it took place as a choice of evils, there is not an iota of proof. Dryden's biographers have agreed to endow his lady with a very unhappy disposition; and surely the bitter invectives against matrimony, which so frequently occur in the writings of our author, could never have come from a man, who enjoyed much domestic felicity. The temper of Lady Elizabeth is represented as so intolerable, that her husband always fled into the country, when she came to town; and she was seldom visited, either by her own friends, or by those of Dryden. For our own parts, we cannot abandon her to the mercy of those, who, in the zeal of editorship or biography, are disposed to think, that others must always have been in the fault, when Dryden's peace was disturbed. It is not certainly a circumstance against her original affection, that she humbled the pride of her birth to marry a man, who was writing for his daily bread. She doubtless felt above Dryden's relations; and, after the marriage, her own relations probably felt above her. The visits of the one she repelled: those of the others, she could not attract: Dryden himself was so completely devoted to his pen, that he could give her little of his own time; and thus the unhappy lady saw herself cut off, at once, from the society of all the world,-deserted by the friends, whom she esteemed, and neglected by the man, whom she adored. Was she to bear all this with silent equinimity? Can we wonder, that she wished herself a book, that she might enjoy more of her husband's society? Or is it an additional proof of her want of affection, that the conduct of Lord Jeffries, at Dryden's funeral, rendered her inconsolable; that her brain was turned, soon after his death; and that she died a maniac, in the summer of 1714?

The offspring of this ill-starred marriage were Charles, John, and Erasmus Henry Dryden. Charles was born in 1666; entered Westminster School, in

1683; and went to Cambridge, three years afterwards. He became, almost of course, an author; but he followed his father with very unequal steps. In 1692, he was appointed Chamberlain of the Household to Pope Innocent XII.; returned to England, in 1698; was his father's administrator, in 1700; and, on the 20th of August, 1704, was drowned in an attempt to swim across the Thames.

John Dryden was born in 1667, or 1668; entered Westminster School, in 1682; and was elected to Oxford, in 1685. He followed Charles to Rome; and officiated as deputy chamberlain. A comedy of his was acted in Lincoln's-Inn-Fields, in 1696. He travelled in Sicily and Malta, in 1700-1; and died at Rome, soon after his return.

Erasmus Henry Dryden was born in 1669. He, also, went to Rome; and became a captain in the Pope's Guards. On the death of his brother John, he returned to England; and, in 1708, succeeded to the title, without the estate, of his grandfather, Sir Erasmus Dryden. The estate had been devised, by Sir Robert Dryden, to Edward Dryden, eldest son of Erasmus, the younger brother of the poet; with whom Sir Erasmus Henry resided, until his death, in 1710.

The necessitous circumstances of Dryden, while they formed an excuse for his faults, were, by no means, the least cause of his excellencies. He had a mind peculiarly fitted for reasoning and analysis; and, when his powers of argument were sparingly employed, they gave a character of unusual vigour to all his composition. They seemed to add the force of logic to the fascination of poetry. Yet logic and poetry are things radically discrepant; and, if suffered to act too long upon each other, the poetry must either evaporate in conceits, or sink into frigidity. It is what chemists would call a sublimation, or a freezing-mixture;-and the few experiments, which Dryden had leisure to make, are

sufficient to render us thankful, that he found no time to make more. Most of his early poems are merely the fumes of conceit; and the Annus Mirabilis is little better than a cold, smooth level of rhetorical metaphors. It was well, that necessity compelled him to bestow less labour upon his subsequent productions; for, though comparative haste has betrayed him into occasional flats, that haste was the only thing which left him at liberty to soar. Alexander's Feast,-which alone would have rendered the poet immortal,—was finished at a single sitting. His pen was seldom out of his hand. One subject had scarcely been dropt, when another was taken up; and Dryden's imagination seems to have been equally fertile and ready upon them all. Ideas flowed in from every quarter; and he was obliged to put down, almost indiscriminately, whatever occurred. He could not stop to choose:-there was no time to be brief. Some things could have been expunged; some we could wish corrected; and others might have been abridged: Yet we could hardly have trusted either of these operations to the hands of the author himself.

It is certain, that he never did retouch a poem after it was once published; and, Dr. Johnson has thought it worth while to remark, that, though the hastiness of his productions might be the effect of necessity, his subsequent neglect could hardly have any other cause than impatience of study.' This would have been a very good antithesis, if written of an author, who was so independent of circumstances, that he might lay down, and resume, his pen at pleasure: But, the biographer of Dryden should have been the last man to cast such a reflection upon him; who had scarcely finished one production, before he was driven to another; and who, to comply with his engagements, was obliged to write, almost incessantly, night and day. Did such a piteous expostulation as this, ever come from a

man, who was 'impatient of study? If it please God (he writes to Tonson, while labouring to procure a supply of money for his son Charles, who was then sick at Rome)-If it please God that I must die of over-study, I cannot spend my life better than in preserving his.' Had Dr. Johnson forgotten the anecdote, which he related upon the authority of Lord Bolingbroke?—that one day, when the latter visited Dryden, they heard, as they were conversing, another person entering the house. 'This,' said Dryden, 'is Tonson. You will take care not to depart before he goes away: for I have not completed the sheet which I promised him; and, if you leave me unprotected, I must suffer all the rudeness to which his resentment can prompt his tongue." It is upon the authority of the same Lord Bolingbroke, that Mr. Scott has related another anecdote, which shows Dryden's impatience of study. He found him, one morning, in great agitation; and, on enquiring the cause, I have been up all night,' replied the old bard: 'my musical friends made me promise to write them an Ode for the Feast of St. Cecilia; and here it is, finished at one sitting.'t Indeed, Dryden's enemies, when they had exhausted every other topic of abuse, turned even his patient industry into a reproach. A camel (says Melbourn) will take upon him no more burden, than is sufficient for his strength; but there is another

The reader will reco`lect that this amiable personage is immor talized in two lines of the Dunciad; in one of which he is called the 'genial Jacob;' and, in the other, the left legged Jacob.' On one occasion, Dryden silenced his importunity, and made him easy, for a time, by sending him the following portrait of himself:

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

And frowzy pores, that taint the ambient air.

'Tell the dog,' said the poet to the messenger, that he who wrote these can write more.' Scott, vol. i. p. 390.

† Scott, vol. i. p. 408.

beast that crouches under all.' Was it well, to pro nounce an oracle against the indolence of such a man?

The greater part of this laborious life was spent in writing tragedies; in defending them, when written; of in showing others how to write them. Dryden's early taste was fashioned upon Spanish model; and his first plays were little more than romances of knight errantry reduced to the form of dramatic dialogue. He then abused Otway; and scarcely knew, that there was such a writer as Shakspeare. He was unacquainted with the passions, in their simple state. They must 'all,' to use his own language, 'be set in a ferment. Nothing must be natural, because it would be common-place; and whatever was simple, was thought silly. Any body could turn machinery by the natural current of things; but it required a person of rare ingenuity to set the wheels in motion by steam. The tragedian, who could write the best fustian, was the most successful poet; and the hero, who made the loudest noise, was considered as the best fellow. That the language might be more sonorous and declamatory, it was thrown into rhyme; and the writer's object was effectually gained, when he had split the ears of the groundlings. Such was the character of Dryden's early tragic poetry; nor was it till late in life, that he began to observe that real feeling is never ostentatious; and that the emotions of the heart are not to be awakened by noise.

By what topics of persuasion, he became a convert to nature, it would be vain to inquire. Some think that the Rehearsal first unsettled his faith in declamation and romance; but the Rehearsal was aimed rather at the foibles of his character, than the faults of his poetry. Perhaps the better reason was, that he saw himself no longer so pre-eminently distinguished above his cotemporaries in the art and mystery of fabricating dramatic romances in rhyme.