(subsequently Duchess of Cleveland) who procured it the favour of the court, met with so indifferent a reception from the public, that he had resolved to relinquish this species of composition: but his strong passion for it, happily, got the better of his resentment.

In 1654, he took his degree of B. A.,* and by his father's death inherited a small estate in his native county, liable however to some deductions for the support of the widow and the younger children.

That he had at this time no fixed principles, either in religion or politics, is abundantly evident from his Heroic Stanzas on Cromwell, written upon his funeral in 1658; † and his publishing, within two

* The subsequent degree of M. A. he did not take till 1668; and then, by a dispensation from the Archbishop of Canterbury, in consequence of a letter from Charles II.

† To this compliment, which (as compared with the verses of Sprat and Waller on the same occasion) excited high hopes, he was led by his connexion with Sir Gilbert Pickering, one of Cromwell's Privy Council and House of Lords, to whom he with no apparent violence to his opinions became Clerk or Secretary. In the history, indeed, of the changes of the human mind few facts will appear more extraordinary, than that Milton should have been descended from a catholic and loyalist family, and Dryden from a sectarian and republican one. The verses of the latter however upon the Protector, praising him chiefly for having put an end to civil fury,' easily slid into an encomium on legal monarchy. But they contain one couplet, which if interpreted (in it's most natural acceptation) of the execution of Charles I. and not of the general severity of Cromwell's military discipline, admits a less ready apology:

He sought to end our fighting, and essay'd

To staunch the blood by breathing of the vein.'

In his Astræa Redux,' a remarkable distich, we are told, justly exposed him to ridicule:

A horrid stillness first invades the ear,

And in that silence we the tempest fear."

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years afterward, his Astræa Redux, a Poem on the happy Restoration of Charles II.,' and, in the same year, A Panegyric to the King on his Coronation.' Other loyal verses, likewise, appeared in the Academical Collections of these times.*

In 1662, he addressed the Chancellor Hyde, upon New Year's Day; and published, also, a satire on the Dutch.

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In 1663, in consequence probably of his verses in praise of modern improvements in philosophy, prefixed to Dr. Charleton's treatise on Stonehenge, he was appointed a Fellow of the Royal Society; an honour solicited, or possessed, by few poets except Denham and himself. His next piece, published in 1667, was, his Annus Mirabilis, or The Year of Wonders, 1666;' an historical poem, celebrating the Duke of York's victory over the States General. It is written in quatrains, or heroic standards of four lines; a measure which he borrowed from Davenant's Gondibert, and which in his prefatory Letter to Sir Robert Howard he says, "I have ever judged more noble, and of greater dignity than any other verse in use amongst us." In the following year he succeeded Sir William Davenant as Poet Laureat,† and

* From his signature in the Epithalamia Cantabrigiensia it appears, that (contrary to Johnson's assertion) he had obtained a fellowship,

This office, though it in some measure enlisted the occupier into the service of royalty, did not then impose the necessity of composing annually two copies of verses. An afflictive dispensation has, recently, caused an intermission of these contributions; and like the Luctus et Gratulationes of Academical Bodies, which used to accompany every royal death, birth, marriage, &c. they might perhaps, with no disadvantage either to poetry or to royalty, be wholly laid aside. Dryden's stipends, it is said, were not in that needy reign paid with great regularity.

was also made Historiographer to his Majesty with a stipend for the two offices of 2001. per ann., upon which he published his Essay on Dramatic Poesy,'* addressed to Charles Earl of Dorset and Middlesex.

The writing of this essay,' he tells his patron, served as an amusement to him in the country, when he was driven from town by the violence of the plague, which then raged in London; and he diverted himself with thinking on the theatres, as lovers do by ruminating on their absent mistresses.' He there justifies the method of composing plays in verse, but confesses that he had quitted the practice, because he found it troublesome and slow.

As to tragedy, he seldom (the critics have remarked) touches the passions, but deals rather in pompous language and poetical descriptions; causing his characters too frequently to speak better than they ought to do, when their sphere in the drama is considered. "It is peculiar to him," says Addison, "to make his personages as wise, witty, elegant, and polite as himself." That he could not deeply affect the passions, is certain; for we find no play of his, in which we are much disposed to weep. We are so much enchanted indeed with beautiful digressions and elevated flights of fancy, that we forget the business of the piece, and suffer the characters to sleep. Gildon in his Laws of Poetry' observes, that, when it was recommended to Dryden to turn his thoughts to a translation of Euripides, rather than of Homer,† he

*The drift of this discourse was, to vindicate the honour of the English writers from the censure of those, who unjustly preferred to them the French.

+ Toward the conclusion of his life, he actually translated the first book of the Iliad.

confessed he had no relish for that poet, who was a great master of tragic simplicity.' As a farther confirmation, likewise, that his taste for tragedy was not of the genuine sort, the same writer adds that ⚫he constantly expressed great contempt for Otway, who is universally allowed to have eminently succeeded in affecting the tender passions.

And that he was not born to write comedy, he seems himself to have been abundantly sensible: "I want (he observes) that gayety of humour, which is required in it: my conversation is slow and dull, my humour saturnine and reserved. In short, I am none of those who endeavour to break jests in company, and make repartees; so that those who decry my comedies do me no injury, except it be in point of profit: reputation in them is the last thing, to which I shall pretend." This ingenuous confession of inability, one would imagine, might have been sufficient to silence the clamor of the critics; but, however true it be that he did not appear to advantage in comedy, it may yet be contended that in tragedy, with all his faults, he is still the most illustrious of his time. The end of tragedy is, to instruct the mind, as well as to move the passions. Now where there are no refined sentiments, the mind indeed may be affected, but not improved; and, however powerfully the passion of grief sways the heart, a man may feel distress in the acutest manner, and not be much the wiser for it.

Dryden too, perhaps, would have written better in both species of the drama, had not the necessity. of his circumstances obliged him to comply with the popular taste.* This he himself insinuates, in his

* Although his first plays were so little successful, he went

Dedication of the Spanish Friar. "I remember some verses of my own 'Maximin and Almanzor,' which ery

on, and in the space of twenty five years produced twenty seven dramas, beside his other numerous poetical writings. Of the stage, says Dr. Johnson, when he had once invaded it, he kept possession; not indeed without the competition of rivals, who sometimes prevailed, or the censure of critics, which was often poignant and often just; but with such a degree of reputation, as made him at least secure of being heard, whatever might be the final determination of the public. These plays were collected and published, in six volumes duodecimo, in 1725.

He appears, indeed, about 1667 to have become professionally a writer for the stage; having contracted with the patentees of the King's Theatre to furnish them annually with three plays (though he never, even during the greatest vigour of his exertions, fully completed two) on condition of receiving the profit of one share and a quarter out of the twelve and three quarters, into which the theatrical stock was at that time divided ; i. e. T or nearly one tenth. This, which is said to have produced him about 400l. per ann., constituted probably the principal part of his income. Whether he derived any farther advantages from the contingent recompences of dedications, or the sale of copyrights, is unknown. But, if his claims in the former respect were to be measured by the abject meanness of his flattery, he ought to have profited largely :

❝Indignant view

Yet pity Dryden-Hark! whene'er he sings,
How adulation drops her courtly dew

On titled rhymers and inglorious kings.'

(Mason.)

He was, indeed, a striking example of genius able to reduce it's labours to a mechanical exactness at the call of party, poverty, or panegyric. Yet his real sentiments of men and things appear to have been free, and it would be easy to deduce from his works many strong expressions of scorn and indignation relative to every species of tyranny exercised over mankind; strangely contrasted, it must at the same time be owned, by the doctrines of passive submission, civil and religious, which it was his task to support.