ntative of the ancient family.

We reserve till our next volume a criticism on Dryden's genius and
works. As to his habits and manners, little is known, and that little is
worn threadbare by his many biographers. In appearance he became, in
his maturer years, fat and florid, and obtained the name of "Poet
Squab." His portraits show a shrewd, but rather sluggish face, with long
gray hair floating down his cheeks, not unlike Coleridge, but without
his dreamy eye, like a nebulous star. His conversation was less
sprightly than solid. Sometimes men suspected that he had "sold all his
thoughts to his booksellers." His manners are by his friends pronounced
"modest;" and the word modest has since been amiably confounded by his
biographers with "pure." Bashful he seems to have been to awkwardness;
but he was by no means a model of the virtues. He loved to sit at Will's
coffee-house, and be the arbiter of criticism. His favourite stimulus
was snuff, and his favourite amusement angling. He had a bad address, a
down look, and little of the air of a gentleman. Addison is reported to
have taught him latterly the intemperate use of wine; but this was said
by Dennis, who admired Dryden, and who hated Addison; and his testimony
is impotent against either party. We admire the simplicity of the
critics who can read his plays, and then find himself a model of
continence and virtue. "Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth
speaketh;" and a more polluted mouth than Dryden's never uttered its
depravities on the stage. We cannot, in fine, call him personally a very
honest, a very high-minded, or a very good man, although we are willing
to count him amiable, ready to make very considerable allowance for his
period and his circumstances, not disposed to think him so much a
renegado and deliberate knave as a fickle, needy, and childish
changeling, in the matter of his "perversion" to Popery; although we
yield to none in admiration of the varied, highly-cultured, masculine,
and magnificent forces of his genius.

CONTENTS

ON THE DEATH OF LORD HASTINGS

HEROIC STANZAS ON THE DEATH OF OLIVER CROMWELL

ASTRAEA REDUX. A POEM ON THE HAPPY RESTORATION AND RETURN
OF HIS SACRED MAJESTY CHARLES II., 1660

TO HIS SACRED MAJESTY. A PANEGYRIC ON HIS CORONATION

TO THE LORD CHANCELLOR HYDE. PRESENTED ON NEW YEAR'S DAY, 1662

SATIRE ON THE DUTCH

TO HER ROYAL HIGHNESS THE DUCHESS, ON THE MEMORABLE VICTORY GAINED
BY