poet laureate, was due to, and probably obtained by, his
literary character; nor did he ever receive any boon suitable to his
rank, as son-in-law to an earl. But, what was worst of all, the parties
did not find mutual happiness in the engagement they had formed. It is
difficult for a woman of a violent temper and weak intellects, and such
the lady seems to have been, to endure the apparently causeless
fluctuation of spirits incident to one doomed to labour incessantly in
the feverish exercise of the imagination. Unintentional neglect, and the
inevitable relaxation, or rather sinking of spirit, which follows
violent mental exertion, are easily misconstrued into capricious
rudeness, or intentional offence; and life is embittered by mutual
accusation, not the less intolerable because reciprocally just. The wife
of one who is to gain his livelihood by poetry, or by any labour (if any
there be) equally exhausting, must either have taste enough to relish
her husband's performances, or good-nature sufficient to pardon his
infirmities. It was Dryden's misfortune, that Lady Elizabeth had neither
the one nor the other; and I dismiss the disagreeable subject by
observing, that on no one occasion, when a sarcasm against matrimony
could be introduced, has our author failed to season it with such
bitterness as spoke an inward consciousness of domestic misery.[18]

During the period when the theatres were closed, Dryden seems to have
written and published the "_Annus Mirabilis_" of which we spoke at the
close of the last Section. But he was also then labouring upon his
"Essay of Dramatic Poesy." It was a singular trait in the character of
our author, that by whatever motive he was directed in his choice of a
subject, and his manner of treating it, he was upon all occasions, alike
anxious to persuade the public, that both the one and the other were the
object of his free choice, founded upon the most rational grounds of
preference. He had, therefore, no sooner seriously bent his thoughts to
the stage, and distinguished himself as a composer of heroic plays, than
he wrote his "Essay of Dramatic Poesy," in which he assumes, that the
drama was the highest department of poetry; and endeavours to prove,
that rhyming or heroic tragedies are the most legitimate offspring of
the drama.

The subject is agitated in a dialogue between Lord Buckhurst, Sir
Charles Sedley, Sir Robert Howard, and the author himself, under the
feigned names of Eugeni