was also made Historiographer to his Majesty with a stipend for the two offices of 2001. per ann., upon which he published his Essay on Dramatic Poesy,'* addressed to Charles Earl of Dorset and Middlesex.

The writing of this essay,' he tells his patron, 'served as an amusement to him in the country, when he was driven from town by the violence of the plague, which then raged in London; and he diverted himself with thinking on the theatres, as lovers do by ruminating on their absent mistresses.' He there justifies the method of composing plays in verse, but confesses that he had quitted the practice, because he found it troublesome and slow.

As to tragedy, he seldom (the critics have remarked) touches the passions, but deals rather in pompous language and poetical descriptions; causing his characters too frequently to speak better than they ought to do, when their sphere in the drama is considered. "It is peculiar to him," says Addison, "to make his personages as wise, witty, elegant, and polite as himself." That he could not deeply affect the passions, is certain; for we find no play of his, in which we are much disposed to weep. We are so much enchanted indeed with beautiful digressions and elevated flights of fancy, that we forget the business of the piece, and suffer the characters to sleep. Gildon in his Laws of Poetry' observes, that, when it was recommended to Dryden to turn his thoughts to a translation of Euripides, rather than of Homer,† he

*The drift of this discourse was, to vindicate the honour of the English writers from the censure of those, who unjustly preferred to them the French.

+ Toward the conclusion of his life, he actually translated the first book of the Iliad.

confessed he had no relish for that poet, who was a great master of tragic simplicity.' As a farther confirmation, likewise, that his taste for tragedy was not of the genuine sort, the same writer adds that he constantly expressed great contempt for Otway,' who is universally allowed to have eminently succeeded in affecting the tender passions.

And that he was not born to write comedy, he seems himself to have been abundantly sensible: "I want (he observes) that gayety of humour, which is required in it: my conversation is slow and dull, my humour saturnine and reserved. In short, I am none of those who endeavour to break jests in company, and make repartees; so that those who decry my comedies do me no injury, except it be in point of profit reputation in them is the last thing, to which I shall pretend." This ingenuous confession of inability, one would imagine, might have been sufficient to silence the clamor of the critics; but, however true it be that he did not appear to advantage in comedy, it may yet be contended that in tragedy, with all his faults, he is still the most illustrious of his time. The end of tragedy is, to instruct the mind, as well as to move the passions. Now where there are no refined sentiments, the mind indeed may be affected, but not improved; and, however powerfully the passion of grief sways the heart, a man may feel distress in the acutest manner, and not be much the wiser for it.

Dryden too, perhaps, would have written better in both species of the drama, had not the necessity of his circumstances obliged him to comply with the popular taste.* This he himself insinuates, in his

* Although his first plays were so little successful, he went

Dedication of the Spanish Friar. "I remember some verses of my own 'Maximin and Almanzor,' which cry

on, and in the space of twenty five years produced twenty seven dramas, beside his other numerous poetical writings. Of the stage, says Dr. Johnson, when he had once invaded it, he kept possession; not indeed without the competition of rivals, who sometimes prevailed, or the censure of critics, which was often poignant and often just; but with such a degree of reputation, as made him at least secure of being heard, whatever might be the final determination of the public. These plays were collected and published, in six volumes duodecimo, in 1725.

He appears, indeed, about 1667 to have become professionally a writer for the stage; having contracted with the patentees of the King's Theatre to furnish them annually with three plays (though he never, even during the greatest vigour of his exertions, fully completed two). on condition of receiving the profit of one share and a quarter out of the twelve and three quarters, into which the theatrical stock was at that time divided; i. e., or nearly one tenth. This, which is said to have produced him about 400l. per ann., constituted probably the principal part of his income. Whether he derived any farther advantages from the contingent recompences of dedications, or the sale of copyrights, is unknown. But, if his claims in the former respect were to be measured by the abject meanness of his flattery, he ought to have profited largely :

'Indignant view

Yet pity Dryden-Hark! whene'er he sings,
How adulation drops her courtly dew

On titled rhymers and inglorious kings.'

(Mason.)

He was, indeed, a striking example of genius able to reduce it's labours to a mechanical exactness at the call of party, poverty, or panegyric. Yet his real sentiments of men and things appear to have been free, and it would be easy to deduce from his works many strong expressions of scorn and indignation relative to every species of tyranny exercised over mankind; strangely contrasted, it must at the same time be owned, by the doctrines of passive submission, civil and religious, which it was his task to support. -

vengeance upon me for their extravagance. All that I can say for those passages, which are I hope not many, is that I knew they were bad when I wrote them.' But I repent of them among my sins; and if any of their fellows intrude by chance into my present writings, I draw a veil over all these Dalilahs of the theatre, and am resolved I will settle myself no reputation upon the applause of fools. 'Tis not, that I am mortified to all ambition; but I scorn as much to take it from half-witted judges, as I should to raise an estate by cheating of bubbles. Neither do I discommend the lofty stile in tragedy, which is naturally pompous and magnificent; but nothing is truly sublime, that is not just and proper.'

In 1672, he was publicly ridiculed upon the stage, in The Rehearsal,' a comedy written by the Duke of Buckingham, with the assistance of Sprat (at that time his chaplain) Butler, and Martin Clifford, Esq. of the Charter House, under the character of Mr. Bayes. This character, at first called Bilboa' (we are informed in the Key to the Rehearsal') was originally intended for Sir Robert Howard:* but the répresentation being interrupted by the breaking out of the plague in 1665, it was not re-exhibited till 1671; in which interval Dryden having been advanced to the laurel,† the noble author changed the

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Who, in the preface to his Great Favourite, or the Duke of Lerma,' had animadverted upon Dryden's Essay on Dramatic Poesy.'

In order to appropriate the ridicule, Dryden's actual dress is said to have been borrowed by some finesse, and his very phraseology and manner of recitation to have been exactly mimicked. But, although the town enjoyed the laugh raised against him, it does not appear that his solid reputation as a poet was injured by the attack. In fact, more of the parodied passages

name of his hero, and made other alterations in his play, in order to ridicule several dramatic performances which had appeared subsequently to it's first performance. Those of Dryden, which fell under his lash, were, The Wild Gallant,' Tyrannic Love,' The Conquest of Granada,' Marriage a-la-Mode,' and Love in a Nunnery.' Whatever was extravagantly or unnaturally expressed, the author has ridiculed by parody.*

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In 1673, his tragi-comedies, entitled the Conquest of Granada' in two parts, encountered the attack of Leigh a player (in a pamphlet, called The Censure of the Rota') and of Elkanah Settle, who though a very indifferent poet, for many years bore his reputation above that of Dryden. From Dryden's reply to his latter adversary, a tract never republished and now therefore rare, Dr. Johnson has given large extracts: observing, in conclusion, "such was the criticism, to which the genius of Dryden could be reduced between rage and terror; rage with little provocation, and terror with little danger. To see the highest minds thus levelled with the meanest, may produce some solace to the consciousness of weakness, and some mortification to the pride of wisdom. But let it be remembered, that minds are not levelled in their powers, but when they are first levelled in their desires. Dryden and Settle had both placed their happiness in the claps of multitudes." +

and instances of absurdity are drawn from other writers, than from Dryden.

* That Dryden affected to despise this satire, appears from his Dedication of the translation of Juvenal and Persius.

The tragedy of the latter, entitled the Emperor of Morocco, which was written in rhyme and for a while much ap