is particularly charged with inciting Creech to tranflate Horace, that he might lose the reputation which Lucretius had given him.

Of this charge we immediately dif cover that it is merely conjectural; the purpose was fuch as no man would confefs; and a crime that admits no proof, why fhould we believe?

He has been defcribed as magifterially prefiding over the younger writers, and affuming the diftribution of poeti cal fame; but he who excels has a right to teach, and he whofe judgement is inconteftable may, without ufurpation, examine and decide.

Congreve reprefents him as ready to advise and instruct; but there is reason

to believe that his communication was

He

rather useful than entertaining. declares of himself that he was faturnine, and not one of those whose spritely fayings diverted company; and one of his cenfurers makes him say,

Nor wine nor love could ever fee me

gay;

To writing bred, I knew not what to fay.

There are men whofe powers operate only at leifure and in retirement, and whose intellectual vigour deferts them in converfation; whom merriment confufes, and objection difconcerts; whofe bafhfulness restrains their exertion, and fuffers them not to speak till the time of speaking is paft; or whofe attention

to their own character makes them un

willing to utter at hazard what has not been confidered, and cannot be re

called.

Of Dryden's fluggishness in converfation it is vain to fearch or to guess the cause. He certainly wanted neither fentiments nor language; his intellectual treasures were great, though they were locked up from his own ufe. His thoughts, when he wrote, flowed in upon bim so fast, that his only care was which to chuse, and which to reject. Such rapidity of compofition naturally promises a flow of talk, yet we must be content to believe what an enemy fays of him, when he likewife fays it of himself. But whatever was his character as a

com

companion, it appears that he lived in familiarity with the highest perfons of his time. It is related by Carte of the duke of Ormond, that he used often to pafs a night with Dryden, and thofe with whom Dryden conforted: who they were, Carte has not told; but cer tainly the convivial table at which Ormond fat was not furrounded with a plebeian fociety. He was indeed reproached with boafting of his familiarity with the great; and Horace will fupport him in the opinion, that to please fuperiours is not the loweft kind of

merit.

The merit of pleasing must, however, be estimated by the means. Favour is not always gained by good actions or laudable

laudable qualities. Careffes and pre

ferments are often bestowed on the auxiliaries of vice, the procurers of pleafure, or the flatterers of vanity. Dryden has never been charged with any perfonal agency unworthy of a good character: he abetted vice and vanity only with his pen. One of his enemies has accufed him of lewdnefs in his converfation; but if accufation without proof be credited, who fhall be innocent?

His works afford too many examples of diffolute licentiousness, and abject adulation; but they were probably, like his merriment, artificial and constrained; the effects of study and meditation, and his trade rather than his pleasure.

Of