graphers. In appearance he became, in his maturer years, fat and florid, and obtained the name of "Poet Squab." His portraits show a shrewd, but rather sluggish face, with long gray hair floating down his cheeks, not unlike Coleridge, but without his dreamy eye, like a nebulous star. His conversation was less sprightly than solid. Sometimes men suspected that he had "sold all his thoughts to his booksellers." His manners are by his friends pronounced "modest;" and the word modest has since been amiably confounded by his biographers with "pure." Bashful he seems to have been to awkwardness; but he was by no means a model of the virtues. He loved to sit at Will's coffee-house, and be the arbiter of criticism. His favourite stimulus was snuff, and his favourite amusement angling. He had a bad address, a down look, and little of the air of a gentleman. Addison is reported to have taught him latterly the intemperate use of wine; but this was said by Dennis, who admired Dryden, and who hated Addison; and his testimony is impotent against either party. We admire the simplicity of the critics who can read his plays, and then find himself a model of continence and virtue. "Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh;" and a more polluted mouth than Dryden's never uttered its depravities on the stage. We cannot, in fine, call him personally a very honest, a very high-minded, or a very good man, although we are willing to count him amiable, ready to make very considerable allowance for his period and his circumstances, not disposed to think him so much a renegado and deliberate knave as a fickle, needy, and childish changeling, in the matter of his "perversion" to Popery; although we yield to none in admiration of the varied, highly-cultured, masculine, and magnificent forces of his genius.

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Astræa Redux. A Poem on the Happy Restoration and Re-

turn of His Sacred Majesty Charles II., 1660

To His Sacred Majesty. A Panegyric on his Coronation

To the Lord Chancellor Hyde. Presented on New Year's

Day, 1662

Satire on the Dutch

To Her Royal Highness the Duchess, on the Memorable Vic-

tory gained by the Duke over the Hollanders, June 3,

1665; and on her Journey afterwards into the North

✓ Annus Mirabilis: the Year of Wonders, 1666. An Historical

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81

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An Essay upon Satire. By Mr Dryden and the Earl of Mul-

grave, 1679

84

93

161

Religio Laici; or, A Layman's Faith. An Epistle

174

Threnodia Augustalis: a Funeral Pindaric Poem, sacred to

the Happy Memory of King Charles II.

195

Veni Creator Spiritus, Paraphrased

212

The Hind and the Panther. A Poem, in Three Parts

213

Mac Flecknoe

295

Britannia Rediviva. A Poem on the Prince, born June 10,

1688

302

DRYDEN'S POEMS.

ON THE DEATH OF LORD HASTINGS. 1

MUST noble Hastings immaturely die,
The honour of his ancient family;
Beauty and learning thus together meet,
To bring a winding for a wedding-sheet?
Must Virtue prove Death's harbinger? must she,
With him expiring, feel mortality?

Is death, Sin's wages, Grace's now ? shall Art
Make us more learned, only to depart?
If merit be disease; if virtue death;
To be good, not to be; who'd then bequeath
Himself to discipline? who'd not esteem
Labour a crime? study, self-murder deem?
Our noble youth now have pretence to be
Dunces securely, ignorant healthfully.

Rare linguist, whose worth speaks itself, whose praise,
Though not his own, all tongues besides do raise:
Than whom great Alexander may seem less,
Who conquer'd men, but not their languages.

Lord Hastings: the nobleman herein lamented, was styled Henry Lord Hastings, son to Ferdinand Earl of Huntingdon. He died before his father in 1649, being then in his twentieth year, and on the day preceding that which had been fixed for his marriage.

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In his mouth nations spake; his tongue might be
Interpreter to Greece, France, Italy.

His native soil was the four parts o' the Earth;
All Europe was too narrow for his birth.
A young apostle; and, with reverence may
I speak it, inspired with gift of tongues, as they.
Nature gave him, a child, what men in vain
Oft strive, by art though further'd, to obtain.
His body was an orb, his sublime soul

Did move on Virtue's and on Learning's pole
Whose regular motions better to our view,
Than Archimedes'1 sphere, the Heavens did show.
Graces and virtues, languages and arts,
Beauty and learning, fill'd up all the parts.
Heaven's gifts, which do like falling stars appear
Scatter'd in others; all, as in their sphere,
Were fix'd, conglobate in his soul; and thence
Shone through his body, with sweet influence;
Letting their glories so on each limb fall,
The whole frame render'd was celestial.
Come, learned Ptolemy, 2 and trial make,
If thou this hero's altitude canst take:
But that transcends thy skill; thrice happy all,
Could we but prove thus astronomical.

Lived Tycho 3 now, struck with this ray which shone
More bright i' the morn, than others' beam at noon.
He'd take his astrolabe, and seek out here
What new star 'twas did gild our hemisphere.
Replenish'd then with such rare gifts as these,
Where was room left for such a foul disease?

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1'Archimedes' a famous geometrician, who was killed at the taking of Syracuse, in the 542d year of Rome. He made a glass sphere, wherein the motions of the heavenly bodies were wonderfully described. —2 ‹ Ptolemy:' Claudius Ptolemæus, a celebrated mathematician in the reign of M. Aurelius Antoninus. Tycho:' Tycho Brahe.

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