitous, and sprightly gallantry, demanded on such occasions.
The incense, it is said, was acknowledged by a present of ВЈ500; a
donation worthy of the splendid house of Ormond. The sale of the
"Fables" was surprisingly slow: even the death of the author, which has
often sped away a lingering impression, does not seem to have increased
the demand; and the second edition was not printed till 1713, when,
Dryden and all his immediate descendants being no more, the sum
stipulated upon that event was paid by Tonson to Lady Sylvius, daughter
of one of Lady Elizabeth Dryden's brothers, for the benefit of his
widow, then in a state of lunacy.--See Appendix, vol. xviii.

The end of Dryden's labours was now fast approaching; and, as his career
began upon the stage, it was in some degree doomed to terminate there.
It is true, he never recalled his resolution to write no more plays; but
Vanbrugh having about this time revised and altered for the Drury-lane
theatre, Fletcher's lively comedy of "The Pilgrim," it was agreed that
Dryden, or, as one account says, his son Charles,[44] should have the
profits of a third night on condition of adding to the piece a Secular
Masque, adapted to the supposed termination of the seventeenth
century;[45] a Dialogue in the Madhouse between two Distracted Lovers;
and a Prologue and Epilogue. The Secular Masque contains a beautiful and
spirited delineation of the reigns of James I., Charles I., and Charles
II., in which the influence of Diana, Mars, and Venus, are supposed to
have respectively predominated. Our author did not venture to assign a
patron to the last years of the century, though the expulsion of Saturn
might have given a hint for it. The music of the Masque is said to have
been good; at least it is admired by the eccentric author of John
Buncle.[46] The Prologue and Epilogue to "The Pilgrim," were written
within twenty days of Dryden's death; [47] and their spirit equals that
of any of his satirical compositions. They afford us the less pleasing
conviction, that even the last fortnight of Dryden's life was occupied
in repelling or retorting the venomed attacks of his literary foes. In
the Prologue, he gives Blackmore a drubbing which would have annihilated
any author of ordinary modesty; but the knight[48] was as remarkable for
his powers of endurance, as some modern pugilists are said to be, for
the quality technically called _bottom_. After having been "brayed in a
mortar," as Solomon expresses it, by every wit of his time, Sir Richard
not only survived to commit new offences against ink and paper, but had
his faction, his admirers, and his panegyrists, among that numerous and
sober class of readers, who think that genius consists in good
intention.[49] In the Epilogue, Dryden attacks Collier, but with more
courteous weapons: it is rather a palliation than a defence of dramatic
immorality, and contains nothing personally offensive to Collier. Thus
so dearly was Dryden's preeminent reputation purchased, that even his
last hours were embittered with controversy; and nature, over-watched
and worn out, was, like a besieged garrison, forced to obey the call to
arms, and defend reputation even with the very last exertion of the
vital spirit.

The approach of death was not, however, so gradual as might have been
expected from the poet's chronic diseases. He had long suffered both by
the gout and gravel, and more lately the erysipelas seized one of his
legs. To a shattered frame and a corpulent habit, the most trifling
accident is often fatal. A slight inflammation in one of his toes,
became, from neglect, a gangrene. Mr. Hobbes, an eminent surgeon, to
prevent mortification, proposed to amputate the limb; but Dryden, who
had no reason to be in love with life, refused the chance of prolonging
it by a doubtful and painful operation.[50] After a short interval, the
catastrophe expected by Mr. Hobbes took place, and, Dryden not long
surviving the consequences, left life on Wednesday morning, 1st May
1700, at three o'clock. He seems to have been sensible till nearly his
last moments, and died in the Roman Catholic faith, with submission and
entire resignation to the divine will; "taking of his friends," says
Mrs. Creed, one of the sorrowful number, "so tender and obliging a
farewell, as none but he himself could have expressed."

The death of a man like Dryden, especially in narrow and neglected
circumstances, is usually an alarum-bell to the public. Unavailing and
mutual reproaches, for unthankful and pitiless negligence, waste
themselves in newspaper paragraphs, elegies, and funeral processions;
the debt to genius is then deemed discharged, and a new account of
neglect and commemoration is opened between the public and the next who
rises to supply his room. It was thus with Dryden: His family were
preparing to bury him with the decency becoming their limited
circumstances, when Charles Montague, Lord Jefferies, and other men of
quality, made a subscription for a public funeral. The body of the poet
was then removed to the Physicians' Hall, where it was embalmed, and lay
in state till the 13th day of May, twelve days after the decease. On
that day, the celebrated Dr. Garth pronounced a Latin oration over the
remains of his departed friend; which were then, with considerable
state, preceded by a band of music, and attended by a numerous
procession of carriages, transported to Westminster Abbey, and deposited
between the graves of Chaucer and Cowley.

The malice of Dryden's contemporaries, which he had experienced through
life, attempted to turn into burlesque these funeral honours. Farquhar,
the comic dramatist, wrote a letter containing a ludicrous account of
the funeral;[51] in which, as Mr. Malone most justly remarks, he only
sought to amuse his fair correspondent by an assemblage of ludicrous and
antithetical expressions and ideas, which, when accurately examined,
express little more than the bustle and confusion which attends every
funeral procession of uncommon splendour. Upon this ground-work, Mrs.
Thomas (the Corinna of Pope and Cromwell) raised, at the distance of
thirty years, the marvellous structure of fable, which has been copied
by all Dryden's biographers, till the industry of Mr. Malone has sent
it, with other figments of the same lady, to "the grave of all the
Capulets."[52] She appears to have been something assisted by a
burlesque account of the funeral, imputed by Mr. Malone to Tom Brown,
who certainly continued to insult Dryden's memory whenever an
opportunity offered.[53]  Indeed, Mrs. Thomas herself quotes this last
respectable authority. It must be a well-conducted and uncommon public
ceremony, where the philosopher can find nothing to condemn, nor the
satirist to ridicule; yet, to our imagination, what can be more
striking, than the procession of talent and rank, which escorted the
remains of DRYDEN to the tomb of CHAUCER!

The private character of the individual, his personal appearance, and
rank in society, are the circumstances which generally interest the
public most immediately upon his decease.

We are enabled, from the various paintings and engravings of Dryden, as
well as from the less flattering delineations of the satirists of his
time, to form a tolerable idea of his face and person. In youth, he
appears to have been handsome,[54] and of a pleasing countenance: when
his age was more advanced, he was corpulent and florid, which procured
him the nickname attached to him by Rochester.[55] In his latter days,
distress and disappointment probably chilled the fire of his eye, and
the advance of age destroyed the animation of his countenance.[56]
Still, however, his portraits bespeak the look and features of genius;
especially that in which he is drawn with his waving grey hairs.

In disposition and moral character, Dryden is represented as most
amiable, by all who had access to know him; and his works, as well as
letters, bear evidence to the justice of their panegyric. Congreve's
character of the poet was drawn doubtless favourably, yet it contains
points which demonstrate its fidelity.

"Whoever shall censure me, I dare be confident, you, my lord, will
excuse me for anything that I shall say with due regard to a gentleman,
for whose person I had as just an affection as I have an admiration of
his writings. And indeed Mr. Dryden had personal qualities to challenge
both love and esteem from all who were truly acquainted with him.

"He was of a nature exceedingly humane and compassionate; easily
forgiving injuries, 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 everything that he had read. He was not more
possessed of knowledge, than he was communicative of it. But then his
communication of it was by no means pedantic, or imposed upon the
conversation; but just such, and went so far, as, by the natural turns
of the discourse in which he was engaged, it was necessarily promoted or
required. He was extreme ready and gentle in his correction of the
errors of any writer, who thought fit to consult him: and full as ready
and patient to admit of the reprehension of others, in respect of his
own oversight or mistakes. He was of very easy, I may say, of very
pleasing access; but something slow, and, as it were, diffident in his
advances to others. He had something in his nature, that abhorred
intrusion into any society whatsoever. Indeed, it is to be regretted,
that he was rather blameable in the other extreme; for, by that means,
he was personally less known, and, consequently, his character might
become liable both to misapprehensions and misrepresentations.

"To the best of my knowledge and observation, he was, of all the men
that I ever knew, one of the most modest, and the most easily to be
discountenanced in his approaches either to his superiors or his
equals."

This portrait is from the pen of friendship; yet, if we consider all the
circumstances of Dryden's life, we cannot deem it much exaggerated. For
about forty years, his character, personal and literary, was the object
of assault by every subaltern scribbler, titled or untitled, laureated
or pilloried. "My morals," he himself has said, "have been sufficiently
aspersed; that only sort of reputation, which ought to be dear to every
honest man, and is to me." In such an assault, no weapon would remain
unhandled, no charge, true or false, unurged; and what qualities we do
not there find excepted against, must surely be admitted to pass to the
credit of Dryden. His change of political opinion, from the time he
entered life under the protection of a favourite of Cromwell, might have
argued instability, if he had changed a second time, when the current of
power and popular opinion set against the doctrines of the Reformation.
As it is, we must hold Dryden to have acted from conviction, since
personal interest, had that been the ruling motive of his political
conduct, would have operated as strongly in 1688 as in 1660. The change
of his religion we have elsewhere discussed; and endeavoured to show
that, although Dryden was unfortunate in adopting the more corrupted
form of our religion, yet, considered relatively, it was a fortunate and
laudable conviction which led him from the mazes of scepticism to become
a catholic of the communion of Rome.[57] It would be vain to maintain,
that in his early career he was free from the follies and vices of a
dissolute period; but the absence of every positive charge, and the
silence of numerous accusers, may be admitted to prove, that he partook
in them more from general example than inclination, and with a moderate,
rather than voracious or undistinguishing appetite. It must be admitted,
that he sacrificed to the Belial or Asmodeus of the age, in his
writings; and that he formed his taste upon the licentious and gay
society with which he mingled. But we have the testimony of one who knew
him well, that, however loose his comedies, the temper of the author was
modest;[58] his indelicacy was like the forced impudence of a bashful
man; and Rochester has accordingly upbraided him, that his
licentiousness was neither natural nor seductive. Dryden had
unfortunately conformed enough to the taste of his age, to attempt that
"nice mode of wit," as it is termed by the said noble author, whose name
has become inseparably connected with it; but it sate awkwardly upon his
natural modesty, and in general sounds impertinent, as well as
disgusting. The clumsy phraseology of Burnet, in passing censure on the
immorality of the stage, after the Restoration, terms "Dryden, the
greatest master of dramatic poesy, a monster of immodesty and of
impurity of all sorts." The expression called forth the animated defence
of Granville, Lord Lansdowne, our author's noble friend. "All who knew
him," said Lansdowne, "can testify this was not his character. He was so
much a stranger to immodesty, that modesty in too great a degree was his
failing: he hurt his fortune by it, he complained of it, and never could
overcome it. He was," adds he, "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 monster 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."[59]

The Bishop's youngest son, Thomas Burnet, in replying to Lord Lansdowne,
explained his father's last expressions as limited to Dryden's plays,
and showed, by doing so, that there was no foundation for fixing this
gross and dubious charge upon his private moral character.

Dryden's conduct as a father, husband, and master of a family, seems to
have been affectionate, faithful, and, so far as his circumstances
admitted, liberal and benevolent. The whole tenor of his correspondence
bears witness to his paternal feelings; and even when he was obliged to
have recourse to Tonson's immediate assistance to pay for the presents
he sent them, his affection vented itself in that manner. As a husband,
if Lady Elizabeth's peculiarities of temper precluded the idea of a warm
attachment, he is not upbraided with neglect or infidelity by any of his
thousand assailants. As a landlord, Mr. Malone has informed us, on the
authority of Lady Dryden, that "his little estate at Blakesley is at
this day occupied by one Harriots, grandson of the tenant who held it in
Dryden's time; and he relates, that his grandfather was used to take
great pleasure in talking of our poet. He was, he said, the easiest and
the kindest landlord in the world, and never raised the rent during the
whole time he possessed the estate."

Some circumstances, however, may seem to degrade so amiable a private,
so sublime a poetical character. The licence of his comedy, as we have
seen, had for it only the apology of universal example, and must be
lamented, though not excused. Let us, however, remember, that if in the
hey-day of the merry monarch's reign, Dryden ventured to maintain, that,
the prime end of poetry being pleasure, the muses ought not to be
fettered by the chains of strict decorum; yet in his more advanced and
sober mood, he evinced sincere repentance for his trespass, by patient
and unresisting submission to the coarse and rigorous chastisement of
Collier. If it is alleged, that, in the fury of his loyal satire, he was
not always solicitous concerning its justice, let us make allowance for
the prejudice of party, and consider at what advantage, after the laps
of more than a century, and through the medium of impartial history, we
now view characters, who were only known to their contemporaries as
zealous partisans of an opposite and detested faction. The moderation of
Dryden's reprisals, when provoked by the grossest calumny and personal
insult, ought also to plead in his favour. Of the hundreds who thus
assailed, not only his literary, but his moral reputation, he has
distinguished Settle and Shadwell alone by an elaborate retort. Those
who look into Mr. Luttrell's collections, will at once see the extent of
Dryden's sufferance, and the limited nature of his retaliation.

The extreme flattery of Dryden's dedications has been objected to him,
as a fault of an opposite description; and perhaps no writer has
equalled him in the profusion and elegance of his adulation. "Of this
kind of meanness," says Johnson, "he never seems to decline the
practice, or lament the necessity. He considers the great as entitled to
encomiastic homage, and brings praise rather as a tribute than a gift;
more delighted with the fertility of his invention than mortified by the
prostitution of his judgment." It may be noticed, in palliation of this
heavy charge, that the form of address to superiors must be judged of by
the manners of the times; and that the adulation contained in
dedications was then as much a matter of course, as the words of
submissive style which still precede the subscription Dryden considered
his panegyrics as merely conforming with the fashion of the day, and
rendering unto Caesar the things which were Caesar's,--attended with no
more degradation than the payment of any other tribute to the forms of
politeness and usage of the world.

Of Dryden's general habits of life we can form a distinct idea, from the
evidence assembled by Mr. Malone. His mornings were spent in study; he
dined with his family, probably about two o'clock. After dinner he went
usually to Will's Coffeehouse, the famous rendezvous of the wits of the
time, where he had his established chair by the chimney in winter, and
near the balcony in summer, whence he pronounced, _ex cathedra_, his
opinion upon new publications, and, in general, upon all matters of
dubious criticism.[60] Latterly, all who had occasion to ridicule or
attack him, represent him as presiding in this little senate.[61] His
opinions, however, were not maintained with dogmatism; and we have an
instance, in a pleasing anecdote told by Dr. Lockier,[62] that Dryden
readily listened to criticism, provided it was just, from whatever
unexpected and undignified quarter it happened to come. In general,
however, it may be supposed, that few ventured to dispute his opinion,
or place themselves of his censure. He was most falsely accused of
carrying literary jealousy to such a length, as feloniously to encourage
Creech to venture on a translation of Horace, that he might lose the
character he had gained by a version of Lucretius. But this is
positively contradicted, upon the authority of Southerne.[63]

We have so often stopped in our narrative of Dryden's life, to notice
the respectability of his general society, that little need here be said
on the subject. Although no enemy to conviviality, he is pronounced by
Pope to have been regular in his hours in comparison with Addison, who
otherwise lived the same coffee-house course of life. He has himself
told us, that he was "saturnine and reserved, and not one of those who
endeavour to entertain company by lively sallies of merriment and wit;"
and an adversary has put into his mouth this couplet--

  "Nor wine nor love could ever see me gay;
  To writing bred, I knew not what to say."

_Dryden's Satire to his Muse._

But the admission of the author, and the censure of the satirist, must
be received with some limitation. Dryden was thirty years old before he
was freed from the fetters of puritanism; and if the habits of lively
expression in society are not acquired before that age, they are seldom
gained afterward. But this applies only to the deficiency of repartee,
in the sharp encounter of wit which was fashionable at the court of
Charles, and cannot be understood to exclude Dryden's possessing the
more solid qualities of agreeable conversation, arising from a memory
profoundly stocked with knowledge, and a fancy which supplied modes of
illustration faster than the author could use them.[64] Some few sayings
of Dryden have been, however, preserved; which, if not witty, are at
least jocose. He is said to have been the original author of the
repartee to the Duke of Buckingham, who, in bowling, offered to lay "his
soul to a turnip," or something still more vile. "Give me the odds,"
said Dryden, "and I take the bet." When his wife wished to be a book,
that she might enjoy more of his company, "Be an almanac then, my dear,"
said the poet, "that I may change you once a year."[65] Another time, a
friend expressing his astonishment that even D'Urfey could write such
stuff as a play they had just witnessed, "Ah, sir," replied Dryden, "you
do not know my friend Tom so well as I do; I'll answer for him, he can
write worse yet." None of these anecdotes intimate great brilliancy of
repartee; but that Dryden, possessed of such a fund of imagination, and
acquired learning, should be dull in conversation, is impossible. He is
known frequently to have regaled his friends, by communicating to them a
part of his labours; but his poetry suffered by his recitation. He read
his productions very ill;[66] owing, perhaps, to the modest reserve of his
temper, which prevented his showing an animation in which he feared his
audience might not participate. The same circumstance may have repressed
the liveliness of his conversation. I know not, however, whether we are,
with Mr. Malone, to impute to diffidence his general habit of consulting
his literary friends upon his poems, before they became public, since it
might as well arise from a wish to anticipate and soften criticism.[67]

Of Dryden's learning, his works form the best proof. He had read
Polybius before he was ten years of age;[68] and was doubtless well
acquainted with the Greek and Roman classics. But from these studies he
could descend to read romances: and the present editor records with
pride, that Dryden was a decided admirer of old ballads and popular
tales.[69] His researches sometimes extended into the vain province of
judicial astrology, in which he was a firm believer; and there is reason
to think that he also credited divination by dreams. In the country, he
delighted in the pastime of fishing, and used, says Mr. Malone, to spend
some time with Mr. Jones of Ramsden, in Wiltshire. D'Urfey was sometimes
of this party; but Dryden appears to have undervalued his skill in
fishing, as much as his attempts at poetry. Hence Fenton, in his Epistle
to Mr. Lambard:

  "By long experience, D'Urfey may no doubt
  Ensnare a gudgeon, or sometimes a trout;
  Yet Dryden once exclaimed, in partial spite,
  '_He fish_!'--because the man attempts to write."

I may conclude this notice of Dryden's habits, which I have been enabled
to give chiefly by the researches of Mr. Malone, with two notices of a
minute nature. Dryden was a great taker of snuff, which he made himself.
Moreover, as a preparation to a course of study, he usually took
medicine, and observed a cooling diet.[70]

Dryden's house, which he appears to have resided in from the period of
his marriage till his death, was in Gerrard Street, the fifth on the
left hand coming from Little Newport Street.[71] The back windows looked
upon the gardens of Leicester House, of which circumstance our poet
availed himself to pay a handsome compliment to the noble owner.[72] His
excursions to the country seem to have been frequent; perhaps the more
so, as Lady Elizabeth always remained in town. In his latter days, the
friendship of his relations, John Driden of Chesterton, and Mrs. Steward
of Cotterstock, rendered their houses agreeable places of abode to the
aged poet. They appear also to have had a kind solicitude about his
little comforts, of value infinitely beyond aiding them. And thus
concludes all that we have learned of the private life of Dryden.

The fate of Dryden's family must necessarily interest the admirers of
English literature. It consisted of his wife, Lady Elizabeth Dryden, and
three sons, John, Charles, and Erasmus Henry. Upon the poet's death, it
may be believed, they felt themselves slenderly provided for, since all
his efforts, while alive, were necessary to secure them from the gripe
of penury.

Yet their situation was not very distressing. John and Erasmus Henry
were abroad; and each had an office at Rome, in which he was able to
support himself. Charles had for some time been entirely dependent on
his father, and administered to his effects, as he died without a will.
The liberality of the Duchess of Ormond, and of Driden of Chesterton,
had been lately received, and probably was not expended. There was,
besides, the poet's little patrimonial estate, and a small property in
Wiltshire, which the Earl of Berkshire settled upon Lady Elizabeth at
her marriage, and which yielded ВЈ50 or ВЈ60 annually. There was therefore
an income of about ВЈ100 a year, to maintain the poet's widow and
children; enough in these times to support them in decent frugality.

Lady Elizabeth Dryden's temper had long disturbed her husband's domestic
happiness. "His invectives," says Mr. Malone, "against the married state
are frequent and bitter, and were continued to the latest period of his
life;" and he adds, from most respectable authority, that the family of
the poet held no intimacy with his lady, confining their intercourse to
mere visits of ceremony.[73] A similar alienation seems to have taken
place between her and her own relations, Sir Robert Howard, perhaps,
being excepted; for her brother, the Honourable Edward Howard, talks of
Virgil, as a thing he had learned merely by common report.[74] Her
wayward disposition was, however, the effect of a disordered imagination
which, shortly after Dryden's death, degenerated into absolute insanity,
in which state she remained until her death in summer 1714, probably,
says Mr. Malone, in the seventy-ninth year of her life.

Dryden's three sons, says the inscription by Mrs. Creed, were ingenious
and accomplished gentlemen. Charles, the eldest, and favourite son of
the poet, was born at Charlton, Wiltshire, in 1666. He received a
classical education under Dr. Busby, his father's preceptor, and was
chosen King's Scholar in 1680. Being elected to Trinity College in
Cambridge, he was admitted a member in 1683. It would have been
difficult to conceive that the son of Dryden should not have attempted
poetry; but though Charles Dryden escaped the fate of Icarus, he was
very, very far from emulating his father's soaring flight. Mr. Malone
has furnished a list of his compositions in Latin and English.[75] About
1692, he went to Italy, and through the interest of Cardinal Howard, to
whom he was related by the mother's side, he became Chamberlain of the
Household; not, as Corinna pretends, "to that _remarkably fine
gentleman_, Pope Clement XI.," but to Pope Innocent XII. His way to this
preferment was smoothed by a pedigree drawn up in Latin by his father,
of the families of Dryden and Howard, which is said to have been
deposited in the Vatican. Dryden, whose turn for judicial astrology we
have noticed, had calculated the nativity of his son Charles; and it
would seem that a part of his predictions were fortuitously fulfilled.
Charles, however, having suffered, while at Rome, by a fall, and his
health, in consequence, being much injured, his father prognosticated he
would begin to recover in the month of September 1697. The issue did no
great credit to the prediction; for young Dryden returned to England in
1698 in the same indifferent state of health, as is obvious from the
anxious solicitude with which his father always mentions Charles in his
correspondence. Upon the poet's death, Charles, we have seen,
administered to his effects on 10th June 1700, Lady Elizabeth, his
mother, renouncing the succession. In the next year, Granville conferred
on him the profits arising from the author's night of an alteration of
Shakespeare's "Merchant of Venice;" and his liberality to the son of one
great bard may be admitted to balance his presumption in manufacturing a
new drama out of the labours of another.[76] Upon the 20th August 1704,
Charles Dryden was drowned, in an attempt to swim across the Thames, at
Datchet, near Windsor. I have degraded into the Appendix, the romantic
narrative of Corinna, concerning his father's prediction, already
mentioned. It contains, like her account of the funeral of the poet,
much positive falsehood, and gross improbability, with some slight
scantling of foundation in fact.