DRYDEN, JOHN, was born on the 9th of August 1631, at Aldwinckle, in Northamptonshire. He was the eldest son of Erasmus Driden, who was the third son of Sir Erasmus Driden of Canons Ashby, in that county, created a baronet in 1019. The poet was educated as a king's scholar at Westminster School under Dr. Busby, where he wrote some poetic translations, which were much noticed, and, in 1649, an 'Elegy on the Death of Lord Hastings,' and some verses on the 'Divine Epigrams' of John Hoddesdon, which were published in 1620. He was elected a Westminster scholar to Trinity College, Cambridge, May 11, 1650. Almost the only notice which the college archives give respecting him is one dated July 19th, 1652, whereby he is "put out of Commons for a fortnight at least," confined to walls, and sentenced to read a confession of his crime at the fellows' table during dinner-time.
In 1654 his father's death put him in possession of an estate worth about 001. per annum (subject to his mother's life interest of a third).
Ile did not however leave Cambridge till three years afterwards, when, having been admitted M.A. by dispensation from the Archbishop of Canterbury, he was introduced into a subordinate public office by his maternal relation Sir Gilbert Pickering. The stanzas on Cromwell's death, his first poem of any importance, were written in the following year, and in 1660 he signalised himself by 'Astrma Rados,' a congratu latory address on the Restoration.
It seems scarcely worth while attempting to excuse this change of views. Dryden was yet a young man, and had probably never before been in a situation to express his own opinions, apart from the influence of his kinsman ; and after all, the lines on Cromwell contain, as Sir W. Scott has observed, little or nothing in the way of eulogy which his worst enemies could have denied him. In the year 1663 Dryden began his dramatic career with ' The Wild Gallant.' The plague and fire of London soon interrupted him for a time, and he employed himself upon his 'Essay on Dramatic Poesy,' a performance containing much elegant writing, and worthy of notice as the earliest work of the kind in our language. It would be easy to show the deficiencies and mistakes of this composition, but they are fully coun terbalanced by the manly avowal—the first since the Restoration— of the supremacy of Shakspere. In December 1603 he married a daughter of the first Earl of Berkshire ; with her he received a settle ment of about 60/. a year ; and in 1670 he was appointed poet-laureate and biatoriographer, with a salary of 200/. a year; so that, allowing for the then much greater value of money, he must have been in receipt of for the times a very handsome income. On the revival of stage plays, Dryden became one of the most active dramatic writers, and soon acquired so much celebrity that he was engaged to supply the King's Thestre with three playa a year, for the annual sum of 300/. to 400/. He did not however fulfil his share of the contract Malone has proved that the number really produced did not amount to more than eighteen in sixteen years.
Towards the end of 1671, tho celebrated attack on heroic dramas called the ' Rehearsal' was produced on the stage. Its effect, though sure, was not immediate ; except that Dryden exchanged tragedy for comedy, and composed two comedies in 1672. A few years after wards he took leave of rhyme; his last rhyming tragedy, called Aureng-Zebe,' being brought out in 1675 ; but he continued to write for the stage until 1681, when the struggle between the parties of the dukes of Monmouth and York seemed drawing to a crisis, and there appeared some need that the scurrilous abuse which had been in every way poured on the court party by moans of epigram and satire should be rebutted in !dallier fashion.
This Dryden effected by the famous satire called 'Absalom and Achitopliel; wherein Monmouth figures as Absalom. Monmouth is treated with great levity, but all the vials of the poet's wroth are poured out on Buckingham, the author of the ' Rehearsal,' no Zimri, and on Shaftesbury as AchitopheL The last-named nobleman had been committed to the Tower, not long before, under a charge of high treason : he was however released upon the gum(' jury's refusal to find a true bill against him, which the Whig party celebrated by medal struck for the occasion. This afforded Dryden a fresh subject, and in March 1681 appeared The Medal,' a bitter lampoon on Shaftes bury, followed up in the next year by 'Mac Flecknoc, and the second part of 'Absalom and Achitophel; the larger part of which was written by N. Tate, but revised by Dryden. Together these satires gave the
finishing stroke to his old enemies Settle and Shadwcll, besides a numerous host of petty satirists. With Settle he had quarrelled some years before, whose chief supporter, Rochester, having become impli cated, and suspecting Dryden of indulging anonymous revenge, caused him, in 1679, to be attacked and beaten by hired ruffians, During the four years from 1682 to 1685 Dryden produced nothing worth notice, with the exception of a translation of Maimbourg's History of the League,' undertaken, na Dr. Johnson says, to promote popery. We should be at a loss to account for this apparent want of purpose, ose but an event which occurred in the year last mentioned clears up the difficulty. Soon after the death of Charles II. Dryden turned Roman Catholic—not without due consideration—as the Religio Laid, written nearly four years before, contains sufficient evidence of his mental struggles at that period, and not, it is to be hoped, other wise than conscientiously, as indeed his subsequent conduct appears to show. Johnson indeed has hinted, and Macaulay pretty broadly asserted, that the renunciation of Protestantism was made by the "illustrious renegade,' as Macaulay designates him, with a view to the personal and pecuniary advantages to be derived from it. Mr. Bell, the most recent biographer of Dryden, has shown however that the addi tional pension of 100/., with which, as Macaulay says, he was "gratified," by James II. immediately "he declared himself a papist," was not a new grant, but the resumption of an annuity granted by his predecessor about a year before his death, but which had remained unpaid from the decease of Charles—in fact, that it was a formal continuation of a grant "which had lapsed in common with all other personal gratui ties by the death of the late king." But Mr. Bell clearly goes too far when he adds that this fact contributes "materially to remove the suspicion hitherto attached to this pension." It shows that Macaulay, who seems to entertain for the memory of Dryden a kind of personal ill-feeling, made an assertion somewhat broader and more positive than was quite justifiable ; but of course the renewal of a lapsed annuity may be as much the 'gratification' for a service performed, or a seasonable apostacy, as the granting of a new pension. Still, as we have said already, the whole tenor of Dryden's subsequent life speaks for his conscientiousness on this occasion. Moreover, Dryden was a poet, and, as his ' Religio Laid' showed, a high churchman, and any one who observed the course of reasoning which, on a well known occasion a few years back, led many adherents of the high church portion of the establishment, whose views were to a great extent a matter of sentiment and feeling, to pass over to the Church of Rome (as Dryden did) "with the crowd," will shrink from branding him as a renegade and a barterer of his faith for a paltry pension, so long as no direct evidence is brought to prove him one. Dryden, we may add, educated his sons as Roman Catholics, and himself remained In strict connection with that church to his death : it ought to be noticed further, that when William III. had become firmly established on the throne, and the court seemed disposed to look kindly on the veteran poet, Dryden, as late as 1699 (the year before his death), in announcing his willingness to promise his "acquiescence under the present government, and forbearing satire on it," adds, "but I can neither take the oaths nor forsake my religion." His conversion to the papacy was announced to the world in 1687 by his Hind and Panther,' "an allegory," as Johnson happily expressed it, "intended to comprise and to describe the controversy between the Romanists and the Protestants." It did not, we know, decide nor materially influence the controversy ; but it is a brilliant specimen of the poet's almost unrivalled power of reasoning in verse. Whatever may be thought of the arguments, and absurd as is the allegory, the 'Hind and Panther' is certainly of its kind one of the finest pieces in the entire range of English poetry.