SONG IN THE FIRST PART OF "THE CONQUEST OF GRANADA SONG, IN TWO PARTS, IN THE SECOND PART OF "THE CONQUEST OF GRANADA a EPILOGUE TO "THE HUSBAND HIS OWN CUCKOLD PROLOGUE TO "THE PILGRIM." REVIVED FOR OUR AUTHOR'S BENEFIT, ANNO 1700 . THE TWENTY-NINTH ODE OF THE FIRST BOOK OF HORACE; PARAPHRASED IN PINDARIO MELEAGER AND ATALANTA, OUT OF THE EIGHTH BOOK OF OVID'S METAMORPHOSES BAUCIS AND PHILEMON, OUT OF THE EIGHTH BOOK OF OVID'S METAMORPHOSES THE FABLE OF IPHIS AND IANTHE, FROM THE NINTH BOOK OF OVID'S METAMORPHOSES PYGMALION AND THE STATUE, FROM THE TENTH BOOK OF OVID'S METAMORPHOSES CINYRAS AND MYRRHA, OUT OF THE TENTH BOOK OF OVID'S METAMORPHOSES CEYX AND ALCYONE, OUT OF THE ELEVENTH BOOK OF OVID'S METAMORPHOSES SACUS TRANSFORMED INTO A CORMORANT, FROM THE ELEVENTH BOOK OF OVID'S THE LIFE OF DRYDEN, BY DR. JOHNSON. OF the great poet whose life I am about to delineate, the curiosity 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 casual mention and uncertain tradition have supplied. JOHN DRYDEN was born August 9, 1631,* at Aldwinkle near Oundle, the son of Erasmus Dryden of Titchmersh; 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.t 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 said, an Anabaptist. 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 necessities. But though he had many enemies, who undoubtedly examined his life with a scrutiny sufficiently malicious, I do not remember that he is ever charged with waste of his patrimony. He was indeed sometimes reproached for his first religion. I am therefore inclined to believe that Derrick's intelligence was partly true, and partly erroneous. From Westminster school, where he was instructed 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 school performances has appeared only a poem on the death of Lord Hastings, composed with great ambition of such conceits as, notwithstanding the reformation begun by Waller and Denham, the example of Cowley still kept in reputation. Lord Hastings died of the small pox; and his poet has made of the pustules, first rosebuds, and then gems; at last he exalts them into stars; and says, ."No comet need foretel his change drew on, At the university he does not appear to have been eager of poetical distinction, or to have lavished his early wit either on fictitious subjects or public occasions. He probably * Mr. Malone has lately proved that there is no satisfactory evidence for this date. The inscription on Dryden's monument says only natus 1632. See Malone's Life of Dryden, prefixed to his "Critical and Miscellaneous Prose Works." p. 5. note.-C. t Of Cumberland. Ibid. p. 10.-C. Mr. Derrick's Life of Dryden was prefixed to a very beautiful and correct edition of Dryden's Miscellanies, published by the Tonsons in 1760, 4 vols. 8vo. Derrick's part, however, was poorly executed, and the edition never became popular.-C. He went off to Trinity College, and was admitted to a Bachelor's Degree in Jan. 1653-4, and in 1657 was made M.A.-C. |