ugh
life, attempted to turn into burlesque these funeral honours. Farquhar,
the comic dramatist, wrote a letter containing a ludicrous account of
the funeral;[51] in which, as Mr. Malone most justly remarks, he only
sought to amuse his fair correspondent by an assemblage of ludicrous and
antithetical expressions and ideas, which, when accurately examined,
express little more than the bustle and confusion which attends every
funeral procession of uncommon splendour. Upon this ground-work, Mrs.
Thomas (the Corinna of Pope and Cromwell) raised, at the distance of
thirty years, the marvellous structure of fable, which has been copied
by all Dryden's biographers, till the industry of Mr. Malone has sent
it, with other figments of the same lady, to "the grave of all the
Capulets."[52] She appears to have been something assisted by a
burlesque account of the funeral, imputed by Mr. Malone to Tom Brown,
who certainly continued to insult Dryden's memory whenever an
opportunity offered.[53] Indeed, Mrs. Thomas herself quotes this last
respectable authority. It must be a well-conducted and uncommon public
ceremony, where the philosopher can find nothing to condemn, nor the
satirist to ridicule; yet, to our imagination, what can be more
striking, than the procession of talent and rank, which escorted the
remains of DRYDEN to the tomb of CHAUCER!

The private character of the individual, his personal appearance, and
rank in society, are the circumstances which generally interest the
public most immediately upon his decease.

We are enabled, from the various paintings and engravings of Dryden, as
well as from the less flattering delineations of the satirists of his
time, to form a tolerable idea of his face and person. In youth, he
appears to have been handsome,[54] and of a pleasing countenance: when
his age was more advanced, he was corpulent and florid, which procured
him the nickname attached to him by Rochester.[55] In his latter days,
distress and disappointment probably chilled the fire of his eye, and
the advance of age destroyed the animation of his countenance.[56]
Still, however, his portraits bespeak the look and features of genius;
especially that in which he is drawn with his waving grey hairs.

In disposition and moral character, Dryden is represented as most
amiable, by all who had access to know him; and his works, as well as
letters, bear evidence to the justice of their panegyric. Congreve's
character of the po