sessed of knowledge, than he was communicative of it; but then his communication was by no means pedantick, or imposed upon the conversation; but just such, and went so far as, by the natural turns of the discourse in which he was engaged, it was necessarily promoted or required. He was extreme ready and gentle in his correction of the errours of any writer, who thought fit to consult him ; and full as ready and patient to admit of the reprehension of others, in respect of his own oversights or mistakes. He was of very easy, I may say, of very pleasing access: but something slow, and, as it were, diffident, in his advances to others. He had something in his nature that abhorred intrusion into any society whatsoever. Indeed it is to be regretted, that he was rather blamcable in the other extreme: for by that means, he was personally less known, and consequently his character might become liable both to misappre hensions and misrepresentations.

"To the best of my knowledge and observation, he was, of all the men that I ever knew, one of the most modest, and the most casily to be discountenanced in his approaches either to his superiours or his equals."

3 Congreve's censure of his compositions is as follows: "As to his writings, I shall not take upon me to speak of them; for to say little of them, would not be to do 'them right; and to say all that I ought to say, would be, to be very voluminous. But I may venture to say in general terms, that no man hath written in our language so much, and so various matter, and in so various man.

"To this account," Dr. Johnson observes, "nothing can be objected but the fondness of friend

ners, so well. Another thing I may say very peculiar to him, which is, that his parts did not decline with his years, but that he was an improving writer to his last, even to near seventy years of age; improving even in fire and imagination, as well as in judgment: witness—his Ode on St. Cecilia's Day, and his Fables, his latest performances.

"He was equally excellent in verse, and in prose. His prose had all the clearness imaginable, together with all the nobleness of expression; all the graces and ornaments proper and peculiar to it, without deviating into the language or diction of poetry. I make this observation, only to distinguish his style from that of many poetical writers, who, meaning to write harmoniously in prose, do in truth often write mere blank verse.

"I have heard him frequently own with pleasure, that if he had any talent for English prose, it was owing to his having often read the writings of the great Archbishop

Tillotson.

"His versification and his numbers he could learn of no body; for he first possessed those talents in perfection in our tongue. And they who have best succeeded in them since his time, have been indebted to his example; and the more they have been able to imitate him, the bet ter have they succeeded.

"As his style in prose is always specifically different from his style in poetry, so, on the other hand, in his poems, his diction is, wherever his subject requires it, so sublimely and so truly poetical, that its essence, like that of pure gold, cannot be destroyed. Take his verses, and divest them of their rhymes, disjoint them in their numbers, transpose their expressions, make what arrangement and disposition you please of his words, yet shall there eter. nally be poetry, and something which will be found in

ship; and to have excited that fondness in such a mind, is no small degree of praise." But little deduction need be made from this eulogy, when we reflect that it is abundantly confirmed by many of Dryden's contemporaries. "I was not," says Pope, "so happy as to know him. Virgilium tantum vidi. Had I been born early enough, I must have known and loved him; for I have been assured, not only by yourself, but by Mr. Congreve and Sir William Turnbull, that his perfonal qualities were as amiable as his poetical, notwithstanding the many libellous misrepresentations of them;'

capable of being resolved into absolute prose: an incon. testable characteristick of a truly poetical genius.

"I will say but one word more in general of his writings; which is, that what he has done in any one species, or distinct kind, would have been sufficient to have acquired him a great name. If he had written nothing but his Prefaces, or nothing but his Songs, or his Prologues, cach of them would have intituled him to the preference and distinction of excelling in his kind."

Letter from Pope to Wycherley, dated Dec. 26, 1704. We learn from Dr. Warburton, that when he was very young, he prevailed with a friend to carry him to Will's Coffee-house, that he might see Dryden. Dr. Warton mentions, that Mr. Walter Harte informed him, "that Dryden gave Pope a shilling for translating, when he was a boy, the story of Pyramus and Thisbe." At the time of Dryden's death he was near twelve years old.

It is pleasing to reflect, that in the irreproachable tenour of their lives,-the society, friendship, and esteem of wise, and good, and respected men,-and the testimony such men will always delight to bear to their merits in their life-time, and by letters, and in other ways, to

against which the former of these gentlemen has told me he will one day vindicate him. I suppose, those injuries were begun by the violence of party; but 'tis no doubt they were continued by envy at his success and fame."

transmit to posterity,-THE VIRTUOUS in every age are provided with an adamantine shield against the envenomed shafts of CALUMNY; and that the miscreants who employ those instruments, to gratify their malice or to protect their crimes, however artfully they may contrive to elude the publick disgrace of legal chastisement, cannot escape, whenever they are known, the indignation and abhorrence of mankind.

He did so in 1717, in the Dedication of a new edi tion of Dryden's plays, in six volumes, 12mo. to Thomas Pelham, Duke of Newcastle; quoted in p. 461.

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"The fact," says Dr. Warburton, was just the reverse. One of the first satires against him was the Duke of Buckingham's REIIEARSAL, and one of the last Montague's parody of THE HIND AND THE PANTHER."— But Pope's representation appears to me to be correct. THE REHEARSAL only professed to ridicule the extravagancies of the dramatick poet, and did not contain any libellous misrepresentation of the man. The scrutiny of his private life, and the calumnies by which his morals were blackened, and his person attempted to be ridiculed, were posterior to the publication of ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL, and were doubtless produced by the violence of party. Even several years after the Revolution his political adversaries would scarcely allow him any merit as a poet. Thus, we find, in a Session of the Poets, published in 1698, the following lines:

"A reverend griesly elder first appear'd,

With solemn port through the divided herd;

Gildon asserts, that Rochester's description of Lord Dorset

“The best good man, with the worst-natured muse,

was equally applicable to Dryden; for "though nothing could be more severe than his satire, yet nothing was so easy and so affable as his temper and conversation." Another of his contemporaries, who, though he lived to near the middle of the present century, had seen some of his plays performed in the time of Charles the Second, is equally lavish in his praise. "I remember (says this writer,) plain John Dryden, (before he paid his court with fuccess to the great,) in one uniform clothing of Norwich drugget. I have eat tarts with him and Madam Reeve' at the Mulberry Garden,' when our author advanced to a sword

"Whose lab'ring Muse did many years excel "In ill inventing, and in stealing well, "Till LOVE TRIUMPHANT did the cheat reveal." See also Rowe's verses, quoted below.

Miscellaneous Letters and Essays, 8vo. 1694.

}

9 Mrs. Anne Reeve, who, according to the common inaccuracy of the time, was called Reeves, is said to have been Dryden's mistress. She was the original performer of Amaryllis, in THE REHEARSAL. In MARRIAGE A-LAMODE she performed the part of a lady's maid. At a subsequent period she retired into a convent.

The Mulberry Garden comprehended, I believe, the ground on which the houses in Arlington-street now stand, and part of the Green Park. From Sir Charles Sidley's