THE LIFE

OF

JOHN DRYDEN.

BY

SIR WALTER SCOTT, Bart.

ROBERT CADELL, EDINBURGH;

WHITTAKER AND CO., LONDON.

1834.

NOTICE.

THE present Edition of Sir Walter Scott's Miscellaneous Prose Works will include many pieces which were never until now collected, or printed with his name. The whole will be arranged, as nearly as possible, in chronological order, thus illustrating the course of the author's studies and exertions; and accompanied with notes, in which occasional mistakes are rectified, deficiencies filled up, and the observations of contemporary critics quoted or condensed. Mr Turner has undertaken the pictorial embellishment of the series, by representations of many of the interesting scenes described in the text.

The Biographical department will include, besides the Memoirs of Dryden and Swift, those of the British Novelists, and a variety of Sketches hitherto scattered over different

extensive and expensive collections: To these volumes will be attached Portraits of DRYDEN, SWIFT, SMOLLETT, and MACKENZIE. In the Life of Napoleon, the text is corrected and partly annotated by the Author; marginal dates are appended, in compliance with his instructions to his executors; and, in addition to Portraits and Mr Turner's Designs, this Edition is enriched with Maps of the Emperor's Campaigns.

The most important articles contributed by Sir Walter Scott to periodical publications, are now for the first time to appear in company with the prose writings originally sanctioned by his name.

The Series will close with the TALES OF a GRANDFATHER, and the Editor anticipates that the whole will be comprised within twenty-four volumes, the last of which will, course, include a copious index.

of

March, 1834.

ADVERTISEMENT.

[The following "ADVERTISEMENT" is extracted from the Preface to "The Works of John Dryden, now first collected; illustrated with Notes, historical, critical, and explanatory, and a Life of the Author, by Walter Scott, Esq. 18 volumes, 8vo. London, 1808,"-of which publication a second edition appeared in Edinburgh in 1821. Those parts of the Preface which relate not to the "Life of Dryden," but to the Author's Edition of his Works, have been omitted on the present occasion ; but much important matter, originally scattered over seventeen volumes, in the shape of Notes, has now been appended to the Memoir, which has thus, it is hoped, been rendered more complete and satisfactory for the purposes of persons who do not happen to possess Sir W. Scott's Edition of Dryden.' The present Editor has also availed himself, on some occasions, of the labours of Mr D'Israeli, and other literary antiquaries, who have recently thrown additional light on subjects handled in this Biographical Essay.-ED.]

IN the Biographical Memoir of Dryden, it would have been hard to exact, that the

1 [The references in the present volume are to the Edition of Dryden's Works of 1821.]