ADDEND A.

The following Notes were received too late to be inferted in their proper places.

Vol. I. p. 1. After Mr. Malone's note, add, On examining the LACRYME MUSARUM, it should feem that Mr. Collins was led into an error concerning the number of elegies on the death of Lord Haftings, by glancing his eye on the TABLE of Contents, in which the laft elegy has a reference to p. 98; which he haftily fuppofed was the number of elegies in the book.

—p. 246 l. 595. His hand a vare of juftice did uphold] Doubts have been entertained concerning the word VARE in this line, which fome perfons have fuppofed an error of the prefs; and Derrick fubftituted VASE for it. But the text is perfectly correct, and VARE is the true reading; the meaning of which uncommon word is afcertained by the following paffage in Howell's LETTERS, p. 161, edit. 1728, which has been communi. cated by James Bofwell, of the Inner Temple, Efq.

"He [the Spaniard] is wonderfully obedient to government; for the proudest Don of Spain, when he is prancing upon his ginet in the street, if an alguazil (a ferjeant) fhew him his VARE, that is, a little white flaffe he carrieth as a badge of his office, my Don will presently off his horfe, and yield himself his prifoner."

VARA in Spanish fignifies a wand. In a note on one of Dryden's Profe Pieces, Mr. Malone has obferved, that he was a great reader of Spanish authors.

Vol. I. p. 400. Dr. Warton's authority for calling Dryden's young friend by the name of Hampden is probably derived from Derrick's affertion; for which there appears no authority; the initials of this young friend being given as H. D.

Vol. III. p. 41. The name of its author being wholly loft,] Not fo: for, as Mr. Malone has obferved, Boccace alluded to the Thefeida, which was written by himself. See Malone's Life,

&c. of Dryden, vol. iii. p. 641.

THE

LIFE OF DRYDEN,

BY

DR. JOHNSON.

OF F the great poet whofe life I am about to delineate, the curiofity which his reputation must excite will require a difplay more ample than can now be given. His contemporaries, however they reverenced his genius, left his life unwritten; and nothing therefore can be known beyond what casual mention and uncertain tradition have supplied.

JOHN DRYDEN was born Auguft 9, 1631*, at Aldwinkle near Oundle, the son of Erasmus Dryden of Titchmersh; who was the third fon of Sir Erafmus Dryden, baronet, of Canons Ashby. All these places are in Northamptonshire; but the original stock of the family was in the county of Huntingdon +.

He is reported by his last biographer, Derrick, to have inherited from his father an eftate of two hundred a year, and to have been bred, as was faid, an Anabaptift. For either

• Mr. Malone has lately proved that there is no fatisfactory evidence for this date. The infcription on Dryden's monument fays only natus 1632. See Malone's Life of Dryden, prefixed to his " Critical and Miscellaneous Profe Works." p. 5. note. C.

+ Of Cumberland. Ibid. p. 10. C.

of these particulars no authority is given. Such a fortune ought to have fecured him from that poverty which feems always to have oppreffed him; or, if he had wasted it, to have made him afhamed of publishing his neceffities. But though he had many enemies, who undoubtedly examined his life with a fcrutiny fufficiently malicious, I do not remember that he is ever charged with waste of his patrimony. He was indeed fometimes reproached for his firft religion. I am therefore inclined to believe that Derrick's intelligence was partly true, and partly erroneous *.

From Westminster School, where he was inftructed as one of the King's Scholars by Dr. Bufby, whom he long after continued to reverence, he was in 1650 elected to one of the Westminster scholarships at Cambridge +.

Of his fchool performances has appeared only a poem on the death of Lord Haftings, compofed with great ambition of such conceits as, notwithstanding the reformation begun by Waller and Denham, the example of Cowley ftill kept in reputation. Lord Haftings died of the fmall pox; and his poet has made of the puftules first rosebuds, and then gems ; at laft he exalts them into ftars; and fays,

No comet need foretel his change drew on,
Whofe corpfe might seem a conftellation.

At the univerfity he does not appear to have been eager of poetical diftinction, or to have lavished his early wit either on fictitious subjects or publick occafions. He probably confidered, that he, who proposed to be an author, ought first to be a student. He obtained, whatever was the reason, no fellowship in the College. Why he was excluded cannot now

Mr. Derrick's Life of Dryden was prefixed to a very beautiful and cor rect edition of Dryden's Mifcellanies, published by the Tonfons in 1760, 4 vols. 8vo. Derrick's part, however, was poorly executed, and the edition never became popular. C.

+ He went off to Trinity College, and was admitted to a Bachelor's De gree in Jan. 1653-4, and in 1657 was made M. A. C.

be known, and it is vain to guess;

had he thought himself injured, he knew how to complain. In the life of Plutarch he mentions his education in the College with gratitude; but, in a prologue at Oxford, he has these lines:

Oxford to him a dearer name shall be

Than his own mother-univerfity;

Thebes did his rude, unknowing youth engage;
He chooses Athens in his riper age.

It was not till the death of Cromwell, in 1658, that he became a public candidate for fame, by publishing Heroic Stanzas on the late Lord Protector; which, compared with the verses of Sprat and Waller on the fame occafion, were fufficient to raise great expectations of the rifing poet.

When the King was reftored, Dryden, like the other pa negyrifts of ufurpation, changed his opinion, or his profeflion, and published ASTREA REDUX; a poem on the happy Refloration and Return of his most facred Majesty King Charles the Second.

The reproach of inconftancy was, on this occafion, shared with fuch numbers, that it produced neither hatred nor difgrace! if he changed, he changed with the nation. It was, however, not totally forgotten when his reputation raised him enemies.

The fame year he praised the new King in a second poem on his restoration. In the ASTREA was the line,

An horrid ftillness first invades the ear,

And in that filence we a tempest fear

for which he was perfecuted with perpetual ridicule, perhaps with more than was deferved. Silence is indeed mere privation; and, fo confidered, cannot invade; but privation likewife certainly is darkness, and probably cold; yet poetry has never been refused the right of afcribing effects or agency to them as to pofitive powers. No man fcruples to fay that darkness hinders him from his work; or that cold has killed the plants. Death is also privation; yet who has made any