DRYDEN. O F the great poet whose life I am about to delineate, the curiofity which his reputation muft 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 Auguft 9, 1631, at Aldwincle near Oundle, the fon of Erafmus Dryden of Tichmerfh; who was the third fon of Sir Erafmus Dryden, Baronet, of Canons Ashby, All these places are in Northamptonshire; but the original ftock of the family was in the county of Huntingdon, He is reported by his laft 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 thefe parti, culars 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 wafted it, to have made him afhamed of publishing his neceffities. But though he had VOL. II. A many many enemies, who undoubtedly examined his life with a fcrutiny fufficiently 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. From Westminster School, where he was inftructed as one of the king's scholars by Dr. Busby, 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, compofed with great ambition of fuch conceits as, notwithftanding the reformation begun by Waller and Denham, the example of Cowley ftill kept in reputation. Lord Haftings died of the fmall-pox, and his poet has made of the puftules first rofebuds, and then gems; at laft exalts them into ftars; and fays, No comet need foretell his change drew on, At the univerfity he does not appear to have been eager of poetical diftinction, or to have lavifhed his early wit either on fictitious fubjects or public occafions. He probably confidered that he who purposed to be an author, ought firft to be a ftudent. He obtained, whatever was the reason, no fellowship in the College. Why he was excluded cannot now be known, and it is vain to . guefs; |