in
his dramas, and dedicating his work with much flattery to those who were
easily cajoled by their vanity into sharing their purse and patronage. In
this, however, he only followed the general custom of the time, and is
above many of his contemporaries.

Dryden was born in the village of Aldwinkle, Northamptonshire, in 1631. His
family were prosperous people, who brought him up in the strict Puritan
faith, and sent him first to the famous Westminster school and then to
Cambridge. He made excellent use of his opportunities and studied eagerly,
becoming one of the best educated men of his age, especially in the
classics. Though of remarkable literary taste, he showed little evidence of
literary ability up to the age of thirty. By his training and family
connections he was allied to the Puritan party, and his only well-known
work of this period, the "Heroic Stanzas," was written on the death of
Cromwell:

His grandeur he derived from Heaven alone,
For he was great ere Fortune made him so;
And wars, like mists that rise against the sun,
Made him but greater seem, not greater grow.

In these four lines, taken almost at random from the "Heroic Stanzas," we
have an epitome of the thought, the preciseness, and the polish that mark
all his literary work.

This poem made Dryden well known, and he was in a fair way to become the
new poet of Puritanism when the Restoration made a complete change in his
methods. He had come to London for a literary life, and when the Royalists
were again in power he placed himself promptly on the winning side. His
"Astraea Redux," a poem of welcome to Charles II, and his "Panegyric to his
Sacred Majesty," breathe more devotion to "the old goat," as the king was
known to his courtiers, than had his earlier poems to Puritanism.

In 1667 he became more widely known and popular by his "Annus Mirabilis," a
narrative poem describing the terrors of the great fire in London and some
events of the disgraceful war with Holland; but with the theaters reopened
and nightly filled, the drama offered the most attractive field to one who
made his living by literature; so Dryden turned to the stage and agreed to
furnish three plays yearly for the actors of the King's Theater. For nearly
twenty years, the best of his life, Dryden gave himself up to this
unfortunate work. Both by nature and habit he seems to have been clean in
his personal life; but the stage demanded unclean plays, and Dryd