ed, though not excused. Let us, however, remember, that if in the
hey-day of the merry monarch's reign, Dryden ventured to maintain, that,
the prime end of poetry being pleasure, the muses ought not to be
fettered by the chains of strict decorum; yet in his more advanced and
sober mood, he evinced sincere repentance for his trespass, by patient
and unresisting submission to the coarse and rigorous chastisement of
Collier. If it is alleged, that, in the fury of his loyal satire, he was
not always solicitous concerning its justice, let us make allowance for
the prejudice of party, and consider at what advantage, after the laps
of more than a century, and through the medium of impartial history, we
now view characters, who were only known to their contemporaries as
zealous partisans of an opposite and detested faction. The moderation of
Dryden's reprisals, when provoked by the grossest calumny and personal
insult, ought also to plead in his favour. Of the hundreds who thus
assailed, not only his literary, but his moral reputation, he has
distinguished Settle and Shadwell alone by an elaborate retort. Those
who look into Mr. Luttrell's collections, will at once see the extent of
Dryden's sufferance, and the limited nature of his retaliation.

The extreme flattery of Dryden's dedications has been objected to him,
as a fault of an opposite description; and perhaps no writer has
equalled him in the profusion and elegance of his adulation. "Of this
kind of meanness," says Johnson, "he never seems to decline the
practice, or lament the necessity. He considers the great as entitled to
encomiastic homage, and brings praise rather as a tribute than a gift;
more delighted with the fertility of his invention than mortified by the
prostitution of his judgment." It may be noticed, in palliation of this
heavy charge, that the form of address to superiors must be judged of by
the manners of the times; and that the adulation contained in
dedications was then as much a matter of course, as the words of
submissive style which still precede the subscription Dryden considered
his panegyrics as merely conforming with the fashion of the day, and
rendering unto Caesar the things which were Caesar's,--attended with no
more degradation than the payment of any other tribute to the forms of
politeness and usage of the world.

Of Dryden's general habits of life we can form a distinct idea, from the
evidence assembled by Mr. Malone. His mornings were