though of anything but superior excellence, is inferior to few of its companions, and better than many of them, Gray, who was an ardent admirer of Dryden, is reported by Mason to have been in the habit of saying that this first poem did not give the slightest promise of future excellence, and seemed to show want of ear for versification. The poem is undoubtedly stiff, laboured, and pedantic. It must be judged, however, as the production of a youth of eighteen, saturated with Latin and Greek, and set on imitating the metaphysical conceits of Donne and Cowley, who were then in fashion and had impressed his young intellect.

Not very much more is known of Dryden at Cambridge than of his life at Westminster. A short poem, his second known piece, being a few complimentary lines addressed to a young friend, John Hoddesdon, and printed at the beginning of a little volume of religious poetry by Hoddesdon, called "Sion and Parnassus,” was published, and probably also written, soon after he commenced residence at Cambridge. Hoddesdon's little volume was published in 1650, and the lines of praise are signed "John Dryden, of Trinity C." The style of these lines is perhaps a little less constrained than that of the poem on Lord Hastings: but classical allusions predominate.

There is a record in the archives of Trinity College of Dryden's being in disgrace in the second year of his undergraduateship. It is written in the College Conclusion Book, July 19, 1652, that "his crime was his disobedience to the Vice-Master, and his contumacy in taking of his punishment inflicted by him." The occasion and nature of the disobedience are not explained. The punishment assigned by the College was "that Dryden be put out of commons for a fortnight at least, and that he go not out of the College during the time aforesaid, excepting to sermons, without express leave from the Master or Vice-Master, and that at the end of the fortnight he read a confession of his crime in the Hall at dinner-time at the three Fellows' tables." This is really the whole of what is He took the known of his College life beyond dates of formal academic acts. degree of Bachelor of Arts in January 1654. He did not become a Fellow of Trinity College, and he did not take the degree of Master of Arts at Cambridge; he is said, however, to have continued to reside at Cambridge till about the middle of 1657, when he was nearly ripe for a Master's degree.

His father died in June 1654. The property to which he succeeded was small, but probably sufficient to keep a single man in decency. He acquired under his father's will two-thirds of the income of a small estate at Blakesley, near Canons Ashby and Tichmarsh, the other third being left to his mother for her life. On her death, in 1676, the whole income of the estate became his. Malone, who made very minute inquiries and calculations, represents the whole income of the little Blakesley property as sixty pounds a year. Dryden's portion of forty pounds Malone considers equivalent to a hundred and twenty at the end of the eighteenth century, when he wrote. Dryden is said to have returned to Cambridge after

his father's death, and to have continued to reside there for nearly three years. His heart was touched during this time with love for a cousin, Honor, daughter of Sir John Dryden, and sister of the cousin John to whom late in life he addressed an Epistle, which is one of his best smaller poems. A letter written by Dryden to this lady in 1655 is preserved, which passionately mingles poetry with prose. It has been always matter of surprise that Dryden neither obtained a fellowship in the College of which he was a scholar, nor took the degree of Master of Arts. Malone, who is the authority for the statement that he continued to reside at Cambridge after his father's death till 1657, gives no sufficient proof, it any at all; and it would be easier to explain both circumstances, if he quitted Cambridge on the death of his father. As to his not taking the degree of Master of Arts, this would probably be explained, as he was not a Fellow, by the expense, which would have been greater for Dryden, in consequence of his inheritance from his father. The ancient statutes of the University required any one possessed of any estate, annuity, or certain income for life amounting to £26 13s. 4d. to pay 8 6s. 4d. in addition to the ordinary fees for any degree; and these for the M. A. degree for one not a Fellow of a College would be as much. It may be supposed that Dryden with his income of forty pounds might be unable, or might not care, to incur the expense of this degree.

Shadwell, in his scurrilous reply to Dryden's "Medal," taunts Dryden with having left Cambridge in shame after receiving chastisement from some young nobleman whom he had slandered:

"At Cambridge first your scurrilous vein began,
Where saucily you traduced a nobleman,

Who for that crime rebuked you on the head,
And you had been expelled, had you not fled."

But there is not the slightest confirmation anywhere else of this story, and had there been any such cause for Dryden's leaving Cambridge, more would most certainly have been known of it. It is unlikely on the other hand that so specific an imputation should be wholly baseless ; and the story may be an incorrect and exaggerated version of the cause of Dryden's college-trouble in 1652. There is no sign in his many writings, or in what is known of the events of his life, of fondness for Cambridge, or renewed intercourse with his old College and University. One solitary reference is in his "Life of Plutarch," published in 1683, where he mentions having read that author in the Library of Trinity College, "to which foundation,” he then adds, “I gratefully acknowledge a great part of my education." No inference on the other hand can be drawn as to altered feeling from the oftenquoted lines of one of his Prologues spoken at Oxford:

"Oxford to him a dearer name shall be

Than his own mother-university.

Thebes did his green unknowing youth engage;

He chooses Athens in his riper age."

For it was characteristic of Dryden to flatter when he desired to please, and run riot in praise if it suited his purpose of the moment; and a letter of his to John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, is preserved, in which he avows the insincerity of other similar flattering addresses to an Oxford audience. Sending Rochester copies or a Prologue and Epilogue written for Oxford in 1673, he says, "I hear they have succeeded, and by the event your lordship will judge how easy 'tis to pass anything upon an University, and what gross flattery the learned will endure."

Dryden appears to have taken up his residence in London about the middle of the year 1657. Oliver Cromwell was then in the height of power, strongly established as Protector, having lately refused for the second time the title of King. The second Protectoral constitution had been newly made, by which a second House was created, and Cromwell was charged with the nomination of its members for life. All Dryden's relations were Cromwellites, and his cousin Sir Gilbert Pickering was prominent and influential. He was one of the Peers nominated by Cromwell in the following year, 1658. Shadwell says, in "The Medal of John Bayes," that Dryden was clerk to Sir Gilbert when he began London life. It is very probable that he lived for a time with Sir Gilbert, or improved his scanty income by working under him for some remuneration. On the death of Cromwell, September 3, 1658, Dryden wrote his first poem of mark, "Heroic Stanzas " in memory and praise of the Protector. He had not published, and does not appear to have written any poetry, since his two school and college efforts of 1650. The superiority of his poem on Cromwell is very considerable. He was now in his twenty-eighth year. Dryden did not blossom young as a poet, and even now the flower was developed slowly.

"Great Dryden did not early great appear,
Faintly distinguished in his thirtieth year."

Dryden's poem in praise of Cromwell was published in conjunction with two other poetical eulogies by Waller, an elder poet of established fame, and by "Mr. Sprat of Oxford," who was his junior, and who came to be Dean of Westminster and Bishop of Rochester. When these poems were published, a few months after Cromwell's death, there was every appearance that his son Richard was firmly seated as his successor, and the hopes of a Stuart restoration were at the lowest. But a sudden unexpected change came over the nation in less than eighteen months Charles the Second was restored; and Dryden and Waller then sung the praises of Charles and the wickedness of all who had rebelled against his father and murdered him, and kept the son out of his rights.

Dryden's life of forty years from the Restoration, when he broke away from all his early associations into enthusiastic loyalty, may be conveniently divided into three portions. The first will extend to the publication of "Absalom and Achito

* Verses addressed to Charles Montague, Earl of Halifax, by Laurence Eusden, a poet-laureate, quoted by Malone in his Life, p. 50.

phel" near the close of 1681, when he suddenly emerged from his chief occupation of play-writing to appear in political controversy, and electrified the public with his satire of matchless vigour in verse of consummate skill. The second portion

will extend to the Revolution of 1688, when he ceased to hold the offices of PoetLaureate and Historiographer Royal, which he had received from Charles, and losing all his official income he was forced to return to play-writing for subsistence. The third and last portion is from 1688 till death ended his existence of toil and strife and fame on May 1, 1700. Though the industry of subsequent biographers has made some considerable addition to the stock of materials from which Johnson wrote his life of Dryden, the deficiency of information as to the life of one famous so long before his death is still remarkable, and the names and dates and order of his publications make a large portion of his biography.

1660-1681.

Three poems within two years after the Restoration were the fruit of Dryden's new-born zeal for the restored King and Church. These are "Astræa Redux," written immediately after the Restoration in its praise, and published in 1660; a "Panegyric" addressed to the King on his coronation, which took place April 22, 1661; and a complimentary poem addressed to Clarendon, the Lord Chancellor, on New Year's Day, 1662. There is no possibility of reconciling, satisfactorily for Dryden's character, the political tone of these poems and his new politics with his praises of Cromwell and of all that had led up to Cromwell's power, written but eighteen months before the Restoration. The enemies of Dryden may have put a forced and unfair interpretation on the following lines, in representing them as justifying the execution of Charles the First, and they may contain no more than a figurative illustration of Cromwell's vigour in prosecuting the war to the end as contrasted with the dilatory and irresolute proceedings of Essex :

"War, our consumption, was their gainful trade;
We inward bled, whilst they prolonged our pain;
He fought to end our fighting, and assayed
To stanch the blood by breathing of the vein."

But the praise of Cromwell's proceedings in the war and of the rebellion itself is unequivocal, and the poem ends with a declaration that Cromwell's name would stand as a great example, to show

"How strangely high endeavours may be blessed

Where piety and valour jointly go."

Immediately after the Restoration, and within eighteen months, the same poet,

a man nearly thirty years of age, wrote, in "Astræa Redux," of Charles's exile during the Protectorate:

"For his long absence church and state did groan;
Madness the pulpit, faction seized the throne:
Experienced age in deep despair was lost,

To see the rebel thrive, the loyal crost."

And again addressing the restored King, he said :

"The discontented now are only they

Whose crimes before did your just cause betray."

A sudden change like this from one extreme to another, attendant on triumph of the newly-espoused cause over that which the poet abandons, cannot be complacently regarded. Dryden projected and sketched at this time a play on the subject of the Duke of Guise and the French League; he did not now persevere with it, but part of his present work was turned to use in the play which was published, twenty years later, the joint work of himself and Lee, on the same subject; and the language of Dryden's loyal poems now published shows that he did not exaggerate the ardour of his new loyalty at its birth when, in 1683, in his "Vindication of the Duke of Guise," he said that he had undertaken the subject immediately after the Restoration "as the fairest way which the Act of Indemnity had then left us of setting forth the rise of the late Rebellion, and by exploding the villanies of it upon the stage to precaution posterity against like errors."

His new politics and the common cultivation of poetry probably combined to connect Dryden at this time in friendship with Sir Robert Howard, a younger son of the Earl of Berkshire, who was of a Royalist family, and had been constant to the royal cause. A complimentary poem addressed by Dryden to Sir Robert was prefixed to a volume of poems published by the latter soon after the Restoration. This shows that Dryden's praise was already regarded as having value; his "Astræa Redux” had probably been already published. Howard's volume began with a Panegyric for the King, and ended with another for Monk. One of Shadwell's malicious taunts against Dryden in his reply to "The Medal" is that he lived at this period indelicately on Sir Robert Howard's bounty; and he also taunts Dryden with being at this time a drudge for Herringman, who was his and Sir Robert Howard's publisher. Dryden was above actual want, but he doubtless increased by writing his small inherited income. Through life he wrote to ncrease his means, and to do this is no disgrace. According to the custom of the time, he might have received from Howard a present of money in return for his complimentary poem; and the King and Clarendon doubtless rewarded his praises. Servility to those with whom he lived was no part of Dryden's character; independence and pride were strangely mixed with his tendency to flattery in writing, and often spoilt his eager pursuit of his own interest. He regarded himself as