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OF the great poet whofe life I am about

to delineate, 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 cafual mention and uncertain tradition have fupplied.

JOHN DRYDEN was born August 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 Afhby. All these places are in Northamptonshire; but the original VOL. II. ftock

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ftock of the family was in the county of Huntingdon.

He is reported by his last biographer, Derrick, to have inherited from his father an eftate 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 fecured him from that poverty which feems always to have oppreffed him; or if he had wafted it, to have made him ashamed of publifhing his neceffities. But though he had many enemies, who undoubtedly examined his life with a scrutiny fufficiently malicious, I do not remember that he is ever charged with wafte of his patrimony. He was indeed fometimes reproached for his first religion. I am therefore inclined to believe that Derrick's intelligence was partly te, and partly erroneous.

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From Weftminfter 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 Cam-. bridge.

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Of his fchool performances has appeared only a poem on the death of Lord Haftings, compofed with great ambition of fuch conceits as, notwithstanding the reformation begun by Waller and Denham, the example of Cowley ftill kept in reputation. Lord Haftings died of the small-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,
Whofe corps might feem a conftellation.

At the univerfity he does not appear to have been eager of poetical diftinction, or to have lavished 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 reafon, no fellowship in the College. Why he was excluded cannot now be known, and it is vain to guefs; had he thought himself injured, he knew how to complain. In the Life of Plutarch he mentions his education in the College with gratitude; but in a prologue at Oxford, he has thefe lines:

Oxford to him a dearer name fhall be
Than his own mother-university;

Thebes did his rude unknowing youth engage;
He chooses Athens in his riper age,

It was not till the death of Cromwell, in 1658, that he became a public candidate for fame, by publishing Heroic Stanzas on the late Lord Protector; which, compared with the verses of Sprat and Waller on the fame occafion, were fufficient to raife great expectations of the rifing poet.

When the king was reftored, Dryden, like the other panegyrifts of ufurpation, changed his opinion, or his profeffion, and published ASTREA REDUX, a poem on the happy restor ation and return of his moft facred Majefty King Charles the Second.

The reproach of inconftancy was, on this occafion, shared with fuch numbers, that it produced neither hatred nor difgrace; if he changed, he changed with the nation. It was, however, not totally forgotten when his reputation raised him enemies.

The fame year he praised the new king in a fecond poem on his reftoration. In the ASTREA was the line,

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