The next step of advancement you began
  Was being clerk to Noll's lord chamberlain,
  A sequestrator and committee-man.

_The Medal of John Bayes_.

But I cannot, with Mr. Malone, interpret the same passage, by supposing
the third line of the triplet to apply to Dryden. Had he been actually a
member of a committee of sequestration, that circumstance would never
have remained in the dubious obscurity of Shadwell's poetry; it would
have been as often echoed and re-echoed as every other incident of the
poet's life which was capable of bearing an unfavourable interpretation.
I incline therefore to believe, that the terms _sequestrator_ and
_committee-man_ apply not to the poet, but to his patron Sir
Gilbert, to whom their propriety cannot be doubted.

Sir Gilbert Pickering was not our author's only relation at the court of
Cromwell. The chief of his family, Sir John Driden, elder brother of the
poet's father, was also a flaming and bigoted puritan,[35] through whose
gifts and merits his nephew might reasonably hope to attain preferment
In a youth entering life under the protection of such relations, who
could have anticipated the future dramatist and poet laureate, much less
the advocate and martyr of prerogative and of the Stuart family, the
convert and confessor of the Roman Catholic faith? In his after career,
his early connections with the puritans, and the principles of his
kinsmen during the civil wars and usurpation, were often made subjects
of reproach, to which he never seems to have deigned an answer.[36]

The death of Cromwell was the first theme of our poet's muse. Averse as
the puritans were to any poetry, save that of Hopkins, of Withers, or of
Wisdom, they may be reasonably supposed to have had some sympathy with
Dryden's sorrow upon the death of Oliver, even although it vented itself
in the profane and unprofitable shape of an elegy. But we have no means
of estimating its reception with the public, if, in truth, the public
long interested themselves about the memory of Cromwell, while his
relations and dependants presented to them the more animated and
interesting spectacle of a struggle for his usurped power. Richard
perhaps, and the immediate friends of the deceased Protector, with such
of Dryden's relations as were attached to his memory, may have thought,
like the tinker at the Taming of the Shrew, that this same elegy was
"marvellous good matter." It did not probably attract much general
attention. The first edition, in 1659, is extremely rare: it was
reprinted, however, along with those of Sprat and Waller, in the course
of the same year. After the Restoration this piece fell into a slate of
oblivion, from which it may be believed that the author, who had seen a
new light in politics, was by no means solicitous to recall it. His
political antagonist did not, however, fail to awaken its memory, when
Dryden became a decided advocate for the royal prerogative, and the
hereditary right of the Stuarts. During the controversies of Charles the
Second's reign, in which Dryden took so decided a share, his eulogy on
Cromwell was often objected to him, as a proof of inconsistence and
apostasy. One passage, which plainly applies to the civil wars in
general, was wrested to signify an explicit approbation of the murder of
Charles the First; and the whole piece was reprinted by an incensed
antagonist, under the title of "An Elegy on the Usurper O.C., by the
author of Absalom and Achitophel, published (it is ironically added) to
show the loyalty and integrity of the poet,"--an odd piece of vengeance,
which has perhaps never been paralleled, except in the single case of
"Love in a Hollow Tree."[37] The motives of the Duchess of Marlborough,
in reprinting Lord Grimestone's memorable dramatic essay, did not here
apply. The elegy on Cromwell, although doubtless sufficiently faulty,
contained symptoms of a regenerating taste; and, politically considered,
although a panegyric on an usurper, the topics of praise are selected
with attention to truth, and are, generally speaking, such as Cromwell's
worst enemies could not have denied to him. Neither had Dryden made the
errors, or misfortunes, of the royal family, and their followers, the
subject of censure or of contrast. With respect to them, it was hardly
possible that a eulogy on such a theme could have less offence in it.
This was perhaps a fortunate circumstance for Dryden at the Restoration;
and it must be noticed to his honour, that as he spared the exiled
monarch in his panegyric on the usurper, so, after the Restoration, in
his numerous writings on the side of royalty, there is no instance of
his recalling his former praise of Cromwell.

After the frequent and rapid changes which the government of England
underwent from the death of Cromwell, in the spring of 1660, Charles II.
was restored to the throne of his ancestors. It may be easily imagined,
that this event, a subject in itself highly fit for poetry, and which
promised the revival of poetical pursuits, was hailed with universal
acclamation by all whose turn for verse had been suppressed and stifled
during the long reign of fanaticism. The Restoration led the way to the
revival of letters, as well as that of legal government. With diaries,
as Dryden has expressed it,

  The officious muses came along,
  A gay, harmonious quire, like angels ever young.

It was not, however, to be expected, that an alteration of the taste
which had prevailed in the days of Charles I., was to be the immediate
consequence of the new order of things. The muse awoke, like the
sleeping beauty of the fairy tale, in the same antiquated and absurd
vestments in which she had fallen asleep twenty years before; or, if the
reader will pardon another simile, the poets were like those who, after
long mourning, resume for a time their ordinary dresses, of which the
fashion has in the meantime passed away. Other causes contributed to a
temporary revival of the metaphysical poetry. Almost all its professors,
attached to the house of Stuart, had been martyrs, or confessors at
least, in its cause. Cowley, their leader, was yet alive, and returned
to claim the late reward of his loyalty and his sufferings. Cleveland
had died a victim to the contempt, rather than the persecution, of the
republicans;[38] but this most ardent of cavalier poets was succeeded by
Wild, whose "_Iter Boreale_" a poem on Monk's march from Scotland
formed upon Cleveland's model, obtained extensive popularity among the
citizens of London.[39] Dryden's good sense and natural taste perceived
the obvious defects of these, the very coarsest of metaphysical poets;
insomuch, that, in his "Essay on Dramatic Poetry," he calls wresting and
torturing one word into another, a catachresis, or Clevelandism, and
charges Wild with being in poetry what the French call _un mauvais
buffon_.

Sprat, and an host of inferior imitators, marched for a time in the
footsteps of Cowley; delighted, probably, to discover in Pindaric
writing, as it was called, a species of poetry which required neither
sound nor sense, provided only there was a sufficient stock of florid
and extravagant thoughts, expressed in harsh and bombastic language.

But this style of poetry, although it was for a time revived, and indeed
continued to be occasionally employed even to the end of the eighteenth
century, had too slight foundation in truth and nature to maintain the
exclusive pre-eminence, which it had been exalted to during the reigns
of the two first monarchs of the Stuart race. As Rochester profanely
expressed it, Cowley's poetry was not of God, and therefore could not
stand. An approaching change of public taste was hastened by the manners
of the restored monarch and his courtiers. That pedantry which had
dictated the excessive admiration of metaphysical conceits, was not the
characteristic of the court of Charles II., as it had been of those of
his grandfather and father. Lively and witty by nature, with all the
acquired habits of an adventurer, whose wanderings, military and
political, left him time neither for profound reflection nor for deep
study, the restored monarch's literary taste, which was by no means
contemptible, was directed towards a lighter and more pleasing style of
poetry than the harsh and scholastic productions of Donne and Cowley.
The admirers, therefore, of this old school were confined to the ancient
cavaliers, and the old courtiers of Charles I.; men unlikely to lead the
fashion in the court of a gay monarch, filled with such men as
Buckingham, Rochester, Etherege, Sedley, and Mulgrave, whose time and
habits confined their own essays to occasional verses, and satirical
effusions, in which they often ridiculed the heights of poetry they were
incapable of attaining. With such men the class of poets, which before
the civil war held but a secondary rank, began to rise in estimation.
Waller, Suckling, and Denham, began to assert a pre-eminence over Cowley
and Donne; the ladies, whose influence in the court of James and Charles
I. was hardly felt, and who were then obliged to be contented with such
pedantic worship as is contained in the "Mistress" of Cowley, and the
"Epithalamion" of Donne, began now, when their voices were listened to,
and their taste consulted, to determine that their poetical lovers
should address them in strains more musical, if not more intelligible.
What is most acceptable to the fair sex will always sway the mode of a
gay court; and the character of a smooth and easy sonneteer was soon
considered as an indispensable requisite to a man of wit and fashion,
terms which were then usually synonymous.

To those who still retained a partiality for that exercise of the fancy
and memory, afforded by the metaphysical poetry, the style of satire
then prevalent afforded opportunities of applying it. The same depth of
learning, the same extravagant ingenuity in combining the most remote
images, and in driving casual associations to the verge of absurdity,
almost all the remarkable features which characterised the poetry of
Cowley, may be successfully traced in the satire of Hudibras. The sublime
itself borders closely on the ludicrous; but the bombast and extravagant
cannot be divided from it. The turn of thought, and the peculiar kind of
mental exertion, corresponds in both styles of writing; and although
Butler pursued the ludicrous, and Cowley aimed at the surprising, the
leading features of their poetry only differ like those of the same face
convulsed with laughter, or arrested in astonishment The district of
metaphysical poetry was thus invaded by the satirists, who sought
weapons there to avenge the misfortunes and oppression which they had so
lately sustained from the puritans; and as it is difficult in a laughing
age to render serious what has been once applied to ludicrous purposes,
Butler and his imitators retained quiet possession of the style which
they had usurped from the grave bards of the earlier age.

A single poet, Sir William Davenant,[40] made a meritorious, though a
misguided and unsuccessful effort, to rescue poetry from becoming the
mere handmaid of pleasure, or the partisan of political or personal
disputes, and to restore her to her natural rank in society, as an
auxiliary of religion, policy, law, and virtue. His heroic poem of
"Gondibert" has, no doubt, great imperfections; but it intimates
everywhere a mind above those laborious triflers, who called that poetry
which was only verse; and very often exhibits a majestic, dignified, and
manly simplicity, equally superior to the metaphysical school, by the
doctrines of which Davenant was occasionally misled. Yet, if that author
too frequently imitated their quaint affectation of uncommon sentiment
and associations, he had at least the merit of couching them in stately
and harmonious verse; a quality of poetry totally neglected by the
followers of Cowley. I mention Davenant here, and separate from the
other poets, who were distinguished about the time of the Restoration,
because I think that Dryden, to whom we are about to return, was, at
that period, an admirer and imitator of "Gondibert," as we are certain
that he was a personal and intimate friend of the author.

With the return of the king, the fall of Dryden's political patrons was
necessarily involved. Sir Gilbert Pickering, having been one of
Charles's judges, was too happy to escape into obscurity, under an
absolute disqualification for holding any office, political, civil, or
ecclesiastical. The influence of Sir John Driden was ended at the same
time; and thus both those relations, under whose protection Dryden
entered life, and by whose influence he was probably to have been aided
in some path to wealth or eminence, became at once incapable of
assisting him; and even connection with them was rendered, by the change
of times, disgraceful, if not dangerous. Yet it may be doubted whether
Dryden felt this evil in its full extent. Sterne has said of a
character, that a blessing which closed his mouth, or a misfortune which
opened it with a good grace, were nearly equal to him; nay, that
sometimes the misfortune was the more acceptable of the two. It is
possible, by a parity of reasoning, that Dryden may have felt himself
rather relieved from, than deprived of, his fanatical patrons, under
whose guidance he could never hope to have indulged in that career of
literary pursuit, which the new order of things presented to the
ambition of the youthful poet; at least, he lost no time in useless
lamentation, but, now in his thirtieth year, proceeded to exert that
poetical talent, which had heretofore been repressed by his own
situation, and that of the country.

Dryden, left to his own exertions, hastened to testify his joyful
acquiescence in the restoration of monarchy, by publishing "_Astroea
Redux_," a poem which was probably distinguished among the innumerable
congratulations poured forth upon the occasion; and he added to those
which hailed the coronation, in 1661, the verses entitled, "A Panegyric
to his Sacred Majesty." These pieces testify, that the author had
already made some progress in harmonising his versification. But they
also contain many of those points of wit, and turns of epigram, which he
condemned in his more advanced judgment. The same description applies,
in a yet stronger degree, to the verses addressed to Lord Chancellor
Hyde (Lord Clarendon) on the new-year's-day of 1662, in which Dryden has
more closely imitated the metaphysical poetry than in any poem, except
the juvenile elegy on Lord Hastings. I cannot but think, that the poet
consulted the taste of his patron, rather than his own, in adopting this
peculiar style. Clarendon was educated in the court of Charles I., and
Dryden may have thought it necessary, in addressing him, to imitate the
"strong verses," which were then admired.

According to the fashion of the times, such copies of occasional verses
were rewarded by a gratuity from the person to whom they were addressed;
and poets had not yet learned to think this mode of receiving assistance
incompatible with the feelings of dignity or delicacy. Indeed, in the
common transactions of that age, one sees something resembling the
eastern custom of accompanying with a present, and not always a splendid
one, the usual forms of intercourse and civility. Thus we find the
wealthy corporation of Hull, backing a polite address to the Duke of
Monmouth, their governor, with a present of _six broad pieces_; and his
grace deemed it a point of civility to press the acceptance of the same
gratuity upon the member of parliament for the city, by whom it was
delivered to him.[41] We may therefore believe, that Dryden received
some compliment from the king and chancellor; and I am afraid the same
premises authorise us to conclude that it was but trifling. Meantime,
our author having no settled means of support, except his small landed
property, and having now no assistance to expect from his more wealthy
kinsmen, to whom, probably, neither his literary pursuits, nor his
commencing them by a panegyric on the restoration, were very agreeable,
and whom he had also offended by a slight change in spelling his
name,[42] seems to have been reduced to narrow and uncomfortable
circumstances. Without believing, in its full extent, the exaggerated
account given by Brown and Shadwell,[43] we may discover from their
reproaches, that, at the commencement of his literary career, Dryden was
connected, and probably lodged, with Herringman the bookseller, in the
New Exchange, for whom he wrote prefaces, and other occasional pieces.
But having, as Mr. Malone has observed, a patrimony, though a small one,
of his own, it seems impossible that our author was ever in that state
of mean and abject dependence, which the malice of his enemies
afterwards pretended. The same malice misrepresented, or greatly
exaggerated, the nature of Dryden's obligations to Sir Robert Howard,
with whom he became acquainted probably about the time of the
Restoration, whose influence was exerted in his favour, and whose good
offices the poet returned by literary assistance.

Sir Robert Howard was a younger son of Thomas Earl of Berkshire,[44]
and, like all his family, had distinguished himself as a royalist,
particularly at the battle of Cropredy[45] Bridge. He had recently
suffered a long imprisonment in Windsor Castle during the usurpation.
His rank and merits made him, after the Restoration, a patron of some
consequence; and upon his publishing a collection of verses very soon
after that period, Dryden prefixed an address "to his honoured friend"
on "his excellent poems." Sir Robert Howard understood the value of
Dryden's attachment, introduced him into his family, and probably aided
in procuring his productions that degree of attention from the higher
world, for want of which the most valuable efforts of genius have often
sunk into unmerited obscurity. Such, in short, were his exertions in
favour of Dryden, that, though we cannot believe he was indebted to
Howard, for those necessaries of life which he had the means to procure
for himself, the poet found ground to acknowledge, that his patron had
not only been "carefull of his fortune, which was the effect of his
nobleness, but solicitous of his reputation, which was that of his
kindness."

Thus patronised, our author seems to have advanced in reputation, as he
became more generally known to the learned and ingenious of his time.
Yet we have but few traces of the labour, by which he doubtless
attained, and secured, his place in society. A short satire on the
Dutch, written to animate the people of England against them, appeared
in 1662.[46] It is somewhat in the hard style of invective, which
Cleveland applied to the Scottish nation; yet Dryden thought it worth
while to weave the same verses into the prologue and epilogue of the
tragedy of "Amboyna," a piece written in 1673, with the same kind
intentions towards the states-general.

Science, as well as poetry, began to revive after the iron dominion of
military fanaticism was ended; and Dryden, who through life was attached
to experimental philosophy, speedily associated himself with those who
took interest in its progress. He was chosen a member of the newly
instituted Royal Society, 26th November 1662; an honour which cemented
his connection with the most learned men of the time, and is an evidence
of the respect in which he was already held. Most of these, and the
discoveries by which they had distinguished themselves, Dryden took
occasion to celebrate in his "Epistle to Dr. Walter Charleton," a
learned physician, upon his treatise of Stonehenge. Gilbert, Boyle,
Harvey, and Ent, are mentioned with enthusiastic applause as treading in
the path pointed out by Bacon, who first broke the fetters of Aristotle,
and taught the world to derive knowledge from experiment. In these
elegant verses, the author divests himself of all the flippant
extravagance of point and quibble, in which, complying with his age, he
had hitherto indulged, though of late in a limited degree.

While thus united in friendly communion with men of kindred and
congenial spirits, Dryden seems to have been sensible of the necessity
of applying his literary talents to some line, in which he might derive
a steadier and more certain recompence, than by writing occasional
verses to the great, or doing literary drudgery for the bookseller. His
own genius would probably have directed him to the ambitious labours of
an epic poem; but for this the age afforded little encouragement.
"Gondibert," the style of which, Dryden certainly both admired and
copied, became a martyr to the raillery of the critics; and to fill up
the measure of shame, the "Paradise Lost" fell still-born from the
press. This last instance of bad taste had not, it is true, yet taken
place; but the men who were guilty of it, were then living under
Dryden's observation and their manners and habits could not fail to
teach him, to anticipate the little encouragement they were likely to
afford to the loftier labours of poetry. One only line remained, in
which poetical talents might exert themselves, with some chance of
procuring their possessor's reward, or at least maintenance, and this
was dramatic composition. To this Dryden sedulously applied himself,
with various success, for many years. But before proceeding to trace the
history of his dramatic career, I proceed to notice such pieces of his
poetry, as exhibit marks of his earlier style of composition.

The victory gained by the Duke of York over the Dutch fleet on the 3d of
June 1665, and his Duchess's subsequent journey into the north,
furnished Dryden with the subject of a few occasional verses; in which
the style of Waller (who came forth with a poem on the same subject) is
successfully imitated. In addressing her grace, the poet suppresses all
the horrors of the battle, and turns her eyes upon the splendour of a
victory, for which the kingdom was indebted to her husband's valour, and
her "chaste vows." In these verses, not the least vestige of
metaphysical wit can be traced; and they were accordingly censured, as
wanting height of fancy, and dignity of words. This criticism Dryden
refuted, by alleging, that he had succeeded in what he did attempt, in
the softness of expression and smoothness of the measure (the
appropriate ornaments of an address to a lady), and that he was accused
of that only thing which he could well defend. It seems, however, very
possible, that these remarks impelled him to undertake a task, in which
vigour of fancy and expression might, with propriety, be exercised.
Accordingly, his next poem was of greater length and importance. This is
a historical account of the events of the year 1666, under the title of
"_Annus Mirabilis_" to which distinction the incidents which had
occurred in that space gave it some title. The poem being in the elegiac
stanza, Dryden relapsed into an imitation of "Gondibert," from which he
had departed ever since the "Elegy on Cromwell." From this it appears,
that the author's admiration of Davenant had not decreased. Indeed, he,
long afterwards, bore testimony to that author's quick and piercing
imagination; which at once produced thoughts remote, new, and
surprising, such as could not easily enter into any other fancy. Dryden
at least equalled Davenant in this quality; and certainly excelled him
in the powers of composition, which are to embody the conceptions of the
imagination; and in the extent of acquired knowledge, by which they were
to be enforced and illustrated. In his preface, he has vindicated the
choice of his stanza, by a reference to the opinion of Davenant,[47]
which he sanctions by affirming, that he had always himself thought
quatrains, or stanzas of verse in alternate rhyme, more noble, and of
greater dignity, both for sound and number, than any other verse in use
among us. By this attention to sound and rhythm, he improved upon the
school of metaphysical poets, which disclaimed attention to either; but
in the thought and expression itself, the style of Davenant more nearly
resembled Cowley's, than that of Denham and Waller. The same ardour for
what Dryden calls "wit-writing," the same unceasing exercise of the
memory, in search of wonderful thoughts and allusions, and the same
contempt for the subject, except as the medium of displaying the
author's learning and ingenuity, marks the style of Davenant, though in
a less degree than that of the metaphysical poets, and though chequered
with many examples of a simpler and chaster character. Some part of this
deviation was, perhaps, owing to the nature of the stanza; for the
structure of the quatrain prohibited the bard, who used it, from
rambling into those digressive similes, which, in the pindaric strophe,
might be pursued through endless ramifications. If the former started an
extravagant thought, or a quaint image, he was compelled to bring it to
a point within his four-lined stanza. The snake was thus scotched,
though not killed; and conciseness being rendered indispensable, a great
step was gained towards concentration of thought, which is necessary to
the simple and to the sublime The manner of Davenant, therefore, though
short-lived, and ungraced by public applause, was an advance towards
true taste, from the unnatural and frantic indulgence of unrestrained
fancy; and, did it claim no other merit, it possesses that of having
been twice sanctioned by the practice of Dryden, upon occasions of
uncommon solemnity.

The "_Annus Mirabilis_" evinces a considerable portion of labour and
attention; the lines and versification are highly polished, and the
expression was probably carefully corrected. Dryden as Johnson remarks,
already exercised the superiority of his genius, by recommending his own
performance, as written upon the plan of Virgil; and as no unsuccessful
effort at producing those well-wrought images and descriptions, which
create admiration, the proper object of heroic poetry. The "_Annus
Mirabilis_" may indeed be regarded as one of Dryden's most elaborate
pieces; although it is not written in his later, better, and most
peculiar style of poetry.

The poem first appeared in octavo, in 1667, and was afterwards
frequently reprinted in quarto. It was dedicated to the metropolis of
Great Britain, as represented by the lord mayor and magistrates. A
letter to Sir Robert Howard was prefixed to the poem, in which the
author explains the purpose of the work, and the difficulties which
presented themselves in the execution. And in this epistle, as a
contrast between the smooth and easy style of writing which was proper
in addressing a lady, and the exalted style of heroic, or at least
historical, poetry, he introduces the verses to the Duchess of York,
already mentioned.

The "_Annus Mirabilis_" being the last poetical work of any importance
produced by our author, until "Absalom and Achitophel," the reader may
here pause, and consider, in the progressive improvement of Dryden, the
gradual renovation of public taste. The irregular pindaric ode was now
abandoned to Arwaker, Behn, Durfey, and a few inferior authors; who
either from its tempting facility of execution, or from an affected
admiration of old times and fashions, still pestered the public with
imitations of Cowley. The rough measure of Donne (if it had any
pretension to be called a measure) was no longer tolerated, and it was
expected, even of those who wrote satires, lampoons, and occasional
verses, that their rhymes should be rhymes, both to the ear and eye; and
that they should neither adore their mistresses nor abuse their
neighbours, in lines which differed only from prose in the fashion of
printing. Thus the measure used by Rochester, Buckingham Sheffield,
Sedley, and other satirists, if not polished or harmonized, approaches
more nearly to modern verse, than that of Hall or Donne. In the "Elegy
on Cromwell," and the "_Annus Mirabilis_," Dryden followed Davenant, who
abridged, if he did not explode, the quaintnesses of his predecessors.
In "_Astroea Redux_" and his occasional verses to Dr. Charlton, the
Duchess of York, and others, the poet proposed a separate and simpler
model, more dignified than that of Suckling or Waller; more harmonious
in measure, and chaste in expression, than those of Cowley and Crashaw.
Much, there doubtless remained, of ancient subtlety, and ingenious
quibbling; but when Dryden declares, that he proposes Virgil, in
preference to Ovid, to be his model in the "_Annus Mirabilis_" it
sufficiently implies that the main defect of the poetry of the last age
had been discovered, and was in the way of being amended by gradual and
almost imperceptible degrees.

In establishing, or refining, the latter style of writing, in couplet
verse, our author found great assistance from his dramatic practice; to
trace the commencement of which is the purpose of the next Section.


FOOTNOTES:
[1] [The statements in this paragraph are somewhat rhetorical.
Massinger, for instance, was still at Oxford when James ascended the
throne, and though he began to write a few years later, his earliest
published play now extant appeared nearly twenty years afterwards. But
the general drift is untouched.--ED.]

[2] I do not pretend to enter into the question of the effect of the
drama upon morals. If this shall be found prejudicial, two theatres are
too many. But, in the present woful decline of theatrical exhibition, we
may be permitted to remember, that the gardener who wishes to have a
rare diversity of a common flower, sows whole beds with the species; and
that the monopoly granted to two huge theatres must necessarily
diminish, in a complicated ratio, both the number of play-writers, and
the chance of anything very excellent being brought forward.

[3] [Scott is here far too harsh. "Euphues" is not a book to be
despatched in a note, but the reader may be requested to suspend his
judgment until he has read it.--ED.]

[4] Our deserved idolatry of Shakespeare and Milton was equalled by that
paid to this pedantic coxcomb in his own time. He is called in the
title-page of his plays (for, besides "Euphues," he wrote what he styled
"Court Comedies"), "the only rare poet of that time; the witty, comical,
facetiously quick, and unparalleled John Lillie." Moreover, his editor,
Mr. Blount, assures us, "that he sate at Apollo's table; that Apollo
gave him a wreath of his own bays without snatching; and that the lyre
he played on had no broken strings." Besides which, we are informed,
"Our nation are in his debt for a new English, which he taught them;
'Euphues and his England' began first that language. All our ladies were
then his scholars; and that beauty in court who could not _parle
Euphuism_, was as little regarded, as she which now there speaks not
French."

[5] So that learned and sapient monarch was pleased to call his skill in
politics.

[6] Witness a sermon preached at St. Mary's before the university of
Oxford. It is true the preacher was a layman, and harangued in a gold
chain, and girt with a sword, as high sheriff of the county; but his
eloquence was highly applauded by the learned body whom he addressed,
although it would have startled a modern audience, at least as much as
the dress of the orator. "Arriving," said he, "at the Mount of St.
Mary's, in the stony stage where I now stand, I have brought you some
fine biscuits, baked in the oven of charity, carefully conserved for the
chickens of the church, the sparrows of the spirit, and the sweet
swallows of salvation." "Which way of preaching," says Anthony Wood, the
reporter of the homily, "was then mostly in fashion, and commended by
the generality of scholars."--_Athenae Oxon_. vol. i. p.183.

[7] Look at Ben Jonson's "Ode to the Memory of Sir Lucius Carey and Sir
H. Morison," and at most of his Pindarics. But Ben, when he pleased,
could assume the garb of classic simplicity; witness many of his lesser
poems.

[8] In Jonson's last illness, Charles is said to have sent him ten
pieces. "He sends me so miserable a donation," said the expiring
satirist, "because I am poor, and live in an alley; go back and tell
him, his soul lives in an alley." Whatever be the truth of this
tradition, we know from an epigram by Jonson, that the king at one time
gave him an hundred pounds; no trifling gift for a poor bard, even in
the present day.

[9] "About a year after his return out of Germany, Dr. Cary was made
bishop of Exeter; and by his removal, the deanery of St. Paul's being
vacant, the king sent to Dr. Donne, and appointed him to attend him at
dinner the next day. When his majesty was sate down, before he had eat
any meat, he said, after his pleasant manner, 'Dr. Donne, I have invited
you to dinner; and though you sit not down with me, yet I will carve to
you of a dish that I know you love well; for knowing you love London, I
do therefore make you dean of Paul's; and when I have dined, then do you
take your beloved dish home to your study; say grace there to yourself,
and much good may it do you."--WALTON'S _Life of Donne._

[10] See his "Verses to Mr. George Herbert, sent him with one of my
seals of the anchor and Christ. A sheaf of snakes used heretofore to be
my seal, which is the crest of our poor family." Upon the subject of
this change of device he thus quibbles:

  "Adopted in God's family, and so
  My old coat lost, into new arms I go;
  The cross my seal, in baptism spread below,
  Does by that form into an anchor grow:
  Crosses grow anchors; bear as thou shouldst do
  Thy cross, and that cross grows an anchor too," etc.

[11] See his Life, prefixed to his Poems, 12mo, 1677.

[12] It is pleasing to see the natural good taste of honest old Isaac
Walton struggling against that of his age. He introduces the beautiful
lines,

  "Come live with me, and be my love,"

as "that smooth song made by Kit Marlow, now at least fifty years ago."
"The milkmaid's mother," he adds, "sung an answer to it, which was made
by Sir Walter Raleigh in his younger days. They were old-fashioned
poetry, but choicely good. I think much better than _the strong lines_
that are in fashion in this critical age."--_The Complete Angler_, Edit.
vi. p. 65.

[13] "A Poem on the Danger Charles I., being Prince, escaped in the Road
at St. Andero."

[14] [The Jacobean and Caroline poets, especially Donne and Cowley,
require considerable allowance to be made on Scott's judgment by those
who are not familiar with them.--ED.]

[15] _Fasti Oxon._ vol. i. p. 115. Considering John Dryden's marriage
with the heiress of a man of knightly rank, it seems unlikely that he
followed the profession of a schoolmaster. But Wood could hardly be
mistaken in the second circumstance some of the family having gloried in
it in his hearing.

[16] See Collins' _Baronetage_, vol. ii. The testator bequeaths his soul
to his Creator, with this singular expression of confidence, "the Holy
Ghost assuring my spirit, that I am the elect of God."

[17] Robert Keies, executed 31st January 1606, of whom Fuller, in his
Church History, tells the following anecdote:--"A few days before the
fatal blow should have been given, Keies, being at Tichmarsh, in
Northamptonshire, at his brother-in-law's house, Mr. Gilbert Pickering,
a Protestant, he suddenly whipped out his sword, and in merriment made
many offers therewith at the heads, necks, and sides, of several
gentlemen and ladies then in his company. It was then taken for a mere
frolic, and so passed accordingly; but afterwards, when the treason was
discovered, such as remembered his gestures thought he practised what he
intended to do when the plot should take effect; that is, to hack and
hew, kill and destroy, all eminent persons of a different religion from
himself."--CAULFIELD's _History of the Gunpowder Plot._

[18] The following curious story is told to that effect, in Caulfield's
"History of the Gunpowder Plot," p. 67:--

"There was a Mr. Pickering of Tichmarsh-Grove, in Northamptonshire who
was in great esteem with King James. This Mr. Pickering had a horse of
special note for swiftness, on which he used to hunt with the king. A
little before the blow was to be given, Mr. Keies, one of the
conspirators, and brother-in-law to Mr. Pickering, borrowed this horse
of him, and conveyed him to London upon a bloody design, which was thus
contrived:--Fawkes, upon the day of the fatal blow, was appointed to
retire himself into St. George's Fields, where this horse was to attend
him, to further his escape (as they made him believe) as soon as the
Parliament should be blown up. It was likewise contrived, that Mr.
Pickering, who was noted for a puritan, should that morning be murdered
in his bed, and secretly conveyed away; and also that Fawkes, as soon as
he came into St. George's Fields, should be there murdered, and so
mangled, that he could not be known; upon which, it was to be spread
abroad, that the puritans had blown up the parliament-house; and the
better to make the world believe it, there was Mr. Pickering, with his
choice horse ready to escape. But that stirred up some, who seeing the
heinousness of the fact, and him ready to escape, in detestation of so
horrible a deed, fell upon him, and hewed him to pieces; and to make it
more clear, there was his horse, known to be of special speed and
swiftness, ready to carry him away; and upon this rumour, a massacre
should have gone through the whole land upon the puritans.

"When the contrivance of this plot was discovered by some of the
conspirators, and Fawkes, who was now a prisoner in the Tower, made
acquainted with it, whereas before he was made to believe by his
companions, that he should be bountifully rewarded for that his good
service to the Catholic cause, now perceiving, that, on the contrary,
his death had been contrived by them, he thereupon freely confessed all
that he knew concerning that horrid conspiracy, which before all the
torments of the rack could not force him to do.

"The truth of this was attested by Mr. William Perkins, who had it from
Mr. Clement Cotton, to whom Mr. Pickering gave the above relation."


[19] Erasmus, the poet's immediate younger brother, was in trade, and
resided in King-street, Westminster. He succeeded to the family title
and estate upon the death of Sir John Dryden, and died at the seat of
Canons-Ashby 3d November 1718, leaving one daughter and five grandsons.
Henry, the poet's third brother, went to Jamaica, and died there,
leaving a son, Richard. James, the fourth of the sons, was a tobacconist
in London, and died there, leaving two daughters. Of the daughters, Mr.
Malone, after Oldys, says, that Agnes married Sylvester Emelyn of
Stanford, Gent.; that Rose married ---- Laughton of Calworth, D.D., in
the county of Huntington; that Lucy became the wife of Stephen Umwell of
London, merchant; and Martha of ---- Bletso of Northampton. Another of
the daughters was married to one Shermardine, a bookseller in Little
Britain; and Frances, the youngest, to Joseph Sandwell, a tobacconist in
Newgate-street This last died 10th October 1730, at the advanced age of
ninety. She had survived the poet about thirty years. Of the remaining
four sisters, no notices occur.

[20] [A few facts of a more precise kind about the contents of this and
the foregoing paragraphs may be grouped here. The Rev. H. Pickering was
rector of Aldwinkle (the better form) All-Saints from 1507 to 1637, not
from 1647 to 1657. This destroys Scott's inference. The error arose from
a misreading of his epitaph. "The village" did not strictly belong to
Lord Exeter: but he had property in Aldwinkle St. Peter's, and the two
parishes are close together, one church being at one end and the other
at the other of the joint village. Erasmus Dryden and Mary Pickering
were married at the church of Pilton, a very small village between
Aldwinkle and Oundle, on October 21, 1630. Dryden was therefore
indisputably the eldest son. Blakesley, where his father's property was
situated, is not near Aldwinkle or Tichmarsh, which are close together
on opposite sides of the river Nene, and about two miles from Thrapston,
but near Canons-Ashby on the other side of the county. The estate (of
about two hundred acres) was united to that of Canons-Ashby after the
death of Dryden's youngest son. But, unlike Canons-Ashby, it does not
now belong to the family, having been sold many years ago.--ED.]

[21]
  "And though no wit ran royal blood infuse,
  No more than melt a mother to a muse,
  Yet much a certain poet undertook,
  That men and manners deals in without book;
  And might not more to gospel truth belong,
  Than he _(if christened)_ does by name of John."
              _Poetical Reflections_, etc. See vol. ix.

Another opponent of our author calls him

  "A bristled Baptist bred, and then thy strain
  Immaculate was free from sinful stain."
              _The Laureat_, vol. x.


[22] Upon a monument, erected by Elizabeth Creed to the poet's memory in
the church at Tichmarsh, are these words:--"We boast that he was bred
and had his first learning here." [A rival tradition favours Oundle,
which had and has a grammar school of merit.--ED.]

[23] The date is not known. That of his admission to Trinity, _infra_,
should be May 18. He matriculated on July 16, and was not elected to his
scholarship till October 2.--ED.

[24] [More usually Busby.--ED.]

[25] "I remember (says Dryden, in a postscript to the argument of the
third satire of Perseus) I translated this satire when I was a King's
scholar at Westminster school, for Thursday night's exercise; and
believe, that it, and many other of my exercises of this nature in
English verse, are still in the hands of my learned master, the Rev. Dr.
Bushby."

[26] The following order is quoted, by Mr. Malone, from the
Conclusion-book, in the archives of Trinity College, p. 221.

  "July 19, 1652. Agreed, then, That Dryden be put out of Comons, for a
  fortnight at least; and that he goe not out of the colledg, during the
  time aforesaid, 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 the three
  ... fellowes table.

  "His crime was, his disobedience to the vice-master, and his contumacy
  in taking his punishment inflicted by him."

[27] Shadwell, in the Medal of John Bayes,

  "At Cambridge Brat your scurrilous vein began,
  Where saucily you traduced a nobleman;
  Who for that crime rebuked you on the head,
  And you had been expelled, had you not fled."

[28] He received this degree by dispensation from the Archbishop of
Canterbury.

[29] Prologue to the University of Oxford.

[30] Jonathan Dryden, elected a scholar from Westminster into Trinity
College, Cambridge, in 1656, of which he became fellow in 1662, was
author of some verses in the Cambridge Collections in 1661, on the death
of the Duke of Gloucester, and the marriage of the Princess of Orange;
and in 1662, on the marriage of Charles II., which have been imputed to
our author. An order, quoted by Mr. Malone, for abatement of the
commencement-money paid at taking the Bachelor's degree, on account of
poverty, applies to Jonathan, not to John Dryden.--MALONE, vol. i. p.17,
note.

[31] [This letter will be found in its proper place. It is the sole
personal utterance in prose, and almost the only biographical fact of
importance that we have for the first thirty years of Dryden's life.
Upon it, an entirely baseless romance has been built of disappointed
love and parental unkindness. There is absolutely no evidence that
Dryden ever seriously pretended to his cousin's hand, or that he was
rejected, or that this rejection was due to his uncle's influence.--ED.]

[32] Elegy on Lady Haddington, in Corbet's Poems, p. 121. Gilchrist's
edition.

[33] Sir John Pickering, father of Sir Gilbert, married Susan, the
sister of Erasmus Dryden, the poet's father. But Mary Pickering, the
poet's mother, was niece to Sir John Pickering; and thus his son Sir
Gilbert was _her_ cousin-german also.

[34] In one lampoon, he is called "fiery Pickering." Walker, in his
"Sufferings of the Clergy," prints Jeremiah Stevens' account of the
Northamptonshire committee of sequestration in which the character of
Pickering, one of the members of that oppressive body, is thus drawn:--
"Sir G---- P---- had an uncle, whose ears were cropt for a libel on
Archbishop Whitgift; was first a presbyterian, then an independent, then
a Brownist, and afterwards an anabaptist. He was a most furious, fiery,
implacable man; was the principal agent in casting out most of the
learned clergy; a great oppressor of the country; got a good manor for
his booty of the E. of R. and a considerable purse of gold by a plunder
at Lynn in Norfolk." He is thus characterized by an angry limb of the
commonwealth, whose republican spirit was incensed by Cromwell creating
a peerage:--"Sir Gilbert Pickering, knight of the old stamp, and of
considerable revenue in Northamptonshire; one of the Long Parliament,
and a great stickler in the change of the government from kingly to that
of a commonwealth;--helped to make those laws of treason against
kingship; has also changed with all changes that have been since. He was
one of the Little Parliament, and helped to break it, as also of all the
parliaments since; is one of the Protector's council (his salary ВЈ1000
_per annum_, besides other places), and as if he had been pinned to this
slieve, was never to seek; is become high steward of Westminster; and
being so finical, spruce, and like an old courtier, is made
lord-chamberlain of the Protector's household or court; so that he may
well be counted fit and worthy to be taken out of the House to have a
negative voice in the other House, though he helped to destroy it in the
king and lords. There are more besides him, that make themselves
transgressors by building again the things which they once destroyed."
Quoted by Mr. Malone from a rare pamphlet in his collection entitled "A
Second Narrative of the late Parliament, 1658."


[35] Like Sir Gilbert Pickering, he was a member of the Northamptonshire
committee of sequestration, and his deeds are thus commemorated in
Walker's "Sufferings of the Clergy:"--"Sir J---- D----n was never noted
for ability or discretion; was a puritan by tenure, his house (Canons
Ashby) being an ancient college, where he possessed the church, and
abused most part of it to profane uses: the chancel he turned to a barn;
the body of it to a corn-chamber and storehouse, reserving one side
aisle of it for the public service of prayers, etc. He was noted for
weakness and simplicity, and never put on any business of moment, but
was very furious against the clergy."

[36] In a satire called "The Protestant Poets," our author is thus
contrasted with Sir Roger L'Estrange. In levelling his reproaches, the
satirist was not probably very solicitous about genealogical accuracy;
as, in the eighth line, I conceive Sir John Dryden to be alluded to,
although he is termed our poet's grandfather, when he was in fact his
uncle. Sir Erasmus Dryden was indeed a fanatic, and so was Henry
Pickering, Dryden's paternal and maternal grandfather; but neither were
men of mark or eminence:

  "But though he spares no waste of words or conscience,
  He wants the Tory turn of thorough nonsense,
  That thoughtless air, that makes light Hodge so jolly;--
  Void of all weight, _he_ wantons in his folly.
  No so forced BAYES, whom sharp remorse attends,
  While his heart loaths the cause his tongue defends;
  Hourly he acts, hourly repents the sin,
  And is all over _grandfather_ within:
  By day that ill-laid spirit checks,--o' nights
  Old Pickering's ghost, a dreadful spectre, frights.
  Returns of spleen his slacken'd speed remit,
  And crump his loose careers with intervals of wit:
  While, without stop at sense, or ebb of spite,
  Breaking all bars, bounding o'er wrong and right,
  Contented Roger gallops out of sight."

[37] This piece was called in, and destroyed by the noble author; but
Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, when opposing Lord Grimestone at an
election, maliciously printed and dispersed a large impression of his
smothered performance, with a frontispiece representing an elephant
dancing on the slack rope.

[38] He was one of the garrison of Newark, which held out so long for
Charles I., and has left a curious specimen of the wit of the time, in
his controversy with a parliamentary officer, whose servant had robbed
him, and taken refuge in Newark. The following is the beginning of his
answer to a demand that the fugitive should be surrendered:

"Sixthly, Beloved,

"Is it so then, that our brother and fellow-labourer in the Gospel is
start aside? then this may serve for an use of instruction, not to trust
in man, nor in the son of man. Did not Demas leave Paul? did not
Onesimus run from his master Philemon? besides, this should teach us to
employ our talent, and not to lay it up in a napkin. Had it been done
among the cavaliers, it had been just; then the Israelite had spoiled
the Egyptian; but for Simeon to plunder Levi, that! that! You see, sir,
what use I make of the doctrine you sent me; and indeed since you change
style so far as to nibble at wit, you must pardon me, if, to quit
scores, I pretend a little to the gift of preaching," etc.

Such was the wit of Cleveland. After the complete subjugation of the
royalists, he was apprehended, having in his possession a bundle of
poems and satirical songs against the republicans. He appeared before
the commonwealth-general with the dignified air of one who is prepared
to suffer for his principles. He was disappointed; for the military
judge, after a contemptuous glance at the papers, exclaimed to
Cleveland's accusers, "Is this all ye have against him? Go, let the poor
knave sell his ballads!" Such an acquittal was more severe than any
punishment. The conscious virtue of the loyalist would have borne the
latter; but the pride of the poet could not sustain his contemptuous
dismissal; and Cleveland is said to have broken his heart in
consequence.--_Biographia Britannica_, voce _Cleveland_.