In him all beauties of this age we see,
Etherege his courtship, Southern's purity,
The satire, wit, and strength of Wycherly.
All this in blooming youth you have achieved,
Nor are your foiled contemporaries grieved;
So much the sweetness of your manners move,
We cannot envy you, because we love.

Already I am worn with cares and age,
And just abandoning the ungrateful stage;
Unprofitably kept at Heaven's expense,
I live a rent-charge on His providence.
But you, whom every Grace and Muse adorn,
Whom I foresee to better fortune born,
Be kind to my remains; and oh, defend,
Against your judgment, your departed friend.
Let not the insulting foe my fame pursue,
But shade those laurels which descend to you:
And take for tribute what these lines express,
You merit more, nor could my love do less.'

An air of insincerity is given to the prophecy of the laurel for Congreve by a similar compliment addressed a few years later to another young dramatist, George Granville, who was rich and of noble family, and became afterwards Secretary of State and a peer, with the title of Lord Lansdowne, and who was a beneficent friend of Dryden in his last years. A poem addressed to Mr. Granville in 1690, 'on his excellent tragedy, called "Heroic Love," contains these lines :

'But since 'tis Nature's law in love and wit,

That youth should reign, and withering age submit,

With less regret those laurels I resign,
Which, dying on my brows, revive on thine.

Thine be the laurel then: thy blooming age
Can best, if any can, support the stage c.'

Dryden renounced the drama in 1694, in order to devote himself to the translation of Virgil, a work which occupied him almost exclusively for the next three years. The translation was published by subscription in 1697, and it was a success both pecuniarily and in respect of fame. Writing to his sons a few months after the publication, he says, 'My Virgil succeeds in the world beyond its desert or my reputation,' and he goes on to say that the profits might have been more had his conscience allowed him to comply with the wish of his publisher Tonson, and dedicate the work to the King. The publisher had been so bent on gaining his point in this matter that he caused the engraving of Æneas to be altered into some likeness of William, in the hope that Dryden might relent at the last moment. But this wily stratagem failed, and Dryden's Virgil appeared with three separate dedications; of the Pastorals to Lord Clifford, the son of his early patron, the Lord Treasurer; of the Georgics to the Earl of Chesterfield; and of the Æneid, to his old and kind friend Mulgrave, now Marquis of Normanby. The Virgil was published by subscription. There were two sets of subscribers: one of five guineas each, and the other of two guineas. There were 102 of the first class, and 250 of the second. The profit to Dryden was twelve or thirteen hundred pounds. is extremely difficult to arrive at a definite notion of the exact arrangements between Dryden and Tonson as to profits, and Malone and other biographers have expended much ingenuity

It

• George Powel, one of the principal actors at Drury Lane Theatre, irritated by taunts at the Drury Lane company in Dryden's poem to Granville, twitted Dryden with his giving to Granville laurels which he had given away before, both to Congreve and Southerne. (Preface to The Fatal Discovery, or Love in Ruins,' 1698, quoted by Malone, vol. i. part i. p. 311.)

in discussion and conjecture on this subject. The poet's relations with his publisher during the progress of his translation and of the printing of Virgil were anything but pleasant. Several of Dryden's letters of this period which have been preserved abound in complaints and accusations against Tonson. At one time he has thoughts of leaving him, but upon trial he finds that 'all of his trade are sharpers, and he not more than others.' He accuses him of paying him in clipped and in bad money, and on one occasion he sends him by Tonson's messenger three insulting lines of poetry, with a message, 'Tell the dog that he who wrote these lines can write more.' Tonson must have been startled by this beginning of a portrait of him :—

'With leering looks, bull-faced, and freckled fair,
With two left legs, and Judas-coloured hair,

And frowsy pores that taint the ambient air?

Dryden is said to have begun his translation of Virgil at the house of his cousin John Driden of Chesterton, and there

d From a positive statement made by one of Dryden's biographers, the Rev. John Mitford, in Pickering's Aldine edition of Dryden's Poems, published in 1832, there should be in existence an agreement dated June 15, 1694, between Dryden and Tonson, attested by Congreve as one of the witnesses: but Mr. Mitford does not say where the agreement is to be seen, and he makes his statement without giving any authority. Mr. Mitford says that by this agreement Dryden was to receive for the Virgil 200l., to be paid at stated intervals, and a hundred copies of the work on large paper, Tonson to pay all expenses, and have the proceeds of the sale of the small paper copies. But this statement of the case is not consistent with many passages of Dryden's letters on the subject, of 1695, 1696, and 1697, which are printed by Malone and Scott. Dryden's letters, however, are not sufficient to enable us to arrive at certainty as to his arrangements with his publisher. The subject is discussed in Malone's Life, in the Rev. Mr. Hooper's, prefixed to the recent reprint of the Aldine edition, and in the Memoir of the Globe edition.

• These three lines are introduced into a poem called 'Faction Displayed,' ascribed to Mr. Shippen, published after Dryden's death, and are there quoted as Dryden's description of Tonson, who figures in this poem as Bibliopolo. Pope called Tonson, left-legged Jacob' in the Dunciad, and referred in a note to Dryden's' two left legs.' This story therefore is well authenticated.

to have written the first lines with a diamond on a windowpane. Some part of the work was done at Denham Court in Buckinghamshire, the seat of Sir William Bowyer, an old Cambridge friend; and the Seventh Book of the Æneid was translated at Burleigh, the house of the Earl of Exeter, in Northamptonshire. Dr. Knightly Chetwode supplied the Life of Virgil and the Preface to the Pastorals, and Addison wrote the arguments of the books and an Essay on the Georgics. Among those who recommended the work to the public by poetical addresses of compliment printed in the front were George Granville the dramatist, the future Lord Lansdowne, and Henry St. John, the future celebrated Lord Bolingbroke.

Amid general congratulation and eulogy, the publication of Virgil called forth some enemies and detractors. The most elaborate attack on the translation came from a Norfolk clergyman, the Rev. Luke Milbourne, neither whose criticism nor whose name would be remembered but for Dryden's having pilloried him in some of his subsequent writings f. The most famous of Dryden's detractors was a younger kinsman, the celebrated Jonathan Swift 8, who never forgetting, it is said, a discouraging opinion on some of his early poetry privately given him by Dryden, whose advice he had asked,

f Dryden on two occasions couples Milbourne with Sir Richard Blackmore, the doctor, who attacked his plays: in the Epistle to John Driden, where Blackmore is Maurus,

'Wouldst thou be soon dispatched and perish whole,

Trust Maurus with thy life and Milbourne with thy soul;' and in the preface to the 'Fables,' where he lashes Milbourne unsparingly, and after replying to Jeremy Collier with some respect, he ends with a general defiance: As for the rest of those who have written against me, they are such scoundrels that they deserve not the least notice to be taken of them. Blackmore and Milbourne are only distinguished from the crowd by being remembered to their infamy.'

g The relationship between Dryden and Swift has not been clearly ascertained; but Malone conjectured, with much probability, that Swift's grandmother, wife of Thomas Swift, vicar of Goodrich in Herefordshire, was daughter to a brother of Sir Erasmus Dryden, John Dryden's grandfather. The lady had a brother, Jonathan Dryden, a clergyman; whence Swift's Christian name.

has sneered at the work and its trio of dedications in his witty 'Battle of the Books.' The story is told that Swift, about the year 1692, sent Dryden several Pindaric odes for perusal, and to obtain his advice as to publication, and that Dryden returned them, saying, 'Cousin Swift, you will never be a poet.'

Swift was always ready to sneer at his cousin Dryden. The translation of Virgil is alluded to disrespectfully in the dedication of 'The Tale of a Tub.' Some lines of Swift's ridicule Will's and his cousin's prefaces:

Read all the prefaces of Dryden,
For these our critics much confide in;
Though merely writ at first for filling
To raise the volume's price a shilling.

While Dryden was engaged in translating Virgil, he published a translation of Du Fresnoy's Latin poem on the Art of Painting, to which he prefixed an essay, entitled 'Parallel of Poetry and Painting.' He wrote also in this period a Life of Lucian for a translation of Lucian's works, which was being prepared by Mr. Moyle, Sir Henry Shere, and other gentlemen, and which was not published till after Dryden's death. Dryden's great ode, Alexander's Feast, his second ode for St. Cecilia's day, was written very soon after the completion of the Virgil, and was sung at the feast of St. Cecilia, November 22, 1697. It is stated by Derrick, on somewhat doubtful authority, that Dryden received forty pounds for the use of this ode on that day. It is likely that he received a gratuity from the Society for which he composed it; but on the other hand, Dryden wrote in September to his sons at Rome, after he had undertaken to produce this ode for November,' This is troublesome, and no way beneficial; but I could not deny the stewards who came in a body to my house to desire that kindness, one of them being Mr. Bridgman, whose parents are your mother's friends.'