ze the whole period. Equally also
do his writings, both creative and critical, represent the revolution
of literary taste that took place in the latter half of the
seventeenth century. It was while he was in the midst of his
intellectual activity that French canons of criticism became largely
the accepted rules, by which the value of English productions was
tested. This was especially true of the drama. The study of Dryden is
accordingly a study of the political and literary history of his times
to an extent that is correspondingly true of no other English author
before or since.

His family, both on the father's and the mother's side, was in full
sympathy with the party opposed to the court. The son was educated at
Westminster, then under the mastership of Richard Busby, whose
relentless use of the rod has made his name famous in that long line
of flagellants who have been at the head of the great English public
schools. From Westminster he went to Trinity College, Cambridge. There
he received the degree of A. B. in January 1654. Later in that same
decade--the precise date is not known--he took up his residence in
London; and in London the rest of his life was almost entirely spent.

Dryden's first published literary effort appeared in a little volume
made up of thirty-three elegies, by various authors, on the death of a
youth of great promise who had been educated at Westminster. This was
Lord Hastings, the eldest son of the Earl of Huntingdon. He had died
of the small-pox. Dryden's contribution was written in 1649, and
consisted of but little over a hundred lines. No one expects great
verse from a boy of eighteen; but the most extravagant anticipations
of sorry performance will fail to come up to the reality of the
wretchedness which was here attained. It was in words like these that
the future laureate bewailed the death of the young nobleman and
depicted the disease of which he died:--

"Was there no milder way but the small-pox,
The very filthiness of Pandora's box?
So many spots, like naeves, our Venus soil?
One jewel set off with so many a foil?
Blisters with pride swelled, which through his flesh did sprout
Like rosebuds, stuck in the lily-skin about.
Each little pimple had a tear in it,
To wail the fault its rising did commit;
Which, rebel-like, with its own lord at strife,
Thus made an insurrection 'gainst his lif