the poet describes the death of Lord Hastings by the small-pox, will be probably admitted as a justification of this censure: "Was there no milder way but the small-pox, The very filthiness of Pandora's box? So many spots, like naves on Venus' soil, One jewel set off with so many a foil; Blisters with pride swell'd, which through's flesh did sprout, Like rose-buds, stuck i'the lily-skin about. To wail the fault its rising did commit, No comet need foretell his change drew on, This is exactly in the tone of Bishop Corbett's invective against the same disease: "O thou deform'd unwoman-like disease, Thou plough'st up flesh and blood, and there sow'st pease; And leav'st such prints on beauty that dost come, As clouted shoon do on a floor of loam. Thou that of faces honeycombs dost make, After leaving the university, our author entered the world, supported by friends, from whose character, principles, and situation, it might have been prophesied, with probability, that his success in life, and his literary reputation, would have been Elegy on Lady Haddington, in Corbett's Poems, p. 121. Gilchrist's edition. exactly the reverse of what they actually proved. Sir Gilbert Pickering was cousin-german to the poet, and also to his mother; thus standing related to Dryden in a double connexion.1 This gentleman was a stanch puritan, and having set out as a reformer, ended by being a regicide, and an abettor of the tyranny of Cromwell. He was one of the judges of the unfortunate Charles; and though he did not sit in that bloody court upon the last and fatal day, yet he seems to have concurred in the most violent measures of the unconscientious men who did so. He had been one of the parliamentary counsellors of state, and hesitated not to be numbered among the godly and discreet persons who assisted Cromwell as a privy council. Moreover, he was lord chamberlain of the Protector's court, and received the honour of his mock peerage. The patronage of such a person was more likely to have elevated Dryden to the temporal greatness and wealth acquired by the sequestrators and committee-men of that oppressive time, than to have aided him in attaining the summits of Parnassus. For, according to the slight records which Mr Malone has recovered concerning Sir Gilbert Pickering's character, it would seem, that, to the hard, precise, fanatical contempt of every illumination, save the inward light, which he derived from 1 Sir John Pickering, father of Sir Gilbert, married Susan, the sister of Erasmus Dryden, the poet's father. But Mary Pickering, the poet's mother, was niece to Sir John Pickering; and thus her son Sir Gilbert was her cousin-german also. his sect, he added the properties of a fiery temper, and a rude savage address.1 In what capacity Dryden lived with his kinsman, or to what line of life circumstances seemed to destine the future poet, we are left at liberty to conjecture. Shad 1 In one lampoon, he is called " fiery Pickering." Walker, in his "Sufferings of the Clergy," prints Jeremiah Steven's account of the Northamptonshire committee of sequestration, in which the character of Pickering, one of the members of that oppressive body, is thus drawn:-" Sir G. P. had an uncle, whose ears were cropt for a libel on Archbishop Whitgift; was first a presbyterian, then an independent, then a Brownist, and afterwards an anabaptist. He was a most furious, fiery, implacable man; was the principal agent in casting out most of the learned clergy; a great oppressor of the country; got a good manor for his booty of the E. of R. and a considerable purse of gold by a plunder at Lynn in Norfolk." He is thus characterised by an angry limb of the commonwealth, whose republican spirit was incensed by Cromwell creating a peerage:" Sir Gilbert Pickering, knight of the old stamp, and of considerable revenue in Northamptonshire; one of the Long Parliament, and a great stickler in the change of the government from kingly to that of a commonwealth ;— helped to make those laws of treason against kingship; has also changed with all changes that have been since. He was one of the Little Parliament, and helped to break it, as also of all the parliaments since; is one of the Protector's council, (his salary L.1000 per annum, besides other places,) and as if he had been pinned to this slieve, was never to seek ; is become high steward of Westminster; and being so finical, spruce, and like an old courtier, is made Lord Chamberlain of the Protector's household or court; so that he may well be counted fit and worthy to be taken out of the House to have a negative voice in the other house, though he helped to destroy it in the king and lords. There are more besides him, that make themselves transgressors by building again the things which they once destroyed." Quoted by Mr Malone from a rare pamphlet in his collection, entitled, "A Second Narrative of the late Parliament, 1658." well, the virulent antagonist of our author, has called him Sir Gilbert Pickering's clerk; and it is indeed highly probable, that he was employed as his amanuensis, or secretary: "The next step of advancement you began The Medal of John Bayes. But I cannot, with Mr Malone, interpret the same passage, by supposing the third line of the triplet to apply to Dryden. Had he been actually a member of a committee of sequestration, that circumstance would never have remained in the dubious obscurity of Shadwell's poetry; it would have been as often echoed and re-echoed, as every other incident of the poet's life, which was capable of bearing an unfavourable interpretation. I incline therefore to believe, that the terms sequestrator and committee-man apply not to the poet, but to his patron Sir Gilbert, to whom their propriety cannot be doubted. Sir Gilbert Pickering was not our author's only relation at the court of Cromwell. The chief of his family, Sir John Driden, elder brother of the poet's father, was also a flaming and bigoted puritan,' through whose gifts and merits his nephew 'Like Sir Gilbert Pickering, he was a member of the Northamptonshire committee of Sequestration, and his deeds are thus commemorated in Walker's "Sufferings of the Clergy:" "Sir JD- -n was never noted for ability or discretion; was a puritan by tenure, his house (Canons Ashby) being an ancient college, where he possessed the church, and abused most part of it to profane uses: the chancel he turned to a barn; the body of it to a corn-chamber and store-house, might reasonably hope to attain preferment. In a youth entering life under the protection of such relations, who could have anticipated the future dramatist and poet laureat, much less the advocate and martyr of prerogative and of the Stuart family, the convert and confessor of the Roman Catholic faith? In his after career, his early connexions with the puritans, and the principles of his kinsmen during the civil wars and usurpation, were often made subjects of reproach, to which he never seems to have deigned an answer.1 reserving one side aisle of it for the public service of prayers, &c. He was noted for weakness and simplicity, and never put on any business of moment, but was very furious against the clergy." In a satire called "The Protestant Poets," our author is thus contrasted with Sir Roger L'Estrange. In levelling his reproaches, the satirist was not probably very solicitous about genealogical accuracy; as, in the eighth line, I conceive Sir John Dryden to be alluded to, although he is termed our poet's grandfather, when he was in fact his uncle. Sir Erasmus Dryden was indeed a fanatic, and so was Henry Pickering, Dryden's paternal and maternal grandfather; but neither were men of mark or eminence: "But though he spares no waste of words or conscience, That thoughtless air, that makes light Hodge so jolly ;- Not so forced BAYES, whom sharp remorse attends, And is all over grandfather within : By day that ill-laid spirit checks,-o'nights |