: OF the great poet whose life I am about to de lineate, 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 cam sual mention and uncertain tradition have supplied. : JOHN DRYDEN was born August 9, 1631, at Aldwinkle near Oundle, the son of Erasmus Dryden of Tichmersh; who was the third son of Sir Erasmus Dryden, baronet, of Canons Ashby. All these places are in Northamptonshire; but the original stock of the family was in the county of Huntingdon. He is reported, by his last biographer, Derrick, to have inherited from his father an estate of two hundred a year, and to have been bred, as was faid, an Anabaptift. For either of these particulars no authority is given. Such a fortune ought to have secured him from that poverty which seems always to have oppressed him; or, if he had wasted it, to have made him ashamed of publishing his neceffities. But though he had many enemies, VOL. II. who B DRYDEN. who undoubtedly examined his life with a fufficiently malicious, I do not remember is ever charged with waste of his patrimon was indeed sometimes reproached for his ligion. I am therefore inclined to believe th rick's intelligence was partly true, and part neous.. From Westminster School, where he w structed as one of the king's scholars by Dr. whom he long after continued to reverence, in 1650 elected to one of the Westminster f ships at Cambridge *. Of his school performances has appeared poem on the death of Lord Hastings, co with great ambition of fuch conceits as, ne standing the reformation begun by Wall Denham, the example of Cowley still kep putation. Lord Hastings died of the smal and his poet has made of the pustules fir buds, and then gems; at last exalts them inte and says, No comet need foretell his change drew on, Whose corpse might seem a constellation. At the university he does not appear t been eager of poetical distinction, or to ha vished his early wit either on fictitious subje public occafions. He probably confidered he, who proposed to be an author, ought be a student. He obtained, whatever was th fon, no fellowship in the College. Why b excluded cannot now be known, and it is v guess; had he thought himself injured, he *He went off to Trinity College, and was admitted to a lor's Degree in 1653. H. |