DRY D E N. F the great poet whofe life I am about to delineate, the curiofity which his reputation must excite, will require a display 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 cafual mention and uncertain tradition have supplied. JOHN DRYDEN was born August 9, 1631, at Aldwincle near Oundle, the fon of Erafmus Dryden of Tichmersh; who was the third fon of Sir Erafmus Dryden, Baronet, of Canons Afhby. All these places are in Northamptonshire; but the original stock of the family was in the county of Huntingdon. He He is reported by his laft biographer, Derrick, to have inherited from his father an eftate of two hundred a year, and to have been bred, as was faid, an Anabaptist. For either of thefe 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. though he had many enemies, who undoubtedly examined his life with a fcrutiny fuffciently 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. But From Westminster School, where he was inftructed as one of the king's fcholars 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, *He went off to Trinity College, and was admitted to a Bachelor's Degree in 1653. H. ccm compofed with great ambition of fuch conceits as, notwithstanding the reformation begun by Waller and Denham, the example of Cowley ftill kept in reputation. Lord Haftings died of the small-pox; and his poet has made of the puftules first rofebuds, and then gems; at Jast exalts them into stars; and fays, No comet need foretell his change drew on, At the university he does not appear to have been eager of poetical diftinction, or to have lavished his early wit either on fictitious subjects or public occafions. He probably confidered that he who purpofed to be an author, ought firft to be a ftudent. He obtained, whatever was the reafon, no fellowship in the College. Why he was excluded cannot now be known, and it is vain to guefs; had he thought himfelf injured, he knew how to complain. In the life of Plutarch he mentions his education in the College with gratitude; but, in a prelogue at Oxford, he has thefe lines: Oxford to him a dearer name shall be Than his own mother-university; *Thebes |