In the following year, he commenced the arduous task of translating Virgil; and, after a labour of three years, exhibited to his countrymen their first specimen of legitimate translation. The first lines are said to have been written with a diamond, upon a pane of glass, in a window of Chesterton-house, in Huntingdonshire, the residence of his kinsman and namesake, John Dryden, Esq. His last work was the Fables; which were written by a contract, 'signed, sealed, and delivered, being first duly stampt, in the presense of Ben. Portlock and Nils. Congreve,' to deliver ten thousand verses to Jacob Tonson, bookseller, in consideration of the sum of three hundred pounds.* A part of these ten thousand verses was the Ode on St. Cecilia's Day; and another part was the first Iliad in English, as a prelude to the version of the whole. But it was too late in the day to be planning schemes of future employment. Dryden was now about seventy years old: his limbs had long forsaken their office; and he died of a mortification in his leg, May 1st, 1700. A slight inflammation of his toe became a gangrene by neglect; and, though our poet's life might yet have been saved by amputating the limb, he refused to sustain the operation. He was an

The Fables contained, when finished, more than twelve thousand verses; and though, had they been deficient, Jacob would have exacted his bond to the last line, we do not find, that he offered any gratuity for Dryden's supererogation. Our author was a contributor to Tonson's Third Miscellany. The contribution, although ample, (says Mr. Scott.) was not satisfactory to old Jacob Tonson, who wrote on the subject a most mercantile expostulatory letter to Dryden, which is fortunately still preserved, as a cu. rious specimen of the minutia of a literary bargain of the seventeenth century. Tonson, with reference to Dryden having offered a strange bookseller six hundred lines for twenty guineas, enters into a question in the rule of three, by which he discovers and proves, that for fifty guineas he has only fourteen hundred and forty-six lines, which he seems to take more unkindly, as he had not counted the lines until he had paid the money; from all which Jacob infers, that Dryden ought, out of generosity, at least to throw him in something to the bargain, especially as he had used him more kindly in Juvenal, which, saith the said Jacob, is not reckoned so easy to translate as Ovid.' Vol. i. p. 381.

old man (he said), and had not long to live by course of nature, and therefore did not care to part with one limb, at such an age, to preserve an uncomfortable life in the rest."

Wilson has preserved a curious story respecting his funeral. Dryden died on Wednesday morning. The next day, Dr. Sprat, bishop of Rochester and dean of Westminster, made his widow a present of the ground, and all the abbey-fees. Lord Halifax and her son, Charles Dryden, also, proposed to bury him at his own expense; and to bestow on him a monument worth five hundred pounds. The proposal was accepted; and, on Saturday morning, the hearse was ready to start, with eighteen mourning coaches, when young lord Jeffries, and some of his rakish companions, happened to ride by; and, being informed whose funeral it was, exclaimed, 'What, shall Dryden, the greatest honour and ornament of the nation, be buried after this private manner! No, gentlemen, let all that loved Mr. Dryden, and honour his memory, alight and join with me in gaining my lady's consent to let me have the honour of his interment, which shall be after another; and I will bestow one thousand pounds on a monument in the abbey for him.' Lady Elizabeth, Dryden's widow, was then sick; and the sudden irruption of the company caused her to faint. Lord Jeffries kneeled, and, at length, the rest kneeled, by his desire, in order to obtain her consent; but, as soon as her speech returned, she exclaimed, 'No, no!' Lord Jeffries caught the word; and, drowning her own reiterated denial, by roaring, 'My lady says, Go, go,'' he rushed out of the room, and ordered the hearsemen to carry the corpse to Mr. Russel's, an undertaker in Cheapside. There it remained three days; and, when the undertaker at length sent to lord Jeffries, to know what he should do with it, his lordship was pleased to answer, that those who observed the orders of a drunken frolic de

served no better; that he remembered nothing at all of the matter; and that he might do what he pleased with the corpse.' The undertaker threatened to set it before lady Elizabeth's door. She gained a respite of a day; and Charles Dryden addressed a civil letter to lord Jeffries; who again answered, that he knew nothing of the matter, and would be troubled no more about it.' Lord Halifax and Dr. Sprat now made a similar answer; and, in the end, Dr. Garth sent for the body to the college of physicians, and had it decently interred by subscription. He had been dead twelve days. Charles Dryden sent a challenge to lord Jeffries; who returned no answer; and would nei. ther receive a subsequent letter, nor admit the writer to an interview. Mr. Dryden then resolved to watch his opportunity and compel him to fight, whenever they should meet. His lordship heard of the design, and slunk out of town; nor could Mr. Dryden ever succeed in meeting him, to the day of his death.*

The death of no English monarch was ever commemorated with such a flood of poetry as soon appeared upon that of Dryden. Every poet and poetaster, male and female, in the kingdom, seemed to think it a duty to contribute an elegy or a panegyric; and, besides a pamphlet of nine odes, composed by as many ladies, who called themselves the Nine Muses, the elegiacs of other poets amounted to a volume, in two months, and were published, by Henry Playford, under the title of Luctus Britannici, or the Tears of the British Muses, for the Death of John Dryden. This was, in fact, his only monument, for twenty years after his death; when Sheffield, duke of Buckingham, erected one of perhaps more durable materials, in Westminster Abbey,

Wilson's Life of Congreve. Mr. Malone has exploded some part of the story; and Mr. Scott calls it a 'romance.' Vol. 3.

p. 412,

with the simple inscription of-J. DRYDEN. Natus 1632. Mortuus 1 Maii 1700. Johannes Sheffield, Dux Buckinghamiensis posuit, 1720.

In his youth, Dryden seems to have been distinguished for his beauty; and his enemy, Melbourne, talks of the 'blushing virgins' who died' for his 'dear sake.' He grew corpulent, as he grew old: and Rochester gave him the nickname of Poet Squab. In his latter years, his eye had lost a part of its lustre, and his cheeks something of their smoothness and rotundity. In a book called Epigrams upon the Paintings of the most eminent Masters, published in 1700, there is the following description of Dryden's portrait by Closterman :

A sleepy eye he shows, and no sweet feature,
Yet was indeed a favourite of nature:

And, though the painter's art can never show it
That his exemplar was so great a poet,

Yet are the lines and tints so subtly wrought
You may perceive he was a man of thought.

Let no man think of collecting the personal dis position of an author from the character of his writings. 'Posterity (says an acquaintance of Dryden, in the Gentleman's Magazine, for 1745) is absolutely mistaken as to that great man: though forced to be a satyrist, he was the mildest creature breathing, and the readiest to help the young and deserving. Though his comedies are horribly full of double entendre, yet 'twas owing to a false complaisance. He was, in company, the modestest man that ever conversed.' This character, though evidently from the hand of friendship, will serve, in some measure, to verify the still more flattering delineation of Congreve.

'He was (says the latter) of a nature exceedingly humane and compassionate; easily forgiving injuries, and capable of a prompt and sincere reconciliation with them who had offended him. His friendship,

when he professed it, was much beyond his profes. sions; and I have been told of strong and generous instances 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 memory, tenacious of every thing 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 extremely ready and gentle in his correction of the errors of any writer, who thought fit to consult him; and fully as ready and patient to admit of the reprehension of others, in respect to his own oversights or mistakes.* He was of very

* One would be a little sceptical as to this fact, if it were not known that Dryden frequently altered his lines at the suggestion of his friends,--and if some instances had not come down of his readiness to be set in the right, by those around him. Mr. Malone, among others. has given us the following anecdote of Dr. Lockier. 'I w. s about seventeen, (says the dean of Peterborough.) when I first came to town; an odd looking boy, with short rough hair, and that sort of awkwrdness which one always brings out of the country with one: however, in spite of my bashfulness and appearance, I used now and then to thrust myself into Will's, to have the pleasure of seeing the most celebrated wits of that time, who used to resort thither. The second time that ever I was there, Mr. Dryden was speaking of his own things, as he frequently did, especially of such as had been published. If any thing of mine is good (says he) 'tis my Mac Flecknoe; and I value myself the more on it, be cause it is the first piece of ridicule written in heroics. Lockier overhearing this, plu ked up his spirits so far, as to say, in a voice, just loud enough to be heard, that Mac Flecknoe was a very fine poe, but that he had not imagined it to be the first that ever was wrote that way. On this Dryden turned short upon him, as surprised at his interposing; asked him how long he had been a dealer in poetry; and added, with a smile,- But pray. sir, what is it, that you did imagine to have been writ so before? Lockier named Bo leau's Lictren, and Tassone's Secchia Rapita; which he had read, and knew Dryden had borrowed some strokes from each. 'Tis true,' says Dryden;-I had forgot them.' A little after, Dryden went out, and in going. spoke to Lockier again, and desired him to come to him the next day. Lockier was highly delighted