nd his
literary reputation, would have been exactly the reverse of what they
actually proved. Sir Gilbert Pickering was cousin-german to the poet,
and also to his mother; thus standing related to Dryden in a double
connection.[33] This gentleman was a staunch puritan, and having set out
as a reformer, ended by being a regicide, and an abettor of the tyranny
of Cromwell. He was one of the judges of the unfortunate Charles; and
though he did not sit in that bloody court upon the last and fatal day,
yet he seems to have concurred in the most violent measures of the
unconscientious men who did so. He had been one of the parliamentary
counsellors of state, and hesitated not to be numbered among the godly
and discreet persons who assisted Cromwell as a privy council. Moreover
he was lord chamberlain of the Protector's court, and received the
honour of his mock peerage.

The patronage of such a person was more likely to have elevated Dryden
to the temporal greatness and wealth acquired by the sequestrators and
committee-men of that oppressive time, than to have aided him in
attaining the summits of Parnassus. For, according to the slight records
which Mr. Malone has recovered concerning Sir Gilbert Pickering's
character, it would seem, that, to the hard, precise, fanatical contempt
of every illumination, save the inward light, which he derived from his
sect, he added the properties of a fiery temper, and a rude and savage
address.[34] In what capacity Dryden lived with his kinsman, or to what
line of life circumstances seemed to destine the future poet, we are
left at liberty to conjecture. Shadwell, the virulent antagonist of our
author, has called him Sir Gilbert Pickering's clerk; and it is indeed
highly probable that he was employed as his amanuensis, or secretary.

The next step of advancement you began
Was being clerk to Noll's lord chamberlain,
A sequestrator and committee-man.

_The Medal of John Bayes_.

But I cannot, with Mr. Malone, interpret the same passage, by supposing
the third line of the triplet to apply to Dryden. Had he been actually a
member of a committee of sequestration, that circumstance would never
have remained in the dubious obscurity of Shadwell's poetry; it would
have been as often echoed and re-echoed as every other incident of the
poet's life which was capable of bearing an unfavourable interpretation.
I incline therefore to believe, that the terms _sequestrator_ and
_committee-man_ a