, since his Lordship refused to answer him like a Gentleman, he
would watch an Opportunity to meet him, and fight off hand, tho' with
all the Rules of Honour; which his Lordship hearing, left the Town, and
Mr. Charles could never have the satisfaction to meet him, tho' he
sought it till his death with the utmost Application.'

Dryden was, perhaps, the last man of learning that believed in
astrology; though an eminent English author, now living, and celebrated
for the variety of his acquirements, has been known to procure the
casting of horoscopes, and to consult a noted 'astrologer,' who gives
opinions for a small sum. The coincidences of prophecy are not more
remarkable than those of star-telling; and Dryden and the author I have
referred to were probably both captivated into belief by some fatuitous
realization of their horoscopic predictions. Nor can we altogether blame
their credulity, when we see biology, table-turning, rapping, and all
the family of imposture, taken up seriously in our own time.

On the birth of his son Charles, Dryden immediately cast his horoscope.
The following account of Dryden's paternal solicitude for his son, and
its result, may be taken as embellished, if not apocryphal. Evil hour,
indeed--Jupiter, Venus, and the Sun were all 'under the earth;' Mars and
Saturn were in square: eight, or a multiple of it, would be fatal to the
child--the square foretold it. In his eighth, his twenty-fourth, or his
thirty-second year, he was certain to die, though he might possibly
linger on to the age of thirty-four. The stars did all they could to
keep up their reputation. When the boy was eight years old he nearly
lost his life by being buried under a heap of stones out of an old wall,
knocked down by a stag and hounds in a hunt. But the stars were not to
be beaten, and though the child recovered, went in for the game a second
time in his twenty-third year, when he fell, in a fit of giddiness, from
a tower, and, to use Lady Elsabeth's words, was 'mash'd to a mummy.'
Still the battle was not over, and the mummy returned in due course to
its human form, though considerably disfigured. Mars and Saturn were
naturally disgusted at his recovery, and resolved to finish the
disobedient youth. As we have seen, he in vain sought his fate at the
hand of Jeffreys; but we must conclude that the offended constellations
took Neptune in partnership, for in due course the youth met with a
watery grave.

After abandoning