"Dryden, in immortal strain,
Had raised the table-round again,
But that a ribald king and court
Bade him toil on, to make them sport;
Demanded for their niggard pay,

Fit for their souls, a looser lay;

The world, defrauded of the high design,

Profaned the God-given strength, and marred the lofty line."

JOHN DRYDEN, who, after Milton's death, was considered the first poet of his time, was born at the parsonagehouse of Oldwinkle, All-Saints, August 9, 1631.

Now I could tell you just what Milton liked best for

breakfast, and how he often sat, with one leg thrown over the arm of his chair, when composing; but of Dryden's daily life we know but little. He belonged to a respectable Puritan family, and was the eldest of fourteen children; was fitted for college at Westminster, under Dr. Busby, of "birchen memory," who, for fifty-five years, was at the head of that famous school; then spent seven years at Cambridge, distinguishing himself in no special way at either place. These meagre facts are all we have to tell of his early days at home, at school, and at college.

His first poem, written when only seventeen, appeared in book form, in 1650, with nearly a hundred other elegies, called forth by the sad death of Lord Hastings, "a young nobleman of great learning, and much beloved," who was a victim of the small-pox on the very eve of his intended marriage.

This juvenile effort was absurd and affected, and showed the young poet had but little heart. He raves about the pustules, calling them rose-buds and jewels, and at last exalts them into stars

"No comet need foretell his change drew on,
Whose corpse might seem a constellation,"

apparently forgetting the sorrow of the mourners, in delight at his own fine verses. But poetry was in a low state at this time, and the public taste was "detestable." Alliterations, poor puns, and strained allegories, were considered fine writing; it was only natural that Dryden. should follow the general fashion.

His family and friends were all stanch Puritans, and on his going to London, from the university, he was made secretary to Sir Gilbert Pickering, his kinsman, who was at that time Lord-Chamberlain of the Protector's household. His dress of plain drugget, and his manners, homely and serious, plainly proved his parentage, and the in

fluences that surrounded him. As Hannay expresses it, "These sable leading-strings were still perceptible in his walk." But, with all these, Dryden was not a Puritan at heart. To be sure, when Cromwell died, he lamented the event in some heroic stanzas; but only two years after, when the merry monarch, Charles II., was welcomed back to London, after a disagreeable and rather dangerous experience, hiding in haylofts and stable-yards, disguised as a servant, to save his worthless life, Dryden approved the rejoicings, the big dinners, flags and trumpets, and wrote another poem, in the same fulsome strain, celebrating his

return.

For this sudden change he has been called a trimmer and turn-coat, but has, perhaps, been too severely criticised. One of his defenders exonerates him in these words: "Puritanism is one way of looking at nature, and, when sincere, of course, a right worshipful one; and the artistic and literary view of life is a different one! A man of wit and social sympathies, a lover of the beautiful, and a humorist, could not be expected to remain a Puritan. There are sacred birds and singing-birds; trees that utter oracles, and trees that produce blossoms and fruit for summer afternoons. Young John Dryden followed his bent." The next few years were spent in writing plays, which were not especially good, but had just made “a hit,” as they say, with his drama of the "Indian Emperor," dedicated to his beautiful patroness, the Duchess of Monmouth, when the "Great Plague " broke out in London, and put a stop to all theatre-going.

Ah! what a sad, sad time in that great city! More than one hundred thousand died from that terrible disease. Fires were kept burning night and day in the streets to stop the infection, but for four months the pestilence raged. In September of the next year, 1666, a fire broke out in a baker's shop near London Bridge, which spread and

spread, and burned and burned for three days. Dryden describes this, and the desperate engagement between the Dutch and English fleets. This poem, full of flattery to the king, and which boasts of his countrymen's prowess, gave him his place among the best poets of the day, but caused Milton to decide that Dryden was a rhymer, and little more.

In 1670 he was made poet-laureate and historian to the king, which gave him a handsome income. This may be considered the most prosperous part of his life. His "Essay on Dramatic Poesy," published about this time, proves that he could not only write plays, but defend them when written. In fact, it was his habit all through life to write an elaborate argument in prose or verse to explain his position, telling the world what good reasons he had for thinking as he did. Having given his time and talents to the composing of heroic plays, he assumed that the drama was the highest department of poetry; and, because he chose to write in rhyme, he argued that blank verse was inappropriate for the drama. Of course, this Essay caused a great deal of discussion, few of the poets. or critics of the time agreeing with Dryden. He, too, afterward changed his mind, and went back to the style sanctioned by the great dramatists of the Elizabethan era. He now engaged to write three plays each year for the king's company of players, and they evidently appreciated his talents, for, although he really wrote but one instead of three, they readily paid him the promised sum. But these plays, twenty-eight in all, were written for pay, and to please a wicked court, and are now considered coarse and contemptible. There never were such profligate times in England as under Charles II., and Dryden lowered himself by following the public taste. He wanted popularity and pay, and for this dipped his pen in pollution, and lost his self-respect.

Whipple says that poverty has been the most fertile source of literary crimes. "Poets are by no means wingless angels, fed with ambrosia plucked from Olympus, or manna rained down from heaven; and men of letters have ever displayed the same strange indisposition to starve common to other descendants of Adam. The law of sup

For

ply and demand operates in literature as in trade. instance, if a poor poet, rich only in the riches of thought, be placed in an age which demands intellectual monstrosities, he is tempted to pervert his powers to please the general taste. This he must do, or die, and this he should rather die than do; but still, if he hopes to live by his products, he must produce what people will buy—and it is already supposed that nothing will be bought except what is brainless or debasing."

This is more briefly expressed in the old couplet

"The drama's laws the drama's patrons give,

And they who live to please, must please to live."

He then mentions Dryden as a pertinent example of this truth. "The time in which he lived was one of great depravity of taste, and greater depravity of manners. Authors seemed banded in an insane crusade to exalt blasphemy and profligacy to the vacant throne of piety and virtue. Books were valuable according to the wickedness blended with their talent. Mental power was lucrative only in its perversion. The public was ravenous for the witty iniquities of the brain; and, to use the energetic invective of South, laid hold of brilliant morsels of sin, with 'fire and brimstone flaming round them, and thus, as it were, digested death itself, and made a meal upon perdition.' Now it is evident, in such a period as this, a needy author was compelled to choose between virtue, attended by neglect, and vice, lackeyed by popularity. One of Sir Charles Sedley's profligate comedies, one of Lord Roches