The inevitable confequence of poverty is dependence. Dryden had probably no recourfe in his exigencies but to his bookfeller. The particular character of Tonfon I do not know; but the general conduct of traders was much lefs liberal in thofe times than in our own; their views were narrower, and their manners groffer. To the mercantile ruggedness of that race, the delicacy of the poer was fometimes expofed. Lord Bolingbroke, who in his youth had cultivated poetry, related to Dr. King of Oxford, that one day, when he visited Dryden, they heard, as they were converfing, another perfon entering the house. "This,' faid Dryden, "is Tonfon. You will take care not to "depart before he goes away; for I have not completed the fheet which I promised him; and if you "leave me unprotected, I must fuffer all the rudeness "to which his refentment can prompt his tongue."

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 magnificence of that fplendid family; and he quotes Moyle, as relating that forty pounds were paid by a musical society for the ufe of Alexander's Feaft.

In thofe 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 those, who, being intrufted with the diftribution of the Prince's bounty, fuffer thofe 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 fettled and prefcriptive place by the fire, was in the fummer placed in the balcony, and that he called the two places his winter and his fummer feat. This is all the intelligence which his two furvivors afforded me.

One of his opinions will do him no honour in the prefent age, though in his own time, at least in the beginning of it, he was far from having it confined to himself. He put great confidence in the prognostications of judicial aftrology. In the Appendix to the Life of Congreve is a narrative of fome of his predictions wonderfully fulfilled; but I know not the writer's means of information, or character of veracity, That he had the configurations of the horofcope in his mind, and confidered them as influencing the affairs of men, he does not forbear to hint.

The utmost malice of the ftars is past.

Now frequent trines the happier lights among,
And high-rais'd Jove, from his dark prison freed,
Thofe weights took off that on his planet hung,
Will gloriously the new-laid works fucceed.

He has elsewhere fhewn his attention to the planetary powers; and in the preface to his Fables has endeavoured obliquely to justify his fuperftition, by attri buting the fame to fome of the Ancients. The latter, added to this narrative, leaves no doubt of his notions or practice.

So

So flight and so scanty is the knowledge which I have been able to collect concerning the private life and domeftick manners of a man, whom every English generation must mention with reverence as a critick and a poet.

DRYDEN may be properly confidered as the father of English criticifm, as the writer who first taught us to determine upon principles the merit of compofition. Of our former poets, the greatest dramatift wrote without rules, conducted through life and nature by a genius that rarely mifled, and rarely deferted him. Of the reft, thofe who knew the laws of propriety had neglected to teach them.

Two Arts of English Poetry were written in the days of Elizabeth by Webb and Puttenham, from which fomething might be learned, and a few hints had been given by Jonfon and Cowley; but Dryden's Effy on Dramatick Poetry was the firft regular and valuable treatise on the art of writing.

He who, having formed his opinions in the present age of English literature, turns back to perufe this dialogue, will not perhaps find much increase of knowledge, or much novelty of inftruction; but he is to remember that critical principles were then in the hands of a few, who had gathered them partly from the Ancients, and partly from the Italians and French. The structure of dramatick poems was not then generally understood. Audiences applauded by inftina, and poets perhaps often pleafed by chance.

A writer who obtains his full purpofe lofes himself in his own luftre. Of an opinion which is no longer doubted, the evidence ceafes to be examined. Of an

art

art univerfally practifed, the first teacher is forgotten. Learning once made popular is no longer learning; it has the appearance of fomething which we have beftowed upon ourselves, as the dew appears to rife from the field which it refreshes.

To judge rightly of an author, we must transport ourfelves to his time, and examine what were the wants of his contemporaries, and what were his means of supplying them. That which is easy at one time was difficult at another. Dryden at least imported his fcience, and gave his country what it wanted before; or rather, he imported only the materials, and manufactured them by his own skill.

The dialogue on the Drama was one of his firft effays of criticifm, written when he was yet a timorous candidate for reputation, and therefore laboured with that diligence which he might allow himfelf fomewhat to remit, when his name gave fanction to his positions, and his awe of the public was abated, partly by cuftom, and partly by fuccefs, It will not be eafy to find, in all the opulence of our language, a treatise fo artfully variegated with fucceffive reprefentations of oppofite probabilities, fo enlivened with imagery, fo brightened with illuftrations. His portraits of the English dramatists are wrought with great fpirit and diligence. The account of Shakspeare may ftand as a perpetual model of encomiaftick criticism; exact with out minutenefs, and lofty without exaggeration. The praise lavished by Longinus, on the atteftation of the heroes of Marathon, by Demofthenes, fades away before it. In a few lines is exhibited a character, fo extenfive in its comprehenfion, and fo curicus in its limitations, that nothing can be added, dìminished, or

reformed;

reformed; nor can the editors and admirers of Shakfpeare, in all their emulation of reverence, boaft of much more than of having diffufed and paraphrafed this epitome of excellence, of having changed Dryden's gold. for bafer metal, of lower value though of greater

bulk.

In this, and in all his other effays on the fame subject, the criticism of Dryden is the criticism of a poet; not a dull collection of theorems, nor a rude detection of faults, which perhaps the cenfor was not able to have committed; but a gay and vigorous differtation, where delight is mingled with inftruction, and where the author proves his right of judgement, by his power of performance.

The different manner and effect with which critical knowledge may be conveyed, was perhaps never more clearly exemplified than in the performances of Rymer and Dryden. It was faid of a dispute between two mathematicians, " malim cum Scaligero errare, quam "cum Clavio recte fapere;" that it was more eligible to go wrong with one than right with the other. A tendency of the fame kind every mind must feel at the perufal of Dryden's prefaces and Rymer's difcourfes. With Dryden, we are wandering in queft of Truth; whom we find, if we find her at all, dreft in the graces. of elegance; and if we miss her, the labour of the purfuit rewards itfelf; we are led only through fragrance and flowers: Rymer, without taking a nearer, takes a rougher way; every step is to be made through thorns and brambles; and Truth, if we meet her, appears repulfive by her mien, and ungraceful by her habit. Dryden's criticism has the majefty of a queen; Rymer's has the ferocity of a tyrant.

As

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