This is the most reasonable scheme of celestial interposition that ever was formed. The furprizes and terrors of enchantments, which have fucceeded to the intrigues and oppositions of pagan deities, afford very striking scenes, and open a vast extent to the imagination; but, as Boileau observes, and Boileau will be seldom found mistaken, with this incurable defect, that in a conteft between heaven and hell we know at the beginning which is to prevail; for this reason we follow Rinaldo to the enchanted wood with more curiofity than terror, In the scheme of Dryden there is one great difficulty, which yet he would perhaps have had address enough to furmount. In a war justice can be but on one fide; and to entitle the hero to the protection of angels, he must fight in the defence of indubitable right. Yet some of the celestial beings, thus opposed to each other, must have been re presented as defending guilt, That this poem was never written, is reasonably to be lamented. It would doubtless have improved our numbers, and enlarged our language, and might perhaps have contributed by pleasing instruction to rectify our opinions, and purify our manners. tributed What he required as the indispensable condition of such an undertaking, a publick stipend, was not likely in those times to be obtained. Riches were not become familiar to us, nor had the nation yet learned to bę liberal. This plan he charged Blackmore with stealing; only, fays he, the guardian angels of kingdoms were machines too ponderous for him to manage. In 1694, he began the most laborious and difficult of all his works, the tranflation of Virgil; from which he borrowed two months, that he might turn Fresnoy's Art of Painting into English profe. The preface, which he boasts to have written in twelve mornings, exhibits a parallel of poetry and painting, with a mifcellaneous collection of critical remarks, such as cost a mind stored like his no labour to produce them. In 1697, he published his version of the works of Virgil; and that no opportunity of : of profit might be lost, dedicated the Pastorals to the lord Clifford, the Georgics to the earl of Chesterfield, and the Eneid to the earl of Mulgrave. This economy of flattery, at once lavish and discreet, did not pafs without observation. This tranflation was censured by Milbourne, a clergyman, styled by Pope the fairest of criticks, because he exhibited his own verfion to be compared with that which he condemned, His last work was his Fables, published in 1699, in consequence, as is supposed, of a contract now in the hands of Mr. Tonson; by which he obliged himself, in confideration of three hundred pounds, to finish for the prefs ten thousand verses. In this volume is comprised the wellknown ode on St. Cecilia's day, which, as appeared by a letter communicated to Dr. Birch, he spent a fortnight in compofing and correcting. But what is this to the patience and diligence of Boileau, whose Equivoque, a poem of only three hundred forty-fix lines, took from his life eleven months months to write it, and three years to revise it! Part of this book of Fables is the first Iliad in English, intended as a specimen of a version of the whole. Confidering into what hands Homer was to fall, the reader cannot but rejoice that this project went no further. The time was now at hand which was to put an end to all his schemes and labours. On the first of May 1701, having been some time, as he tells us, a cripple in his limbs, he died in Gerard-street of a mortification in his leg. There is extant a wild story relating to some vexatious events that happened at his funeral, which, at the end of Congreve's Life, by a writer of I know not what credit, are thus related, as I find the account transferred to a biographical dictionary : " Mr. Dryden dying on the Wednesday " morning, Dr. Thomas Sprat, then bishop " of Rochester and dean of Westminster, " sent the next day to the lady Elizabeth 66 Howard, Mr. Dryden's widow, that he " would make a present of the ground, " which was forty pounds, with all the "other Abbey-fees. The lord Halifax " likewise sent to the lady Elizabeth, and " Mr. Charles Dryden her fon, that, if they " would give him leave to bury Mr. Dry" den, he would inter him with a gentle" man's private funeral, and afterwards be"stow five hundred pounds on a monu"ment in the Abbey; which, as they had “ no reason to refuse, they accepted. On the Saturday following the company came: "the corpse was put into a velvet hearse, " and eighteen mourning coaches, filled " with company, attended. When they 66 were just ready to move, the lord Jefferies, "son of the lord chancellor Jefferies, with " some of his rakish companions coming by, " asked whose funeral it was: and being " told Mr. Dryden's, he said, " What, " shall Dryden, the greatest honour and ornament of the nation, be buried after " this private manner! No, gentlemen, let " all that loved Mr. Dryden, and honour " his memory, alight and join with me in gaining my lady's consent to let me have "the honour of his interment, which shall " be |