2

of the indulgence of his turn for satire.' He took, however, the degree of Bachelor, in January 1653-4, but neither became Master of Arts, nor a fellow of the university, and certainly never retained for it much of that veneration usually paid by an English scholar to his Alma Mater. He often celebrates Oxford, but only mentions Cambridge as the contrast of the sister university in point of taste and learning:

Г.

Oxford to him a dearer name shall be

Than his own mother university :

Thebes did his green unknowing youth engage,
He chooses Athens in his riper age.»3

A preference so uncommon, in one who had studied at Cambridge, probably originated in those slight disgraces, or perhaps in some other cause of disgust, which we may now search for in vain.

In June 1654, the death of his father, Erasmus Dryden, proved a temporary interruption to our author's studies. He left the university, on this occasion, to take possession of his inhe

Shadwell, in the Medal of John Bayes,

<< At Cambridge first your scurrilous vein began,
Where saucily you traduced a nobleman;
Who for that crime rebuked you on the bead,
And you had been expell'd, had you not fled.»

' He received this degree by dispensation from the Archbishop of Canterbury.

ritance, consisting of two-thirds of a small estate. near Blakesley, in Northamptonshire, worth, in all, about sixty pounds a-year. The other third part of this small property was bequeathed to his mother during her life, and the property reverted to the poet after her death in 1676. With this little patrimony our author returned to Cambridge, where he continued until the middle of the year 1657.

Although Dryden's residence at the university was prolonged to the unusual space of nearly seven years, we do not find, that he distinguished himself, during that time, by any poetical prolusions, excepting a few lines prefixed to a work, entitled, « Sion and Parnassus; or Eprigrams on several Texts of the Old and New Testaments,» published in 1650, by John Hoddesden.' Mr Malone conjectures, that our poet would have contributed to the academic collection of verses, entitled, « Oliva Pacis,» and published in 1654, on the peace

Jonathan Dryden, elected a scholar from Westminster into Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1656, of which he became fellow in 1662, was author of some verses in the Cambridge Collections in 1661, on the death of the Duke of Gloucester, and the marriage of the Princess of Orange; and in 1662, on the marriage of Charles II., which have been imputed to our author. An order, quoted by Mr Malone, for abatement of the commencement-money paid at taking the Bachelor's degree, on account of poverty, applies to Jonathan, not to John Dryden.—MALONE, vol. I. P. 17. note.

between England and Holland, had not his father's death interfered at that period. It is probable, we lose but little by the disappearance of any occasional verses which may have been produced by Dryden at this time. The elegy on Lord Hastings, the lines prefixed to « Sion and Parnassus,» and some complimentary stanzas which occur in a letter to his cousin Honor Driden, would have been enough to assure us, even without his own testimony, that Cowley was the darling of his youth; and that he imitated his points of wit, and quirks of epigram, with a similar contempt for the propriety of their application. From these poems we learn enough to be grateful, that Dryden was born at alater period in his century; for had not the road to fame been altered in consequence of the Restoration, his extensive information and acute ingenuity would probably have betrayed the author of the « Ode to St Cecilia,» and the father of English poetical harmony, into rivalling the metaphysical pindarics of Donne and Cowley. The verses, to which we allude, display their subtlety of thought, their puerile extravagance of conceit, and that structure of verse, which, as the poet himself says of Holyday's translations, has nothing of verse in it except the worst part of it-the rhyme, and that far from being unexceptionable. The following lines, in which the poet describes the death of Lord

Hastings by the small-pox, will be probably admitted as a justification of this censure:

« Was there no milder way but the small-pox,

The very filthiness of Pandora's box?

So many spots, like naves on Venus' soil,
One jewel set off with so many a foil;

Blisters with pride swell'd, which through's flesh did
Like rose-buds, stuck i'the lily-skin about.
Each little pimple had a tear in it,
To wail the fault its rising did commit,
Which, rebel-like, with its own lord at strife,
Thus made an insurrection 'gainst his life.
Or were these gems sent to adorn his skin,
The cabinet of a richer soul within?

No comet need foretel his change drew on,
Whose corpse might seem a constellation.»

sprout,

This is exactly in the tone of Bishop Corbett's invective against the same disease:

«Oh thou deform'd unwoman-like disease,

Thou plough'st up flesh and blood, and there sow'st pease; And leav'st such prints on beauty that dost come,

As clouted shoon do on a floor of loam.

Thou that of faces honey-combs dost make,
And of two breasts two cullenders, forsake
Thy deadly trade; now thou art rich, give o’er,
And let our curses call thee forth no more."

After leaving the university, our author entered the world, supported by friends, from whose character, principles, and situation, it might have been prophesied, with probability,

Elegy on Lady Haddington, in Corbett's Poems, p. 121. Gilchrist's edition.

that his success in life, and his literary reputation, would have been exactly the reverse of what they actually proved. Sir Gilbert Pickering was cousin-german to the poet, and also to his mother; thus standing related to Dryden in a double connexion. This gentleman was a staunch puritan, and having set out as a reformer, ended by being a regicide, and an abettor of the tyranny of Cromwell. He was one of the judges of the unfortunate Charles; and though he did not sit in that bloody court upon the last and fatal day, yet he seems to have concurred in the most violent measures of the unconscientious men who did so. had been one of the parliamentary counsellors of state, and hesitated not to be numbered among the godly and discreet persons who assisted Cromwell as a privy council. Moreover, he was lord chamberlain of the Protector's court, and received the honour of his mock peerage.

He

The patronage of such a person was more likely to have elevated Dryden to the temporal greatness and wealth acquired by the sequestrators and committee-men of that oppressive time, than to have aided him in attaining the

Sir John Pickering, father of Sir Gilbert, married Susan, the sister of Erasmus Dryden, the poet's father. But Mary Pickering, the poet's mother, was niece to Sir John Pickering; and thus her son Sir Gilbert was her cousingerman also.