lar. He was subjected to slight punishment for
contumacy to the vice-master,[26] and seems, according to the statement
of an obscure libeller, to have been engaged in some public and
notorious dispute with a nobleman's son, probably on account of the
indulgence of his turn for satire.[27] He took, however, the degree of
Bachelor, in January 1653-4, but neither became Master of Arts,[28] nor
a fellow of the university and certainly never retained for it much of
that veneration usually paid by an English scholar to his Alma Mater. He
often celebrates Oxford, but only mentions Cambridge as the contrast of
the sister university in point of taste and learning:

"Oxford to him a dearer name shall be
Than his own mother-university:
Thebes did his green unknowing youth engage,
He chooses Athens in his riper age."[29]

A preference so uncommon, in one who had studied at Cambridge, probably
originated in some cause of disgust, which we may now search for in
vain.

In June 1654, the death of his father, Erasmus Dryden, proved a
temporary interruption to our author's studies. He left the university,
on this occasion, to take possession of his inheritance, consisting of
two-thirds of a small estate near Blakesley, in Northamptonshire, worth,
in all, about sixty pounds a year. The other third part of this small
property was bequeathed to his mother during her life, and the property
reverted to the poet after her death in 1676. With this little patrimony
our author returned to Cambridge, where he continued until the middle of
the year 1657.

Although Dryden's residence at the university was prolonged to the
unusual space of nearly seven years, we do not find that he
distinguished himself during that time by any poetical prolusions
excepting a few lines prefixed to a work, entitled, "Sion and Parnassus;
or Epigrams on several Texts of the Old and New Testament," published in
1650, by John Hoddesdon.[30] Mr. Malone conjectures that our poet would
have contributed to the academic collection of verses, entitled, "Oliva
Pacis," and published in 1654, on the peace between England and Holland,
had not his father's death interfered at that period. It is probable, we
lose but little by the disappearance of any occasional verses which may
have been produced by Dryden at this time. The elegy on Lord Hastings,
the lines prefixed to "Sion and Parnassus," and some complimentary
stanzas which occur in a letter to his cousin Honor Drid