not be known: Mr. Derrick, who confuf ted fome of his relations, was informed that his Fables obtained five hundred pounds from the dutchefs of Ormond; a prefent not unfuitable to the magnificence of that fplendid family; and he quotes Moyle, as relating that forty pounds were paid by a mufical fociety for the use of Alexander's Feaft.

In those days the economy of government was yet unfettled, and the payments of the Exchequer were dilatory and uncertain: of this diforder there is reafon to believe that the Laureat fometimes felt the effects; for in one of his prefaces he complains of those, who, being intrusted with the distribution 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-house, the appeal upon any literary dispute 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 fummer placed in the balcony, and that he called the two places his winter and his fummer 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 astrology. 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 Fables

H 3

Fables has endeavoured obliquely to justify his fuperftition, by attributing the fame to fome of the Ancients. The latter, added to this narrative, leaves no doubt of his notions or practice.

So flight and fo fcanty is the knowledge. which I have been able to collect concerning the private life and domeftick manners of à man, whom every English generation must mention with reverence as a critick and à poet.

DRYDEN

DRYDEN may be properly confidered as the father of English criticism, as the writer who first taught us to determine upon principles the merit of composition. Of our former poets, the greatest dramatist wrote without rules, conducted through life and nature by a genius that rarely misled, and rarely deserted him. Of the reft, thofe who knew the laws of propriety had neglected to teach them.

Two Arts of English Poetry were written in the days of Elizabeth by Webb and Puttenham, from which fomething might be learned, and a few hints had been given by Jonfon and Cowley; but Dryden's Effay on Dramatick Poetry was the first regular and valuable treatife on the art of writing.

He who, having formed his opinions in the prefent age of English literature, turns back to peruse this dialogue, will not perhaps find much increase of knowledge, or much novelty of inftruction; but he is to remember that critical principles were then in the hands of a few, who had gathered them partly from the Ancients, and partly

from the Italians and French. The ftructure of dramatick poems was not then ge nerally understood. Audiences applauded by instinct, and poets perhaps often pleased by chance,

A writer who obtains his full purpose lofes himself in his own luftre. Of an opinion which is no longer doubted, the evidence ceases to be examined. Of an art univerfally practised, the first teacher is forgotten. Learning once made popular is no longer learning; it has the appearance of fomething which we have bestowed upon ourselves, as the dew appears to rife from the field which it refreshes.

To judge rightly of an author, we must transport ourselves to his time, and examine what were the wants of his contemporaries, and what were his means of supplying them, That which is eafy at one time was difficult at another. Dryden at least imported his fcience, and and gave his country what it wanted before; or rather, he imported only the materials, and manufactured them by his

bwn fkill.

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