Among answers to criticks, no poetical attacks, or altercations, are to be included; they are like other poems, effufions of genius, produced as much to obtain praise as to obviate cenfure. These Dryden practifed, and in thefe he excelled.

Of Collier, Blackmore, and Milbourne, he has made mention in the Preface of his Fables. To the cenfure of Collier, whofe remarks may be rather termed admonitions than criticifms, he makes little reply; being, at the age of fixty-eight, attentive to better things than the claps of a playhouse. He complains of Collier's rudeness, and the "horfe-play of "his raillery ;" and afferts, that "in many places he "has perverted by his gloffes the meaning" of what he cenfures; but in other things he confeffes that he is juftly taxed; and fays, with great calmness and candour, "I have pleaded guilty to all thoughts or "expreffions of mine that can be truly accused of obfcenity, immorality, or profanenefs, and retract "them. If he be my enemy, let him triumph; "if he be my friend, he will be glad of my re

pentance." Yet as our beft difpofitions are imperfect, he left ftanding in the fame book a reflection on Collier of great afperity, and indeed of more afperity than wit.

Blackmore he reprefents as made his enemy by the poem of Abfalom and Ackitopbel, which "he thinks a "little hard upon his fanatick patrons ;" and charges him with borrowing the plan of his Arthur from the Preface to Juvenal, "though he had," fays he, "the "bafenefs not to acknowledge his benefactor, but "inftead of it to traduce me in a libel."

The

The libel in which Blackmore traduced him was a Satire upon Wit; in which, having lamented the exuberance of falfe wit and the deficiency of true, he proposes that all wit fhould be re-coined before it is current, and appoints masters of affay who fhall reject all that is light or debafed.

'Tis true, that when the coarse and worthless dross
Is purg'd away, there will be mighty lofs :
Ev'n Congreve, Southern, manly Wycherly,
When thus refin'd, will grievous sufferers be.
Into the melting pot when Dryden comes,

What horrid ftench will rife, what noifome fumes!
How will he fhrink, when all his lewd allay,

And wicked mixture, fhall be purg'd away!

Thus ftands the paffage in the laft edition; but in the original there was an abatement of the cenfure, beginning thus:

But what remains will be fo pure, 'twill bear
Th' examination of the most fevere.

Blackmore, finding the cenfure refented, and the civility difregarded, ungeneroufly omitted the fofter part. Such variations difcover a writer who confults his paffions more than his virtue; and it may be reafonably supposed that Dryden imputes his enmity to its true caufe.

whether

"He

Of Milbourne he wrote only in general terms, anger, fuch as are always ready at the call of juft or not: a fhort extract will be fufficient. "pretends a quarrel to me, that I have fallen foul upon priesthood; if I have, I am only to afk par"don of good priefts, and am afraid "the reparation will come to little.

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his fhare of

Let him be

"fatif

"fatisfied that he shall never be able to force himself

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upon me for an adverfary; I contemn him too "much to enter into competition with him.

"As for the reft of those who have written against "me, they are fuch fcoundrels that they deserve not "the leaft notice to be taken of them. Blackmore

"and Milbourne are only diftinguished from the "crowd by being remembered to their infamy."

Dryden indeed discovered, in many of his writings, an affected and abfurd malignity to priefts and priefthood, which naturally raised him many enemies, and which was fometimes as unfeasonably resented as it was exerted. Trapp is angry that he calls the facrificer in the Georgicks "The Holy Butcher :" the tranflation is not indeed ridiculous; but Trapp's anger arifes from his zeal, not for the author, but the prieft; as if any reproach of the follies of Paganifm could be extended to the preachers of truth.

Dryden's diflike of the priesthood is imputed by Langbaine, and I think by Brown, to a repulfe which he fuffered when he folicited ordination; but he denies, in the Preface to his Fables, that he ever defigned to enter into the Church; and fuch a denial he would not have hazarded, if he could have been convicted of falsehood.

! Malevolence to the clergy is feldom at a great diftance from irreverence of religion, and Dryden affords no exception to this obfervation. His writings exhibit many paffages, which, with all the allowance that can be made for characters and occafions, are fuch as piety would not have admitted, and fuch as may vitiate light and unprincipled minds. But there is no reason for fuppofing that he disbelieved

the

lings, in pursuance of an agreement for ten thou"fand verfes, to be delivered by me to the faid Ja"cob Tonfon, whereof I have already delivered to "him about seven thousand five hundred, more or

lefs; he the faid Jacob Tonfon being obliged to "make up the forefaid fum of two hundred fixtyeight pounds fifteen fhillings three hundred pounds,

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at the beginning of the fecond impreffion of the "forefaid ten thoufand verfes;

"I fay, received by me

"Witness, Charles Dryden."

"John Dryden.

Two hundred and fifty guineas, at l. 1s. 6d. is 268%. 15s.

It is manifeft, from the dates of this contract, that it relates to the volume of Fables, which contains about twelve thousand verfes, and for which therefore the payment must have been afterwards enlarged.

I have been told of another letter yet remaining, in which he defires Tonfon to bring him money, to pay for a watch which he had ordered for his fon, and which the maker would not leave without the price.

is depenrecourfe in his

The inevitable confequence of poverty dence. Dryden had probably no exigences but to his bookfeller. character of Tonfon I do not know;

The particular but the general

conduct of traders was much lefs liberal in those times than in our own; their views were narrower, and their manners groffer. To the mercantile ruggedness of that race, the delicacy of the poet was fometimes expofed. Lord Bolingbroke, who in his youth

youth had cultivated poetry, related to Dr. King of Oxford, that one day, when he vifited Dryden, they heard, as they were converfing, another perfon entering the house. "This," faid Dryden, " is Ton"fon. You will take care not to depart before he goes away for I have not completed the sheet "which I promised him; and if you leave me un66 protected, I muft fuffer all the rudeness to which "his refentment can prompt his tongue."

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:

What rewards he obtained for his poems, befides the payment of the bookfeller, cannot be known. Mr. Derrick, who confulted fome of his relations, was informed that his Fables obtained five hundred pounds from the Dutchefs of Ormond; a prefent not unfuitable to the mgnificence of that fplendid family; and he quotes Moyle, as relating that forty pounds were paid by a mufical fociety for the ufe of Alexander's Feaft.

In those days the economy of government was yet unfettled, and the payments of the Exchequer were dilatory and uncertain; of this diforder there is reafon to believe that the Laureat fometimes felt the effects; for, in one of his Prefaces he complains of thofe, who, being intrufted with the diftribution of the Prince's bounty, fuffer those that depend upon it to languish in penury.

Of his petty habits or flight amufements, tradition has retained little. Of the only two men whom I have found to whom he was perfonally known, one told me, that at the houfe which he frequented, called Will's Coffee-houfe, the appeal upon any literary difpute was made to him: and the other related, that his armed chair, which in the winter had a settled

and