Dryden, their huntsman dead, no more he wounds,
But now you must engage his pack of hounds."

[50] According to Ward, his expressions were, "that he was an old man,
and had not long to live by course of nature, and therefore did not care
to part with one limb, at such an age, to preserve an uncomfortable life
on the rest."--_London Spy_, Part xviii.

[51] "I come now from Mr. Dryden's funeral, where we had an Ode in
Horace sung, instead of David's Psalms; whence you may find, that we
don't think a poet worth Christian burial. The pomp of the ceremony was
a kind of rhapsody, and fitter, I think, for Hudibras, than him; because
the cavalcade was mostly burlesque: but he was an extraordinary man, and
buried after an extraordinary fashion; for I do believe there was never
such another burial seen. The oration, indeed, was great and ingenious,
worthy the subject, and like the author; whose prescriptions can restore
the living, and his pen embalm the dead. And so much for Mr. Dryden;
whose burial was the same as his life,--variety, and not of a piece:--
the quality and mob, farce and heroics; the sublime and ridicule mixed
in a piece;--great Cleopatra in a hackney coach."

[52] Those who wish to peruse this memorable romance may find it in vol.
xviii. It was first published in Wilson's "Life of Congreve," 1730. Mr.
Malone has successfully shown that it is false in almost all its parts;
for, independently of the extreme improbability of the whole story, it
is clear, from Ward's account, written at the time, that Lord Jefferies,
who it is pretended interrupted the funeral, did, in fact, largely
contribute to it. This also appears from a paragraph, in a letter from
Doctor afterwards Bishop Tanner, dated May 6th, 1700, and thus given by
Mr. Malone:--"Mr. Dryden died a papist, if at all a Christian. Mr.
Montague had given orders to bury him; but some lords (my Lord Dorset,
Jefferies, etc.), thinking it would not be splendid enough, ordered him
to be carried to Russel's: there he was embalmed; and now lies in state
at the Physicians' College, and is to be buried with Chaucer, Cowley,
etc., at Westminster Abbey, on Monday next."--_MSS. Ballard. in Bibl.
Bodl._ vol. iv. p. 29.

[53] The following lines are given by Mr. Malone as a specimen:--

"Before the hearse the mourning hautboys go,
And screech a dismal sound of grief and woe:
More dismal notes from bog-trotters may fall,
More dismal plaints at Irish funeral;