sisting of two-thirds of a small estate near Blakesley, in Northamptonshire, worth, in all, about sixty pounds a-year. The other third part of this small property was bequeathed to his mother during her life, and the property reverted to the poet after her death in 1676. With this little patrimony our author returned to Cambridge, where he continued until the middle of the year 1657.

Although Dryden's residence at the university was prolonged to the unusual space of nearly seven years, we do not find that he distinguished himself, during that time, by any poetical prolusions, excepting a few lines prefixed to a work, entitled, "Sion and Parnassus; or Epigrams on several Texts of the Old and New Testaments," published in 1650, by John Hoddesden.1 Mr Malone conjectures, that our poet would have contributed to the academic collection of verses, entitled, " Oliva Pacis,” and published in 1654, on the peace between England and Holland, had not his father's death interfered at that period. It is probable we lose but little by the disappearance of any occasional verses which may have been produced by Dryden at this

1 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.

time. The elegy on Lord Hastings, the lines prefixed to "Sion and Parnassus," and some complimentary stanzas which occur in a letter to his cousin Honor Driden,' would have been enough to assure us, even without his own testimony, that Cowley was the darling of his youth; and that he imitated his points of wit, and quirks of epigram, with a similar contempt for the propriety of their application. From these poems, we learn enough to be grateful, that Dryden was born at a later period in his century; for had not the road to fame been altered in consequence of the Restoration, his extensive information and acute ingenuity would probably have betrayed the author of the " Ode to St Cecilia," and the father of English poetical harmony, into rivalling the metaphysical pindarics of Donne and Cowley. The verses, to which we allude, display their subtlety of thought, their puerile extravagance of conceit, and that structure of verse, which, as the poet himself says of Holyday's translations, has nothing of verse in it except the worst part of it-the rhyme, and that far from being unexceptionable. The following lines, in which

1 [According to Mitford, p. 6, Honor was wealthy as well as beautiful, and her poetical cousin was an unsuccessful suitor for her hand. She died unmarried after 1707. The verses alluded to in the text are given in Scott's Dryden, vol. xviii., p. 86, where the Editor calls them "a woful sample of the gallantry of the time, alternately coarse and pedantic." "You, fairest nymph, are waxe. Oh! may you be

As well in softnesse as in puritye!

Till fate, and your own happy choice reveale

Whom you so farre shall blesse to make your seale." &c.]

the poet describes the death of Lord Hastings by the small-pox, will be probably admitted as a justification of this censure:

"Was there no milder way but the small-pox,

The very filthiness of Pandora's box?

So many spots, like naves on Venus' soil,

One jewel set off with so many a foil;

Blisters with pride swell'd, which through's flesh did

sprout,

Like rose-buds, stuck i'the lily-skin about.
Each little pimple had a tear in it,

To wail the fault its rising did commit,
Which, rebel-like, with its own lord at strife,
Thus made an insurrection 'gainst his life.
Or were these gems sent to adorn his skin,
The cabinet of a richer soul within?

No comet need foretell his change drew on,
Whose corpse might seem a constellation."

This is exactly in the tone of Bishop Corbett's invective against the same disease:

"O thou deform'd unwoman-like disease,

Thou plough'st up flesh and blood, and there sow'st pease; And leav'st such prints on beauty that dost come,

As clouted shoon do on a floor of loam.

Thou that of faces honeycombs dost make,

And of two breasts two cullenders, forsake
Thy deadly trade; now thou art rich, give o'er,
And let our curses call thee forth no more.

After leaving the university, our author entered the world, supported by friends, from whose character, principles, and situation, it might have been prophesied, with probability, that his success in life, and his literary reputation, would have been

1 Elegy on Lady Haddington, in Corbett's Poems, p. 121. Gilchrist's edition.

exactly the reverse of what they actually proved. Sir Gilbert Pickering was cousin-german to the poet, and also to his mother; thus standing related to Dryden in a double connexion. This gentleman was a stanch puritan, and having set out as a reformer, ended by being a regicide, and an abettor of the tyranny of Cromwell. He was one of the judges of the unfortunate Charles; and though he did not sit in that bloody court upon the last and fatal day, yet he seems to have concurred in the most violent measures of the unconscientious men who did so. He had been one of the parliamentary counsellors of state, and hesitated not to be numbered among the godly and discreet persons who assisted Cromwell as a privy council. Moreover, he was lord chamberlain of the Protector's court, and received the honour of his mock peerage.

The patronage of such a person was more likely to have elevated Dryden to the temporal greatness and wealth acquired by the sequestrators and committee-men of that oppressive time, than to have aided him in attaining the summits of Parnassus. For, according to the slight records which Mr Malone has recovered concerning Sir Gilbert Pickering's character, it would seem, that, to the hard, precise, fanatical contempt of every illumination, save the inward light, which he derived from

1 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 her son Sir Gilbert was her cousin-german also.

his sect, he added the properties of a fiery temper, and a rude savage address.' In what capacity Dryden lived with his kinsman, or to what line of life circumstances seemed to destine the future poet, we are left at liberty to conjecture. Shad

1 In one lampoon, he is called "fiery Pickering." Walker, in his "Sufferings of the Clergy," prints Jeremiah Steven's 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 characterised 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 L. 1000 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."