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to Trinity College, though he pursued the regular course of academical study, he gave no presage of his future eminence; in 1657 he went to London, and soon commenced author. But the two first performances by which he was distinguished, evinced no less the levity of his principles than the brilliancy of his talents. These were, the heroic stanzas addressed to Oliver Cromwell, and the Astrea Redux, in compliment to Charles the second.

Having formed an intimacy with sir Robert Howard, whose sister he afterwards married, he was soon familiar with the court, and caressed by the great; but as neither niles nor compliments conferred affluence, he was impelled by indigence to make an effort in dramatic composition. His theatrical career commenced with the Wild Gallant, and, after thirty years, terminated with Love Triumphant. He was satirised in the Rehearsal, for which he retorted on its author in his Absalom. His celebrity attracted envy, yet he was constantly under the pressure of indigence. Charles the second admired his ge nius, but thought not of remunerating it; and, though he occasionally suggested subjects for his pen, conferred on him no substantial proofs of royal munificence.

After the accession of James, Dryden abjured the errors of heresy; a procedure which drew on him much obloquy, his conversion being invidiously ascribed to motives of interest. At the revolution, Dryden was deprived of the pension annexed to the laureatship, and reduced to precarious dependance on booksellers and managers. In this situation he produced his translations of Virgil, Persius, and Juvenal. His Alexander's Feast was among the latest of his productions. He died in 1701, at his house in Gerard-street, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. His name alone supplied his epitaph.

No modern writer, with the exception of Voltaire, has possessed equal versatility of talent. For the drama he had no original predilection: the bent of his genius would have impelled him to epic poetry, he wrote plays because he was that he ever wrote them well must be ascribed to the ex

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uberance of his powers, his theatrical pieces are indeed unequal in the extreme. In some he sinks below criticism; in others he rises above it: and after having been the rejected rival of Settle, he aspires to fellowship, and sometimes to competition, with Shakspeare. He writes alternately in blank verse and rbyme, and defends either practice with equal plausibility. He never fails to produce persuasive arguments in support of erroneous opinions; his faults are as splendid as his reasonings are seductive: and, like Cleopatra, he often makes defect appear perfection.

The dramatic history of Dryden obviously includes some account of the contemporary stage; the peculiar character of which affords an easy explanation of his various excentrici. ties and inconsistencies as a dramatic writer. In that age there existed against plays, not only among the puritans, but the great body of the people, an inveterate prejudice, which banished from the theatre the better orders of the community. By some it was shunned with abhorrence, by others stigmaised with contempt. To the learned it appeared frivolous, to the pious profane. Neither grave lawyers nor young tradesmen could frequently attend the theatre, but at the hazard of forfeiting reputation and respectability: still less was this amusement tolerated in the other sex. The custom of wearing masks in the playhouse was probably adopted by the ladies, not so much from convenience as in deference to pub lic opinion. From the operation of these various causes of exclusion there remained for the frequenters of the theatre only the retainers of the court, and such nominal students of law, the loungers of inns of court, as came afterwards to be known by the name of Templars men, eager for cavil and debate, who dogmatised in the green-room, and, often on no better principles than party or caprice, dictated to the author, and gave laws to the audience. Criticism, so derived, could neither be useful nor just. The principles of taste are drawn from good sense and correct feeling: they consist not of laws and limitations, they are not constituted by authority and prescription, neither can they be formed by the accord of two or three individuals on any particular points, however such individuals

viduals may be distinguished by wit and learning: they are drawn from the agreement of many minds of different orders and various powers, but united on some subjects by à common, if not an equal, participation of sentiment. The principles of taste originate in nature and truth, and can be but imperfectly developed when literary cultivation is confined, like the privilege of nobility, to the few, and the exercise of judgment exclusively awarded to those few, is disclaimed by the more numerous classes of the community.

In the reign of Elizabeth the general esteem in which erudition was held produced a cast of pedantry which more or less pervades all the compositions of that period. In the reign of Charles the second, when wit was omnipotent, a flippant character was imbibed by our celebrated writers, equally inimical to good sense, to natural feeling, and refined taste. Neither the senate, the bar, nor even the pulpit, escaped the contagion, the passion for such combinations of thought as surprise the mind, was constantly predominant. As, however, real wit could not, from the limitations imposed on human intellect, always be produced, a spurious wit consisting chiefly of fantastic conceits was generally made to supply its place. A similar character prevailed on the stage; where a puerile fondness for novelty fostered extravagance and wildness of sentiment, to the exclusion of all the simple and natural graces of expression. The struggle for the strange and the new was always apparent, and the poet sought rather to excite astonishment than to protract delight. The court affected to naturalize French idioms, and the court writers to adopt the principles of French criticism. The affectation of introducing French phrases in conversation was keenly ridiculed by Dryden, in his comedies of Sir Martin Marrail, and Marriage ala-mode, although a similar practice frequently appears in his own writings. The introduction of rhyme in tragedy, which had also originated in the petty ambition of imitating French writers, was, for a time, sanctioned by Dryden with his example, and supported with all his influence! Neither tragedy nor comedy afforded any genuine representations of nature. The style of each was equally artificial in the one the characters were made for the performers, in the other the sentiments

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were constructed for the times, and were commonly such as gratified the political feelings of the audience. In the plays of Dryden and his contemporaries, allusions to the atrocity of treason and rebellion are perpetually introduced, with the ob vious view of enticing applause from the court and cavaliers.

After the revolution, when such allusions were no longer seasonable, the plays which contained them became unpopular: a curious embarrassment occurred to queen Mary, at the representation of the Spanish Fryar; the deposition of king Sancho, and the usurpation of Leonora, having so strongly suggested a comparison with her own situation, that the attention of the whole house was riveted on the royal box, and her majesty was overwhelmed by the rude gaze of the specta

fors.

Towards the close of Dryden's life, an attack was made on the stage by the celebrated Collier, which insensibly refined the language of dramatic writers. As the audience became more mixed, the taste for the artificial was diminished; the taste for bombast subsided; the passion for extravagance died away; Shakspeare made his way to the public mind, and reclaimed it to truth and nature. It is impossible that Dryden should not have been betrayed into many errors and absurdities by the prevailing temper of his age. So little was Shakspeare appreciated, that his plays seem to have been considered as obsolete; Beaumont and Fletcher had borrowed from him freely, and by these and other poets his thoughts and sentiments were travestied with impunity. Even Dryden, with all his enthusiam for his genius, scrupled not to transform the Tempest to the Enchanted Island; and with the same temerity which had led him to dramatize the Paradise Lost, he obtruded on the hallowed scene created by Shakspeare's fancy, the baser progeny of his own polluted world. Nor did Dryden presume to question the rectitude of public opinion, which had established the supremacy of Jonson over all his compeers. Dryden was himself compared with Howard and Davenant, and, in the judgment of town critics, surpassed by Settle.

This presumptuous record of folly has, however, been re

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versed by time and experience; and the plays of Dryden, though never to be approved, are still read and admired, whilst those of his competitors are mouldering in oblivion. In his heroic plays, Dryden opened a field of composition peculiarly his own. In the Conquest of Granada, he delights by the diver sity of his characters, the vivacity of the descriptions, the eloquence of the language, and, occasionally, the sublimity of the sentiments. What he has produced is not so much a drama as an epic romance, and it is to be regretted that he had not possessed leisure to produce a poem on a plan so consonant to his genius. In his Don Sebastian, he has rivalled Corneille; in his Anthony and Cleopatra, he has caught a portion of Shakspeare's spirit, and employed it better than his inaster; in his Spanish Fryar, he has given the happiest example of a double plot, and in every respect, but morals, of a perfect play. In the drama, therefore, if Dryden sometimes fall short of his own powers, he commonly proves superior to other men; as an original poet he is yet more to be praised. Perhaps no individual writer ever contributed so largely to polish and refine a language: in satire he was a master: his Medal, his McFlecknoe, and his Absalom, are all original treasures which have enriched succeeding writers: his characteristic excellencies are versatility and strength; his faults are innumerable, but they are redeemned by the originality and energy of his conceptions.

As a translator he deserves much blame as well as praise: his genius assimilated better with Juvenal and Persius, than with Virgil. His Fables are not the least pleasing of his performances: his Alexander's Feast, which might alone have immortalized his name, was among the latest of his productions. Such an accession of valuable poetry no other writer has supplied to our language: but his merits are not limited to his poetical compositions: in his various Prefaces, and his Essay on Dramatic Poetry, he has established his reputation as a prose writer: the inequalities so obvious in his verse are not discovered in his prose: he is uniformly graceful and elegant; always animated and various, and sometimes elo

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