es not
appear to have been at any university; probably his religion was the
obstacle. Like his brothers, he went to Rome; and as both his father and
mother request his prayers, we are to suppose he was originally destined
for the Church. But he became a Captain in the Pope's guards, and
remained at Rome till John Dryden, his elder brother's death. After this
event, he seems to have returned to England, and in 1708 succeeded to
the title of Baronet, as representative of Sir Erasmus Driden. the
author's grandfather. But the estate of Canons-Ashby, which should have
accompanied the title, had been devised by Sir Robert Driden, the poet's
first cousin, to Edward Dryden, the eldest son of Erasmus, the younger
brother of the poet. Thus, if the author had lived a few years longer,
his pecuniary embarrassments would have been embittered by his
succeeding to the honours of his family, without any means of sustaining
the rank they gave him. With this Edward Dryden, Sir Erasmus Henry seems
to have resided until his death, which took place at the family mansion
of Canons-Ashby in 1710. Edward acted as a manager of his cousin's
affairs; and Mr. Malone sees reason to think, from their mode of
accounting, that Sir Erasmus Henry had, like his mother, been visited
with mental derangement before his death, and had resigned into Edward's
hands the whole management of his concerns. Thus ended the poet's
family, none of his sons surviving him above ten years. The estate of
Canons-Ashby became again united to the title, in the person of John
Dryden, the surviving brother.[78]

FOOTNOTES

[1] Such, I understand, is the general purport of some letters of
Dryden's, in possession of the Dorset family, which contain certain
particulars rendering them unfit for publication. Our author himself
commemorates Dorset's generosity in the Essay on Satire, in the
following affecting passage: "Though I must ever acknowledge to the
honour of your lordship, and the eternal memory of your charity, that
since this Revolution, wherein I have patiently suffered the ruin of my
small fortune, and the loss of that poor subsistence which I had from
two kings, whom I had served more faithfully than profitably to myself--
then your lordship was pleased, out of no other motive but your own
nobleness, without any desert of mine, or the least solicitation from
me, to make me a most bountiful present, which at that time, when I was
most in want of it, came most seasonab