"I do hereby promife to pay John Dryden, Efq; or order, on the 25th of March *1699, the fum of two hundred and fifty "guineas, in confideration of ten thousand verfes, which the faid John Dryden, Efq; "is to deliver to me Jacob Tonfon, when "finifhed, whereof feven thousand five hun"dred verfes, more or lefs, are already in "the faid Jacob Tonfon's poffeffion. And I do hereby farther promise, and engage myself, to make up the faid fum of two "hundred and fifty guineas three hundred pounds fterling to the faid John Dry"den, Efq; his executors, administrators, "or affigns, at the beginning of the se"cond impreffion of the faid ten thousand " verses. "In witnefs whereof I have hereunto fet my hand and seal, this 20th day of March, ¿ 169. 66 Jacob Tonfon. "Sealed and delivered, being first "Ben. Portlock. VOL. II. H " March March 24th, 1698. "Received then of Mr. Jacob Tonson the "fum of two hundred fixty-eight pounds "fifteen fhillings, in pursuance of an agree"ment for ten thousand verses, to be deli"vered by me to the faid Jacob Tonson, “whereof I have already delivered to him "about seven thousand five hundred, more or less; he the faid Jacob Tonson being 66 66 obliged to make up the forefaid sum of "two hundred fixty-eight pounds fifteen fhillings three hundred pounds, at the beginning of the second impreffion of the "forefaid ten thousand verfes; " I say, received by me 66 "Witness Charles Dryden." John Dryden. Two hundred and fifty guineas, at 17. 1s. 6d. is 2687. 155. It is manifeft from the dates of this contract, that it relates to the volume of Fables, which contains about twelve thousand verfes, and for which therefore the payment musthave been afterwards enlarged. I have been told of another letter yet remaining, in which he defires Tonfon to bring him money, to pay for a watch which he had ordered for his fon, and which the maker would not leave without the price. The inevitable confequence of poverty is dependence. Dryden had probably no recourfe in his exigencies but to his bookfeller. The particular character of Tonfon I do not know; but the general conduct of traders was much less liberal in those times than in our own; their views were narrower, and their manners groffer. To the mercantile ruggedness of that race, the delicacy of the poet was fometimes expofed. Lord Bolingbroke, who in his youth had cultivated. poetry, related to Dr. King of Oxford, that one day, when he vifited Dryden, they heard, as they were converfing, another perfon entering the house. This," said Dryden, 66 "is Tonfon. 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 muft fuffer all the rudeness to which his *resentment can prompt his tongue." What rewards he obtained for his poems, befides the payment of the bookfeller, can not be known: Mr. Derrick, who confulted fome of his relations, was informed that his Fables obtained five hundred pounds from the dutchefs of Ormond; a present not unfuitable to the magnificence of that fplendid family; and he quotes Moyle, as relating that forty pounds were paid by a musical fociety for the use of Alexander's Feaft. of In those days the economy of government was yet unsettled, and the payments of the Exchequer were dilatory and uncertain this disorder there is reafon to believe that the Laureat fometimes felt the effects; for in one of his prefaces he complains of those, who, being intrufted with the diftribution of the Prince's bounty, fuffer those that depend upon it to languish in penury. Of his petty habits or flight amusements, tradition has retained little. Of the only two men whom I have found to whom he was perfonally known, one told me that at the house which he frequented, called Will's Coffee-houfe, the appeal upon any literary difpute was made to him; and the other related, that his armed chair, which in the winter had a fettled and prescriptive place place by the fire, was in the summer placed in the balcony, and that he called the two places his winter and his summer feat. This is all the intelligence which his two furvivors afforded me. One of his opinions will do him no honour in the present age, though in his own time, at least in the beginning of it, he was far from having it confined to himself. He put great confidence in the prognostications of judicial aftrology. In the Appendix to the Life of Congreve is a narrative of fome of his predictions wonderfully fulfilled; but I know not the writer's means of information, or character of veracity. That he had the configurations of the horofcope in his mind, and confidered them as influencing the affairs of men, he does not forbear to hint. The utmost malice of the ftars is past. Now frequent trines the happier lights among, And high-rais'd Jove, from his dark prison freed, Those weights took off that on his planet hung, Will gloriously the new-laid works fucceed. He has elsewhere fhewn his attention to the planetary powers; and in the preface to his H 3 Fables |