the history of Poland records much of unprincipled intriguing, much personal ingratitude, and some upright opposition to his measures, but nothing of material importance to his personal history. He died June 17, 1696, on the double anniversary, it is said, of his birth and his accession to the throne; and by another singular coincidence, his birth and death were alike heralded by storms of unusual violence.

The character of Sobieski is one of great brilliancy and considerable faults. As a subject, he displayed genuine, disinterested patriotism: as a king, the welfare of his family seems to have been dearer to him than that of his country. Nor did his domestic government display the vigour and decision which we might reasonably have expected from his powerful mind. But his justice was unimpeachable; he was temperate, and unrevengeful even when personally affronted, which often happened in the tumultuous Diets of Poland; and, in a bigoted age, he displayed the virtue of toleration. The constant labours of an active life did not choke his literary taste, and his literary attainments were considerable; he spoke several languages, aspired to be a poet, and loved the company of learned men. He was remarkable for the suavity of his temper and the charms of his conversation. Such a character, though far from perfection, is entitled to the epithet GREAT, which he won and enjoyed; and, as a soldier, he has a claim to our gratitude, which not every soldier possesses. His warfare was almost uniformly waged against an aggressive and barbarian power, which, in the utmost need of Christian Europe, he stood forward to resist, and finally broke. Like other nations, Turkey has had its alternations of success and loss; but never, since the campaign of Vienna, have the arms of the East threatened the repose of Europe.

The history of Sobieski's life and reign is told at

large in the works of his countryman Zaluski; in the Life by the Abbé Coyer, of which there is an English translation; and in a recent publication by M. Salvandy. The same writer has republished a most interesting collection of Letters, written by Sobieski to his queen during the campaign of Vienna, printed for the first time in Poland about ten years ago.

JOHN DRYDEN was born at Aldwinkle, near Oundle, in Northamptonshire, August 9, 1631, according to Dr. Johnson; but Mr. Malone raises a doubt concerning the accuracy of this date. The inscription on his monument says, only, natus, 1632. He was educated at Westminster School, under Dr. Busby, and elected Scholar of Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1650. The year before he left the university, he wrote a poem on the death of Lord Hastings. Of this production Dr. Johnson says, that "it was composed with great ambition of such conceits as, notwithstanding the reformation begun by Waller and Denham, the example of Cowley still kept in reputation." Dryden's vacillation, both in religion and politics,

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proves, that though perhaps not completely dishonest, he had no firm and well-considered principles. His heroic stanzas on Oliver Cromwell, written after the Protector's funeral in 1658, were followed, on the Restoration, by his Astrea Redux, and in the same year by a second tribute of flattery to his sacred Majesty, A Panegyric on his Coronation.' The 'Annus Mirabilis' is one of his most elaborate works; a historical poem in celebration of the Duke of York's victory over the Dutch. He succeeded Sir William Davenant as poet-laureat. He did not obtain the laurel till August 18, 1670; but according to Malone, the patent had a retrospect, and the salary commenced from the Midsummer after Davenant's death, in 1668. He was also made historiographer to the King, and in the same year published his Essay on Dramatic Poetry.'

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Among the works of so voluminous a writer, we can only notice those which are distinguished by excellence, or by some strong peculiarity.

Dryden was more than thirty years of age when he commenced dramatic writer. His first piece, the 'Wild Gallant,' met with so mortifying a reception, that he resolved never more to write for the stage. The hasty resolutions of anger are seldom kept, and are seldom worth keeping; but in the present instance it would have been well had he adhered to the first dictates of his resentment. We should not then have had to regret, that so large a portion of a great writer's life and labour has been wasted on twentyeight dramas: the comedies exhibiting much ribaldry and but little wit; with neither ingenuity nor interest in the fable; with no originality in the characters : the tragedies for the most part filled with the exaggerations of romance, and the hyperboles of an extravagant imagination, in the place of nature and pathos. His tragedy seldom touches the passions: his staple

commodities are pompous language, poetical flights, and picturesque description. His characters all speak in one language-that of the author. Addison says, "It is peculiar to Dryden to make all his personages as wise, witty, elegant, and polite as himself." In confirmation of the proofs internally afforded by his writings, that his taste for tragedy was not genuine, he expresses his contempt for Otway, master as that poet was of the tender passions. But however uncongenial with his natural talent dramatic composition might be, his temporary disgust soon passed away. In his Essay on Dramatic Poetry,' he tells his patron, Dorset, that the writing of that treatise served as an amusement to him in the country, when he was driven from London by the plague; that he diverted himself with thinking on the theatres, as lovers do by ruminating on their absent mistresses. But whatever opinion he might entertain of his own tragic style, he was himself sensible that his talents did not lie in the line of comedy. "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." He retaliated on the criticisms levelled against his extravagances in tragedy, by an ostentatious display of defiance. We find in his Dedication of the Spanish Friar, "All that I can say for certain passages of my own Maximin and Almanzor is, that I knew they were bad enough to please when I wrote them."

In 1671 he was publicly ridiculed on the stage in the Duke of Buckingham's comedy of the Rehearsal. The character of Bayes was at first named Bilboa, and meant for Sir Robert Howard; but the representation of the piece in its original form was stopped by the plague in 1665: it was not reproduced till six years afterwards, when it appeared with alterations in ridicule of the pieces brought out in the interval, and