ing what relates principally to the author, his friends and enemies; the fituations of times, and occafions of writing; neither does he pretend to burthen the reader's attention with heaps of quotations from learned authors. Some remarkable imitations he has indeed pointed out ; and for the reft, he leaves the reader to employ his own application; which may perhaps be thought on both fides moft eligible.

The editor was a good deal difappointed at not being able, with all his industry, to obtain any effential materials relating to our author's life or his works, though he applied to the prefent Sir John Dryden, through the means of a friend, who has a confiderable fortune in his neighbourhood. He alfo addressed himself on this head in perfon to a defcendant of our poet's, near Berkley-fquare; but cannot fay he met with any information that gave him fatisfaction.

He has with his utmost care been able only to recover two of Dryden's manuscript letters, one to Wilmot, Earl of Rochefter; the other to Mrs. Thomas, otherwife known by the name of Fair Corinna; and for these there did not appear any proper place in these four volumes. It has been faid that many of his letters are in the hands of one of the Saville family; if the report be true, it is to be hoped that the poffeffor will be public-fpirited enough to communicate fuch a treafure to the world, as, from the fpecimens we have by us, we are perfuaded

a collection of his letters would be the most agreeable that ever came from the press; and the bequeathing them to pofterity would make the memory of the donor immortal.

In the arranging of the larger of our author's original pieces, we have paid a strict regard to the times in which they were written; beginning first with the earlieft. The dedication of the Annus Mirabilis to the city of London, is added from the first edition of that poem in in 4to; and we have given the entire fecond part of Abfalom and Achitophel, though a good deal of it was written by Tate, because the whole narration is rendered thereby more perfect and uniform. We have alfo reprinted Soam's tranflation of the Art of Poetry, as Dryden had a very confiderable hand in it, and permitted his name to be inferted in the title-page in his own lifetime.

We have been very exact in arranging the epiftles according to chronological order, which was never done before, and have retained that to Julian, because we find it in the fixth volume of the Mifcellanies; and therefore, though we have not the highest opinion of its value, we cannot fuppofe it to be an impofition. We have paid the fame regard to the elegies and epitaphs, two of which are not in the edition of 1742; neither are the firft fong in this collection, entituled the Fair Stranger,nor the Secular Mafque, nor yet the prologue to the Mistakes; the epilogue to the Husband his own Cuckold, and the prologue and epilogue to the Pilgrim. The

prologues and epilogues are, as nearly as we could prove, here printed in their order of time; and for the dates of many of them we are particularly obliged to Mr. Garrick, who with great civility gave us the use of his fine collection of old 4to plays.

The third volume of this edition may now, more properly than ever, be called Dryden's Fables, as it contains fuch of the Tales of Chaucer as he has modernized; his tranflations from Boccace, and fuch of the Metamorphofes as he translated: all difpofed in their respective places. We were a good deal mortified to find ourfelves obliged to run part of the latter into our fourth volume, otherwise our third would have welled beyond all fize; and this we had the more reafon to lament, as it broke in upon the uniformity which we flattered ourselves we should have been able in this edition to preferve. At the fame time, for reasons of a fimilar nature, we were under a neceffity of adding the tranflations from Theocritus, Lucretius, and Horace, to the end of the second volume.

In our fourth volume we have added the 19th elegy of the fecond book of Ovid's Amours; and Dryden's fine dedication of Juvenal, together with fuch of the fatires as he tranflated, and the whole of his Perfius, none of them in the edition of 1742.

Thus we think we have collected all his loose pieces; and if this edition fhould meet that encouragement from the public, which the merits

of fuch an author deferve, and which by our labour we have endeavoured to awaken, we shall reprint his Virgil and his Plays in the fame fize, which will make up a complete and uniform fet of his works.

No body, we hope, will blame us for leaving out in this edition most of the complimentary copies of verfes prefixed to our author's works: they were few of them worth preserving; but it was the custom of the times for every man who was fuppofed capable of writing, to furnish his friend with such a prefent, on his printing any thing; and the publication of them, indifcriminately, was obferved, because they were moftly folicited.

1

THE

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LIFE

O F

JOHN DRYDEN, Efq;

D

RYDEN's univerfal genius, his firmly established reputation, and the glory his memory must always reflect upon the nation that gave him birth, make us ardently wish for a more accurate life of him than any which has hitherto appeared: nor will, we hope, the learned writers of the Biographica Britannica, nor thofe of the General Dictionary, be offended with us for thinking, that, even after their labours, fomething farther may be done. That we are furnished with fome new materials, the judicious reader will easily perceive: where these are wanting, we have endeavoured to be more clear, by being lefs diffufive, and by avoiding as much as poffible that variety of notes, into which they seem by their plan to have been neceffarily led.

The Drydens are a reputable and wealthy family, fettled at Canons-Afhby in Northamptonshire; the chief of which, Erafmus, was by letters patent of James I. dated in November 1619, advanced to the dignity of a Baronet. He intermarried with the daughter of William Wilkes, Efq; of Hodnel, in Warwickshire; and Erafmus Dryden, of Tichmarsh, in the county of Northampton, Efq; the third fon of this marriage, had for his eldest born and heir, by Mary the daughter of John Pickering, D. D. rector of Aldwincle, John, whofe life we are now about to write.